There is a concept, all but forgotten in the sanitised corridors of modern power, that once governed the fate of rulers: the sword and the halter.
In ages past, a leader who failed catastrophically – who sent his nation into ruin through greed, incompetence, or reckless ambition – faced a stark and personal reckoning. The sword of his enemies or the halter (the noose) of his own people were the brutal, unequivocal consequences of profound failure. The ruler’s fate was inextricably tied to the fate of the ruled. There was no golden parachute, no lucrative retirement onto corporate boards, no carefully managed press release expressing “regret.” Failure carried a personal, final cost.
This was not mere barbarism. It was a raw, powerful enforcement of the principle of accountability. It meant that those who wielded ultimate power also bore ultimate responsibility.
Today, we govern with the ghost of this principle, having surgically removed its teeth. Our political class operates in a consequence-free vacuum, utterly insulated from the outcomes of their decisions.
- They legislate poverty, but will never miss a meal.
- They design systems that create homelessness, but will never sleep on the street.
- They erode the bedrock of natural justice, all while protected by parliamentary privilege, generous pensions, and a political apparatus designed to deflect blame.
The recent legislation allowing welfare payments to be stripped from individuals merely charged with a crime – a direct assault on the presumption of innocence – is a perfect testament to this insulation. It is a policy crafted by those who will never feel its sting.
The Modern Halter: A Noose of Paperwork
The contemporary equivalent of the sword and halter is not a physical instrument, but a legal and moral one. We have the mechanisms to hold power to account, but we have lost the will to use them.
The Robodebt Royal Commission stands as a monument to this failure. It revealed a “massive failure of public administration,” a “crude and cruel mechanism” that destroyed lives and drove people to suicide. It laid bare the truth: ministers and senior public servants championed and presided over a scheme that was blatantly unlawful.
And what was the consequence? Condemnation in a report. A finding of failure. But where were the swords? Where were the halters? The architects of this cruelty remain, for the most part, insulated. They have not been forced to personally confront the devastation they engineered. The connection between action and consequence was severed.
This lack of tangible accountability creates a moral vacuum where policies like the new welfare suspension law can be born. It is governance by spreadsheet, where human suffering is an “unintended outcome” or an “acceptable cost,” never a personal failure that threatens the comfort of the decision-maker.
Re-forging the Chain of Consequences
We are not, of course, advocating for a return to literal violence. But we must recapture the spirit of the sword and the halter – the unbreakable chain that must connect a leader’s actions to their personal and professional fate.
This means:
- Enforcing Real Political Consequences: A minister who presides over a catastrophic, unlawful policy like Robodebt must be barred from public office. Their political career must end, not with a quiet resignation, but with a public reckoning that serves as a warning to others.
- Demanding Legal Accountability: Where laws are broken, whether in the design or execution of policy, there must be legal consequences. The shield of the state must not protect individuals from the liability for their unlawful actions.
- Creating a Culture of Personal Liability: The public must cease to accept the hollow apology and the shuffled resignation. We must demand a system where the powerful are not insulated – where their fortunes, their reputations, and their freedom are on the line when they gamble with the lives of citizens.
The nightmares of those wronged by these transgressions – the lives broken by Robodebt, the individuals who will be plunged into destitution by this new law – should haunt the sleep of those responsible. That is a form of justice.
To the political class, we issue this warning: The age of consequence-free governance is ending. The public is awakening. We are remembering the old truths. The sword of public outrage and the halter of legal and historical judgment are being taken down from the wall.
You will be held to account. You will learn to think clearly and reflect deeply before you put words on paper, for those words will become weapons, and we will ensure they finally, rightfully, boomerang back to their source.
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Anger provoking warnings here, with a sense in us, perhaps, of the futilities, injustices, complexities and challenges of modern life’s broadening base, social declines, political putridities, economics cesspits, various traps, pits, swamps. Rotten operators, loaded with vanity and little drive or ability, still tend to rise and dominate. Morrison is a glaring example of the wart posing as a Greek statue. As for Trump, it’s all arse from the dandruff to the tinea.
Except perhaps we have Independent publishers like AIM and the following video from Michael West Media.
https://michaelwest.com.au/net-zero-mates-state-funerals-nauru-dupe-scam-of-the-week/
We’ve got the NACC now, and Blind Freddy says it’s more like a trough and nosebag than a sword and halter. Again, never let it be said that the political class won’t bend over backwards to arrange quiet protection by recruiting from their deep well of non-aligned old braided and young apparatchik white knights who come replete with their own designer hobbles (just so they don’t stray from the trough and nosebag) whilst continuing their invaluable injudicial judicious work in hush.
It’s the great Oz prestidigitation, Now ya see it, now ya don’t. It’s been given a state funeral – dead and buried.
A timely and thought-provocing article Andrew, thanks.
There is so many ideas that could be taken up.
One might be how is it the institution that is supposed to holding people in government to account seemingly failed to do so.
The impunity given to those who oversaw Robodebt raises the question, why hasn’t the NACC recommended action against them?
One way to get accountability through such an institution is to have open hearings. An argument provided against open hearings is that innocent people will be tarnished by assoiciation with the investigation. Only those who have been in that position would truly know if that is accurate or not.So, speaking in first hand ignorance of that can the question of if those who were found guilty were given real consequences and held accountable, would that allow for easy differentiation by the public with those responsible and innnocents drawn up in the saga?
Despite being strongly in favour of open hearings I can’t help but think of actors relating public experiences where some of the public have been unable to differentiate between the actor and the character played by the actor on tv or whatever.
But the failings are more complex then just open or closed hearings. The reason there the NACC doesn’t seem to be working is lies in its design and possibly appointments.
AI should reduce pollies and their staff but the move is for more of both????????(10 to the 301 cubed)