"Where there is a will there is a way. And this must be the way not of compulsion but of cooperation... No government and no plan can succeed without it"
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Willpower is the oldest political cliché in the book, so Murphy immediately tightens it into something sharper: the “way” can’t be forced. Coming from a judge, that’s not a feel-good add-on; it’s a boundary line. Courts and governments are built to compel compliance, yet Murphy is warning that the deepest kind of legitimacy can’t be legislated into existence. You can order behavior. You can’t order buy-in.
The intent is almost constitutional in spirit: he’s arguing that the real engine of policy is consent, not machinery. “Compulsion” evokes the blunt instruments of the state - coercive policing, punitive regulation, the top-down plan that treats citizens as problems to be managed. “Cooperation” is the quieter but harder achievement: trust, civic participation, unions and employers bargaining in good faith, communities accepting a reform as theirs rather than something done to them. Murphy is essentially saying that government is an amplifier, not a generator. It can scale a shared will, but it can’t invent one.
The subtext also reads like a rebuke to technocratic confidence. “No government and no plan can succeed without it” undercuts the fantasy that clever design alone can drag society toward progress. In the late 20th-century Australian context Murphy inhabited - dense fights over rights, federal power, and reform - the line lands as a pragmatic moral: durable change comes from people meeting the state halfway. The judge’s authority here is almost paradoxical. He’s reminding the powerful that their power has limits, and that those limits are where democracy actually lives.
The intent is almost constitutional in spirit: he’s arguing that the real engine of policy is consent, not machinery. “Compulsion” evokes the blunt instruments of the state - coercive policing, punitive regulation, the top-down plan that treats citizens as problems to be managed. “Cooperation” is the quieter but harder achievement: trust, civic participation, unions and employers bargaining in good faith, communities accepting a reform as theirs rather than something done to them. Murphy is essentially saying that government is an amplifier, not a generator. It can scale a shared will, but it can’t invent one.
The subtext also reads like a rebuke to technocratic confidence. “No government and no plan can succeed without it” undercuts the fantasy that clever design alone can drag society toward progress. In the late 20th-century Australian context Murphy inhabited - dense fights over rights, federal power, and reform - the line lands as a pragmatic moral: durable change comes from people meeting the state halfway. The judge’s authority here is almost paradoxical. He’s reminding the powerful that their power has limits, and that those limits are where democracy actually lives.
Quote Details
| Topic | Leadership |
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