Mr Broadbent is our elected representative

Liberal MPs dissenting from the party line is almost flavour of the month in Canberra.

But it should not be left to his constituents back home to remind Russell Broadbent (Sentinel-Times, February 22) that when he speaks out in parliament he does so as our elected representative.

In the House, on the issue of vaccine protection, he’s still the MP for Monash. He is apparently incapable of distinguishing personal rights from his democratic responsibilities: to look to the interests of his community during a pandemic.

What’s more, he’s a repeat offender.

He wasn’t elected to speak up (as he expressly did this time) for the noisy fringe groups coalescing around vague ‘freedom’ chants, though he should listen to them, of course. Claiming he’s “never sought to influence people’s choices” is naïve and shows he has, after all these years, a juvenile understanding of his position.

He’s even dragging his own party – tasked in government with serious health management leadership – into the circus ring of ‘look at me’ acts that has us public mugs turning away in derision.

Less politically, as Dr McPhair of the Rural Doctors Association says, he’s actually (and I believe wilfully) a health risk - to himself and to others. That’s us. Can I emphasise that Mr. Broadbent is not neutral in this, standing aside in some personal cul-de-sac.

Posing as a paragon of personal diligence, investigating who-knows-what pop-up therapies to beat COVID infection, he ignores years of scientific conclusions – and in the process, implicitly encourages dangerous behaviours. Ones that impact, by transmission, a wider public.

Hiding behind his consulting ‘health practitioners’ to deflect criticism? Are they clinical professors - or whacky cranks from Woop Woop?

Lest some just write this concern off as ‘last year’s nightmare’, remember that Australians are still dying, and new variants of COVID, and other yet unimagined viruses, are all very real possibilities.

Similarly, we can’t just write our man Russell off as ‘yesterday’s fossil’ – far from doing the honourable thing, and resigning instead of losing the plot in parliament, he’s up for election, again!

A final question to Mr Broadbent, in the hope that he can at least demonstrate some consistency: does he also stand up for Aussies who happen to have a thing about mask-wearing? Or distancing? Or isolating? Taken to a logical conclusion, Russell’s Rules is set to replace Rafferty’s.

But do we need to repeat this depressing joke?

Ken Blackman, Inverloch.