In this fracturing world where the ability of politicians to command mainstream attention is in decline — the events of this week have been a good demonstration of what works.
It helps if you've got in a fistfight with a kangaroo. Or been arrested for captaining a motorised Esky along a legal roadway while drunk as a skunk.
Second: the schedule-flooding line-up of experts called in to TV and radio studios to assess the precise degree of Antipodean insult, and whether it was worse or better than Paul Keating putting his arm around the King's late mother's back on her visit to Sydney 32 years ago.
So, much as organisers in Parliament House must have blanched on Monday to hear the guest of honour loudly and publicly reprimanded for his personal links to a racist system of colonial oppression, it must calmly be remembered that this is not the King's first rodeo on this front, even in his immediate family.
Being able to cope with criticism, even when it's unreasonable — in fact, especially when it's unreasonable — is a mark of human maturity and confidence we are entitled to expect from our political leaders and monarchs, and indeed should practise ourselves wherever possible. Backbenchers audition for advancement and TV minutes by being outrageous, trenchant or destructive. We reward them with screen time and eyeballs. Sometimes, in the face of a problem that would respond better to consensus and compromise, it makes more strategic sense to foment conflict or to portray one's adversary as extreme and intractable, as stupid or malign.
Reform of the exponentially costly aged care system, for instance, has been a too-hard-basket problem for decades.
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