I think more frequent communication helps — I feel like I keep saying it at this point but it’s my fault for just throwing it out on Discord instead of writing it up properly — but I think we’re also developing a pattern of communication mismatches. The flip side of erratic pressure from the Assembly is erratic communication from the Cabinet about policy goals. Telling people what you’re doing is one thing and telling people why you’re doing it — how it fits your long-term vision, how it strengthens our community, and so forth — is another. I think the questions from the Assembly have become too intense because (a) they often don’t ask the subtext directly, which is not so much “are you ticking the checkboxes of your platform?” but rather “are you implementing your vision for the region?” and (b) the structure of our executive means that responsibility is concentrated with the Prime Minister.
I think it’s telling that a lot of the ‘intense’ questions we’re referring to here all started with some variation of “what has the Cabinet been up to?” which, on its own, hardly seems particularly intense. For me, it’s more telling that it needs to be asked or that it can trigger such intense discussion. Even though some members of the Cabinet have probably been providing updates of what they have been spending time on, in the direct and literal sense, I feel that there’s pent-up frustration about not understanding what vision the Cabinet as a whole is working towards. That’s on the Assembly in part for letting that get pent up until it boils over, but at the same time, the relationship between our executive and legislature shouldn’t be a transactional one about ticking off campaign promises, and sometimes it feels like we all lose sight of that.
Looking through the Cabinet category, there are a lot of announcements about what people are doing — events, competitions, articles, and so forth — and fewer discussions about why people are doing those things. I think topics like the Dispatches and Telegrams discussion are a good example of proactively laying out a vision (as opposed to, say, just announcing “we updated our dispatches”) and soliciting public feedback for specific policy plans (which is a whole lot less to unpack than “what has the Cabinet been up to?”). To be honest, even just politically speaking, why not get ahead of the curve and share your ideas with the public on your own terms rather than on the back foot with questions from the Assembly?