Peter Dunne: Government arrogance

Governments rarely lose office because their policies are unpopular or not working. Far more often they are defeated because they have become arrogant and contemptuously dismissive of those promoting different views to theirs.

Usually, this trend becomes pronounced during a government's second or third term, but there are already emerging signs of increasing arrogance and intolerance from the current government, barely two-thirds into its first term. This week alone there have been three such displays of the government's mounting arrogance and disregard for contrary views.