Have you noticed how issues sometimes come out of nowhere and take over the political agenda?
Last week, every single person in Tasmania was talking about same sex marriage. People in churches, parliament, street corners, over coffee, in office - everywhere! It's an important topic that we should discuss…
But have you noticed how consuming the discussion and debate is?
We're not talking about anything else at the moment. We're all eager to see how the politicians will vote - we being people on both sides of the debate - and we'll all be sitting on our seats when the announcement is made.
The thing is - we are not talking about the issues that are crippling the state.
What about the fact that Tasmanian's will be paying for the carbon tax on our clean and green power?
None of these are new issues mind you, but they are all ones that we could be talking about. Focus on the could - because we're not talking about them. We're taken up with the discussion about same sex marriage.
How clever is that?
The government of Tasmania has stated publicly that they'll reintroduce a same sex marriage bill to parliament - at a time when every single other issue seems to be slipping away from the state government.
When was the last time you talked about our hospital system?
The government has managed to transform the entire political discussion and essentially put everything that is negative behind a smoke screen. They've chosen something so big and something that is still controversial to some people, that they've captured and activated the hearts and minds of so many people.
It's like they got a big shiny ball and threw it past us. We may have been chasing a stick before, but now we want that shiny ball.
So when these things do come up and consume the conversation, make sure we don't forget what is behind the smoke screen -
because rising power prices which benefits a government business,
a health system doing everything it can to survive itself, and
one of the largest minerals deposits being located in the largest tract of temperate rainforest in the Southern Hemisphere
- they're all issues we still need to talk about.
Don't get too distracted by the shiny ball!
Follow Adam on Twitter @adammostogl
