The death of John Cain, Victoria's longest serving Labor premier and without a single doubt one of the finest leaders of either our nation or a state, highlights yet again the dreadful dearth of respected authority Australians currently have or have had in the past decade as The SMH's chief political correspondent, David Crowe, alluded to this week.
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Crowe wrote of "a wasted decade" in referring to Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott (easily the worst in my opinion), Malcom Turnbull and now Scott Morrison, the latter comfortably out-played in the past month by Anthony Albanese; but, back to Cain later in whom there is much for Albo and Labor to follow urgently; perhaps above all, this from The SMH's tribute on Christmas Eve: "(Cain) never stopped thinking about how to make things better".
It was left to the intellectually astute Labor man, Barry Jones, to write Cain's epitaph - and it might be added, the way forward for the ALP to get a spurt on again against a tired opponent that has provided three of the five PMs of a decade best forgotten by all but the wealthiest.
Jones said: "If you had a choice between private benefit and the public interest, the public interest always came first. He (Cain) was a person extraordinarily disciplined, very ethical, and when he was committed to something he wouldn't let anything stand in his way".
Cain believed good government came from good process and that policy always trumped politics; there's more than a touch of Sir Robert Gordon Menzies - different party, yes, same moral direction - in Cain.
Menzies respected the law but bad legislation had to be changed and the better leadership the public service gave and the better law-making and law-giving it could provide the more vastly improved government the people would get.
It was said Cain believed policy advice should come from government departments, and not from political advisers; he saw the factional system as an enemy of good government.
Here are examples of just a few of the main things Cain's governments brought Victorians which showed the measure of the great man and, interestingly, that he, his ministers and local MPs (most importantly) were in touch with the people, not like this decade's leaders especially Abbott, Morrison and, certainly, Bill Shorten.
Cain successfully fought the Melbourne establishment which was against shifting the Australian Open tennis from Kooyong to Melbourne Park, thus securing Australian ownership of the Open from global invaders. Inside a year of his 1982 election he had smashed the men-only rule within the Victoria Racing Club, telling it future government funding was off if it didn't agree.
He completely changed Sunday shopping laws and late night licensing but his government's trump card was the fantastic Southbank development of the Yarra.
Most importantly, and ironically in the week that Cain died, two things transpired that may ultimately bring about change for the good of his life-long support to the ALP.
The first was his unswerving campaign for party reform; the second, the NSW Labor branch, rotten to the core as the current ICAC investigation showed, is poised, due to the Lavarch review, to eliminate the factional system in state management leadership.
Cain believed good government came from good process ...
So, the New Year dawns and those hoping our leadership drought will end shouldn't get too excited. Sadly there are not enough people about today like John Cain - let alone the incomparable Menzies on the conservative side - to effect change.
The next fear is that there is gathering evidence the Morrison Government and the increasingly-doddery NSW Government are moving to stifle or render difficult the investigation by Inspector-General, Mick Keelty, to get to the bottom, pardon the pun, of the Murray-Darling Basin disaster, because not only is the ownership of water falling into the hands of people using it to build enormous personal wealth, but it may prove to be either illegal and/or against the best interests of Australian citizens.
The investigation must be completed with all speed; anything less would be a travesty of good government.
As we enter 2020, we have our major river system in crisis, a number of food bowls in trouble and we are selling our water to people in overseas countries.
All Morrison says is, "isn't life good?", but for whom? What he isn't showing, as The Canberra Times' top political writer, Jack Waterford, wrote last week is: "Evidence of a grand design, a master strategy, or even a vague idea of the destination towards which he is headed".
