Coming up 68 and still learning to trust my instincts.
Just watched the middle episode of ABC’s doco The Killing Season on Julia Gillard’s rise (and Kevin Rudd’s fall). It reminded me of my initial instincts on the matter, that in fact Julia Gillard had engineered the demise of two Labor Prime Ministers.
While I was naturally disgusted by her treatment at the hands of Abbott and his ilk, I came again to the view that she was a big girl, was very politically experienced and should have realised that her actions were bound to give the conservatives the upper hand. And I can’t forgive her for that.
Kevin Rudd had the electoral magic shared only by Bob Hawke in my lifetime, he was a person with whom the electorate could be very angry, but would forgive, because of what they saw as his warmth. They classified him into the ‘good bloke’ box.
However, the most stinging thing for me is the fact that those Labor members whose motives and values I had mistrusted on instinct were at the heart of the betrayal. Bitar, Dastyari and Arbib. Just as in the previous state Labor government I had strongly mistrusted Obeid, Macdonald and Roozendaal, each of whom was proved at ICAC to be of a type who considered the parliament as just a treasure chest for their own interests, to use at will.
Science teaches us to weigh up evidence and to be able to carefully and methodically explain our reasoning, yet sometimes (all the time?) our brain computes things about other humans in a way that is instinctive.
Perhaps it is scientific after all? Just that the process is so fast that we miss seeing the steps. But give me some time listening to someone speak in a court, in a meeting, in an interview and, just like the dog who hates the postman, the decision is there.
So it makes sense to me now to just trust my gut reactions, unscientific as that may seem, and classify into trust, don’t trust and pending. Few will need to move category I’ve discovered.