Half baked
Because every great speech starts with someone else’s great idea.
Who Baked It First? — Recipe Wars, Aldi, and the Art of Political Stealing
Salvador Dali once said Good artists borrow. Great artists steal!*
And if the recent “recipe wars” among Australia‘s cake queens have taught us anything, it’s that nobody wants to admit they copied someone else’s secret sauce, even when they’re standing there with flour on their face.
Politics isn’t much different.
Lately, I’ve noticed something strange. Whether it’s getting Aldi to Tasmania, restructuring the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme, or getting houses actually built, it seems every political party is suddenly claiming they thought it up first.
One minute, Tammy is the only ones pushing these ideas. The next, major party MPs are acting like the idea came to them in a dream. I’m half-expecting someone to claim they worked in fields and factories before stepping into the political limelight.
So it got me thinking. Should Tammy stop listening to everyday people and instead go full Bob Katter? Start shouting about bringing back the Tassie tiger and doing her own thing for three years, obsessing over things regardless of what anyone wants?
Or should she turn her office into a kind of free mini-bar-style think tank, no keycard required. All parties welcomed. Need a housing idea? Take one! Got a spare quote about cost-of-living? Help yourself! A policy on freight reform? Bottom shelf, it’s still fresh out of the oven.
“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit”, as former President Harry S Truman once told me. **
Tammy also had words of wisdom on the matter.
“I’m not in it for the credit, I’m in it for the outcome”. ***
If others want to claim the idea as theirs, then fine. As long as it gets done. So long as the policy cake gets baked, it’s OK if somebody wants to argue over who licked the spoon.
So while the recipe wars rage on, lets hope that independent thinkers like Tammy keep cooking up solutions using the simplest ingredient.
Listening to Tasmanians.
Footnotes.
* It could have been Picasso that said this and Dali just stole it from him.
** I’ve never met President Truman, I just borrowed the idea from Picasso that I did.
*** Tammy Tyrrell is a true original, nothing fake. Although I am suspicious that her family recipe for Lasagne is actually straight out of a Jamie Oliver cook book.