The buck stops there

Rowan Dean I 1 June 2024 I The Spectator Australia

Not many of us remember Fred M. Canfil, who, when visiting an Oklahoma prison in 1945, was impressed by a sign that read, ‘The buck stops here’. With the exception, it would appear, of Anthony Albanese, most people are now familiar with that phrase, thanks to Fred, who sent a placard bearing those four words to his friend President Harry S. Truman. It sat in pride of place in the Oval Office thereafter.

The phrase, which has its origins in –of all things – playing poker, has come to represent one of the modern world’s most fundamental democratic and ethical principles. Leadership comes with accountability. The honourable leader will take responsibility for the actions or decisions of those he has empowered to make those decisions. The burden of moral leadership requires the leader to be the individual who bears the blame, even to the point of resignation, when things below go wrong.

This concept works for a number of reasons, but most of all, it gives a leader, when circumstances require, a moral justification for decisions which they may not have a mandate for. Power can be exercised to the full by such a leader because he or she has already committed to the idea that they will take the full blame, and the punishment, should a decision prove to be the wrong one. Equally, the public can have full trust in their leader knowing that along with extraordinary power comes a final reckoning. ‘The buck stops here’ is, in many ways, the very essence of a successful, agile and powerful democracy at work.

Alas, Australia is right now bereft of such a noble principle, and indeed, of such enviable political leadership.

The hallmarks of the Albanese government have been its shiftiness, obfuscation and blame-shifting. Take the failed Voice referendum. After winning the 2022 election, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese immediately seized ownership of the entire Voice to Parliament/Uluru Statement from the Heart Fandango. In his victory speech he made it his primary mission. Before you could say ‘Makarrata stick’ he was off grandstanding at the Garma festival, Akubra perched precariously on his head, taking full moral leadership of the entire Voice project. It was Mr Albanese who insisted on merging the bureaucratic concept with the constitutional change, a decision many wiser heads warned against. It was Mr Albanese who decided to belittle and scoff at those who asked for more details, and to blithely and arrogantly sneer at those who asked why he hadn’t read the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full.

Yet the moment the referendum failed, suddenly it was all everybody else’s fault. Blame the Coalition for being ‘negative’. Blame Sky News and other media (us, presumably) for daring to raise questions about the details. And of course, blame all that ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ that had ‘hoodwinked’ and ‘tricked’ everyday Australians. Indeed, when it came to the Voice’s defeat, as numerous indigenous activists and academics were quick to point out, the buck stopped anywhere and everywhere but on the Prime Minister’s desk.

And that has been the pattern ever since. As Ramesh Thakur writes brilliantly in his column about Albo missing in action in this week’s issue, ‘Albanese shifts querulously from evasive to incomprehensible, incoherent and ultimately indefensible. Who would have thought that by comparison, even Joe Biden displays moral clarity and sounds forceful and coherent.’

Ramesh takes us through many of Albanese’s failures to accept accountability, particularly as regards the appalling antisemitism that has been unleashed across Australia by pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas extremists. Ramesh also looks at the cowardly and morally indefensible comments surrounding the International Criminal Court seeking to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet, is Mr Albanese’s evasiveness and cowardice on that topic – he refuses to condemn the ICC – all that surprising, given that ‘moral relativism’ and ‘moral equivalence’ are the poisonous milk that has succoured Labor for the last few decades?

But this week has seen the buck-passing reach dangerous levels. As we go to print, Andrew Giles remains Minister for Immigration, although we would not be surprised if he were to be sacrificed to save Mr Albanese’s skin. The mishandling of the immigration portfolio under his watch, which has seen the granting of visas to non-citizen criminals, including murderers, paedophiles, drug dealers and sex offenders, has shocked the nation. Serious crimes have been committed by those released, including a grandmother savagely beaten, and there have been allegations of serial rapes and other appalling incidents. There is no question, that as with all Labor’s flawed and failed policies, these latest revelations stem from Labor’s extreme pro-immigration/asylum ideology compounded by ministerial idiocy and bureaucratic incompetence.

There are many you can point the finger of blame at if you so choose. But the buck must stop somewhere. Harry S. Truman would know what to do.

Author: Rowan Dean