Yeah Nah, Nah Yeah - On government, growing up, and knowing when to step aside.

Australians have never been particularly good at taking orders.

We invented Yeah Nah and Nah Yeah for a reason.

But perhaps those two little expressions contain a surprisingly good lesson about government, children, and knowing when to protect someone,  and when to get the hell out of their way.

I have been thinking about government, which is dangerous enough these days.

I posted a question on a forum I belong to:

What makes good government?

One answer stopped me.

“Good people make a good government. So the real question is: what makes good people?”

 

Which led me to my second thought: my great-grandson.

He is ten years old, he knows he matters, and one day he will, along with his twin cousins, inherit the country we leave behind.

Somewhere between those two thoughts lies a rather Australian saying:

Yeah Nah, Nah Yeah

There is a difference between Yeah Nah and Nah Yeah in Australia.

They sound like two ways of saying much the same thing.

They are not.

Yeah Nah means: I hear you. But no.

“Want another beer?”

“Yeah Nah. I’m right.”

Nah Yeah starts with the hesitation and finishes somewhere else.

“You reckon that’ll work?”

“Nah Yeah. I reckon it will.”

That small distinction may say more about us than we like to admit.

We are not, by nature, a people who enjoy being told what to think.

Much like a child who constantly asks, “Why?”, we question government too.

The problem is that, too often these days, parents and governments seem to arrive at the same answer:

“Because I told you so. That’s why.”

That might work with a ten-year-old.

It doesn't work terribly well with adults.

Most of us are not trying to overthrow the country.

We are trying to stay decent.

We want the highway fixed before the press conference. We want an ambulance that arrives when somebody needs one. We want the bloke who bashes somebody to be more frightened of the court than his victim is.

We want to vote, cop the result, and get on with it without being told that noticing the gap between the brochure and the real street view makes us a moral problem.

Yeah, government is necessary.

Nah, government is not our parent.

Someone has to hold the whistle. Someone has to make the rules, enforce the law, collect the rubbish, keep the roads functioning and the lights on.

Holding the whistle is not a licence to raise everybody else’s children by mandate.

Somewhere along the way, we confused protection with smothering, and responsibility and protection with surveillance.

Children need protection.

Of course they do.

They also need scraped knees.

They need to climb trees, play rough, get muddy, lose a game, make a mistake, meet a consequence and hear the word no.

They need someone close enough to catch them when the fall is serious ... not someone trailing behind with a mattress for every step.

I watched a ten-year-old sit up taller every time the adults noticed he was polite.

Someone asked him who was the most important person in the world.

He said, “Me.”

Why?

“Because Mum said I am.”

It was not arrogance.

It was not entitlement.

It was a little boy who knew he mattered.

And perhaps that is where good government starts.

Not with a policy.

Not with a press conference.

With the understanding that the people being governed matter.

Good government has a job of its own.

Protect the country without smothering it.

Keep the streets safe without treating every citizen as a suspect.

Offer a fair go without promising to clear every stone from the path.

Listen when people say something is not working, instead of explaining why they should not have noticed.

Yeah, someone has to hold the whistle.

Nah, holding the whistle does not make you the parent of the whole street.

A child needs to know he matters.

That is a mother's sentence, not a government minister's.

The rest follows from it: manners, work, a scraped knee, a lost game, the word no, and someone close enough to catch him when the fall is actually serious.

If we get that part right, the country has a chance of staying decent.

If we do not, no press conference will save it.

So when the next " bright idea " arrives, already printed and laminated, the answer does not have to be a speech.

Sometimes it is Yeah Nah.

Sometimes it is Nah Yeah.

Sometimes it is simply No.

And sometimes it is Yes.

But underneath all of it is something we don't seem to hear enough of these days.

Trust.

Trust that adults can think.

Trust that parents can raise their children.

Trust that citizens can make choices.

Trust that people can fall over and get back up.

Trust that government can do the jobs government is supposed to do ... and then have the good sense to step aside.

Because the country does not belong to the government or to us.

We are only looking after it until the kids grow up.