Politics & Power Quote by Lionel K. Murphy

It lands like a courtroom ambush: the most damning fact isn’t the absence of a plan, but the implication that the public has been quietly trained to assume one exists. Murphy’s line is built on a sly reversal. “The people of Australia” aren’t accused of apathy; they’re cast as reasonable, even innocent. The shock is reserved for the state. By predicting the public would be “staggered,” he frames the lack of a national development plan as not just policy failure but a breach of democratic expectation - government behaving as if it’s above the basic duty of foresight.

Murphy’s specific intent is to delegitimize complacency in Canberra by turning administration into a question of credibility. A nation that imagines itself modern, prosperous, and strategically serious cannot admit - without embarrassment - that it’s drifting. The sentence also functions as a warning shot to colleagues: if the public ever sees the machinery without its reassuring casing, they’ll notice the improvisation.

Context matters. Murphy came from the mid-century Australian project: expanding federal capacity, building institutions, treating national planning as an expression of sovereignty rather than an indulgence. As a jurist and former attorney-general, he understood how power hides in process. “No plan” isn’t merely an economic critique; it’s an indictment of governance without accountability, where decisions happen, but responsibility can’t be located. The subtext: if there’s no plan, there’s no one to blame - and that’s the point.