Tag Archives: julia gillard

Some Say

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , ,

Journalists with secret sources a cornerstone of our democracy eh? Not so sure. Oh, I know that “I will never reveal the names of my sources” is the Hippocratic Oath of Journalism. And yes, yes, I know all about Watergate. But still, surprisingly, I have me doubts.

Seems hardly an Australian media political story these days, and reflected from there into Twitter, which doesn’t include “senior government sources” “senior ministers” “a number of backbenchers” “Labor insiders” “political observers” “a former power broker”, down to that deepest of Deep Throats the ubiquitous “Some” who frequently appears “saying” things, as a source of stories inevitably damaging to the government.

Now journalists defend this anonymity by arguing that it is an essential part of their trade to protect identity of sources otherwise no whistleblower would ever come forward. In this narrative (for it is just a narrative like all journalism these days) these intrepid journalists find honest insiders willing to lift the lid on some terrible political wrong-doing hidden behind closed doors, and the public must be kept informed.

But it is impossible to think of such a story in recent years. Instead the “whistle blowing” the “leaks from insiders” all have a single theme and purpose – to “reveal” and exacerbate whatever personal tensions exist within the Labor government. Either because it suits the agenda of a media proprietor, or of the Opposition, or of someone who wants to retrieve a Field Marshall’s baton from a knapsack in which, they believe, it was prematurely stored.

That is, this kind of Leak Journalism is not aimed at the public interest but at private interests in the Great Game of politics. The identity of informants, where they do actually exist (and I suggest some are, like the dead body in World War 2 Operation Mincemeat, not real people at all) , is not being protected because of the value of their information to the public, but to hide the nasty political games they are actually playing.

What’s more their anonymity has become a way of journalists inflating the apparent value of sources, of effortlessly increasing them in both numbers and rank to give a totally false impression of the meaning of a story. Pretending that the journalist has 50 whistleblowers, instead of one whistleblower 50 times. And a way of hiding secret agendas, political and business. And of disguising the informant who is a member of a think tanks, pushing a nasty neoconservative economic agenda on behalf of paymasters. And of pretending that “inside information” from the Labor Party isn’t in fact coming from a cunning Liberal troublemaker. And so on.

The media has been completely happy with fake whistleblowers, helping them, for example, to churn out endless fake “Rudd challenge” stories with no more effort than pushing a programmed function key on a keyboard. But the media have treated with contempt those ultimate real whistleblowers Assange and Manning. Their stories needed investigation, work, writing, and, more scarily, would actually involve speaking truth to power. A function once primary for journalists but no longer.

Anyway, think it is time for a change to this “secret informant” business. Some say all informants’ identities should be made public, in the interests of transparency, unless there is an extremely good reason for not doing so.

What do you say?

Own Goaaaaaaal!

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Yesterday in Australia we saw the media in full blown raw and uncut uncamouflaged action as they thought they were witnessing the successful culmination of another year’s hard work in unseating a female Prime Minister. And one reason for their campaign was out in the open, thanks to the magic of twitter.

From the moment the starter’s gun (in the unpredicted form of Wiley E. Crean) went off the journalists were in heaven. Finally they had an actual football match, er, sorry, leadership challenge, in the flesh, to report. It was as if one of those loony tunes evangelists, after years of predicting the end of the world at dates calculated by adding random numbers from hymn books, was suddenly told that a rather large asteroid was heading straight at Earth and would be hitting in a couple of hours.

Off they went, these gangs of football hooligans, sorry, journalists, must stop doing that, to roam parliament house looking for a spot of bovver, er, sorry, looking for some solid news to illuminate the story for the public.

And sure enough, these hard-headed, experienced journalists were soon coming up with real nuggets of KFC, sorry, gold. One bumped into a couple of Rudd supporters who said their man had the numbers. Others were reporting a scorecard produced by Sky which had Gillard narrowly ahead (was it 52-38, I forget) but with “9 undecided”, numbers which seemed to have been generated by a water diviner passing a stick over a list of caucus names.

Others, seeking, perhaps much more scientific psephology were quoting bookies’ odds. Again, I forget the exact figures, but they had Rudd as unbackable as Phar Lapp, and Gillard less likely to win than the Australian cricket team was to win the fourth test in India. The reporters were delighted to report that Kevin Rudd, finally arriving in parliament, was writing things down on a bit of paper. Who knew what, but, obviously, obviously, he was number-crunching, ticking off names as his supporters, water-boarding recalcitrants in the APH car park, advised him through a Protective Services style ear piece, that another former Gillard supporter, poor deluded fool, had come in from the cold.

Still others, uninterested in the boring facts and figures, and searching for human faces to put on the number-crunching faceless men, peered breathlessly down distant corridors where, Swiss clock-like, Stephen Smith was going in this door and out another, while Anthony Albanese moved in another, as different journos reported. Another had several Gillard supporters, probably ashen-faced, in the PM’s Berlin bunker, sorry, Office. Another had “twenty” Rudd supporters in with Kevin. Great heavens, were they holding the 9 undecideds hostage? Still, this “story” was rather spoilt by another intrepid reporter who managed to peep into Rudd’s office and realised that if there were 20 supporters in there they must be very small people indeed.

Anyway, after a lot of this kind of nonsense some journalists bleated, sorry, tweeted, that the Federal Police had, while, surprisingly perhaps, not having kettled the journos, had blocked off their access to the PM’s office and surrounds. And so the main fun was over.

Into the chamber where the next enthralling quarter of football, sorry, politics, was to be played. What were the team line-ups? Great heavens, the coaches were talking to the substitute players, now what? Wow, game on, great tactic from the West Abbott Albions, and totally unexpected, this’ll catch out the Red Devils, a non confidence motion. Wait, what, oh, has to be an SSO first, um, right, dunno much about football, but whatever works. Oh look, the Red Devil subs are playing with the Albion, it’s all over for Full Forward Gillard, she’s lost. What? A technicality means she hasn’t? Boo the umpire, shouldn’t be a woman, hey don’t know nothing about football. What? Game over? But they lost the no confidence … What? There wasn’t? Silly game.

Quick off to the change rooms, see the biffo of the second half.

What? No biffo? No contest? Red Devil wins again without even trying?

How to explain this to the public? Oh, easy, just like we’ve been explaining it last three years. The contest was real, Rudd had the numbers, Abbott wins, Gillard loses. Can just recycle all those earlier fantasy football columns, right? Right.

Who’s for the pub?

Lay down misere

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Andrew Elder has written an excellent piece suggesting that the Liberal Party is engaged in trying to makeover Tony Abbott’s image into that of an Antipodean Ronald Reagan:
“The sunny optimism and pleasantness that Abbott showed in his 60 Minutes appearance reminded me of Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s demeanour made him more appealing than his policies of cutting social welfare and decreasing taxes for the wealthy might otherwise have seemed. And he diminished criticism by not letting it get to him.”

I reckon Andrew is probably right. A very difficult tactic to counter as Reagan’s opponents from Carter onwards discovered. “Don’t worry be happy” could be a theme song with an Australian accent for the “Tony One Three” campaign. The more Gillard and Swan attack with, you know, facts about the economy, the more Albanese boasts about 500 pieces of legislation, the more it reinforces their image as being negative tinkerers, while Tony just beams his way through. May, as Andrew suggests, use Reagan’s “there you go again” to deflect any of that troubling discussion about actual policies. Just vote for him, the message will be, and it will be morning in Australia and happy days will be here again. A vote for Gillard, the implicit message will go, is a vote for a misery guts who thinks Australia isn’t perfect, that things need fixing, that people should, in short, worry, be unhappy with their lot.

And yet, and yet… it’s a tactic that relies totally on the acquiescence of the media to succeed. Relies on them being taken in by the sunny smile and the inability to hear questions over the roar of the helicopter. Needs them to be also captivated by the idea that all will be well, don’t you worry about that.

Because it could so easily go the other way. The first to try something like this was Harold Macmillan with his “Never had it so good”. It worked, because many workers were better off, and the economy was going well, and Macmillan won a big victory in 1959. In retrospect though it is seen as an “out of touch with the workers” comment, and is often used to pour scorn on those who use the Reagan tactic.

Imagine, for a moment, that the present Australian government used the Macmillan phrase, or some equivalent. Tried to be sunny and optimistic about the future, didn’t bother people with policies, indicated by their demeanour and smiling expression that the good ship SS Australia was sailing along smoothly under the light touch of a Labor captain.

Before the PM had finished speaking the News Ltd presses would be running hot with Julia Gillard’s face photoshopped on to Macmillan’s body. The ABC reporters would be hot-footing it to western Sydney to find pensioners, old people, migrants, doing it tough, demanding to know how the PM could live on their pensions or unemployment benefits. “Rooted” of Rooty Hill would be writing letters to the Sydney Morning Herald suggesting that the PM was a silver tail from Kirribilli who wouldn’t know the price of Coles Brand bread. Battlers would be queuing up on Alan Jones radio to demand an election to throw this out-of-touch government on the scrap heap of history while Alan agreed that these people should be forced to live on he, Alan’s, wages for a week and see how they got on.

And the more Julia and Wayne tried to smile and be sunny through this onslaught, the more out of touch they would be portrayed as being. And Tony Abbott would appear on breakfast tv looking serious and demanding that the government be honest with people about how tough they were doing it, and promising to give everybody a million dollar note the day after he became PM. Suddenly misery would be good for electoral success.

And the Libs would win with a lay down misere against a government that thought it was holding all the aces.

Never the Bride

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Has been often said that Aneurin (“Nye”) Bevin was the greatest Prime Minister Britain never had, and no one could argue with that. However I can’t think of any other Post War British Opposition Leaders who didn’t win election as PM about whom you would say that (can any of you dear readers?).

Got thinking about that when a reader responded, on Twitter, to the previous post with a question as to whether I agreed Kim Beazley was the best Prime Minister Australia never had. I do agree with that (with some reservation about religious influence) – his background, intellect, education, experience and big-heartedness (or is that “big-tickerness”?) made him ideally suited to instantly fit into the job. As he has into the role of Australian Ambassador to America.

But beyond that it’s difficult to think of any others that would have been a gain. I suggested Bert Evatt, but you’d have to restrict that to his earlier years in his prime. Probably not (with all due respect) Simon Crean, although he would certainly have done a highly competent job. And not John Hewson, but I’ll come back to him.

Any of the other possibilities are farcical – Sneddon, Peacock, Downer, Calwell (although Arthur would certainly have created a different Australia, by no means necessarily a bad thing) – why, you might as well suggest McMahon as foreman material. What? Oh.

But what about Hewson, you ask? Well, certainly a smart man. And since losing the unlosable election of 1993 has been solid on climate change. But he is what he is, something of a Malcolm Turnbull twin. Uncomfortable with the Billy Tea Party no-nothings of the Abbott Liberal Party, but at the same time big business to his conservative boot straps.

So my gut feelings at the time of Keating’s “Sweetest one of all” 1993 victory were mixed. I think I sensed instinctively that while the Left had won a battle it had lost a war. Keating and Labor were encouraged to believe that Liberal-Lite was a recipe for continuing success. And then were swamped so badly in 1996 when John Howard’s Liberal-Heavy Brigade rolled in that they would be out of power for a political generation of 11 long years of backwards clock-winding.

A Hewson victory in 1993 would have let people see what the modern Liberal agenda really is (as in Newman’s Queensland more recently), and Hewson couldn’t have carried off the Howard Battler vote, nor the dirty pool, of people like Reith, in order to stop the public strongly rejecting neoconservatism in 1996 for a win by Kim Beazley. Ah, these what-ifs of history are intriguing, are they not?

But mentioning Kim Beazley brings us naturally back to America. If Australia, like Britain, only had one great PM who never was, how has the American public treated its candidates? Well, remind yourself that this is a country that voted in Nixon, Reagan and GW Bush NOT JUST ONCE BUT TWICE! Giving Eisenhower, Clinton and Obama two terms goes nowhere near balancing those appalling decisions. And while it’s pleasing that Dewey, Goldwater, Humphrey, Dole, McCain and Romney never got to stand on the bully pulpit, a country which didn’t have Presidents Stevenson, McGovern and Gore (not to mention killing Robert Kennedy as well as his brother) is a country far more wasteful of leadership talent than the UK or Australia.

And all that of course is to leave aside the absence of potential female leaders who never got above the glass political ceilings. Just one each in UK and Australia. The one-off force of nature that was Thatcher couldn’t be held back, and Julia Gillard only made it in unusual circumstances. In America Geraldine Ferraro was restricted to number two behind the unimpressive Mondale, and Hilary Clinton just failed at the last barrier against the Obama unstoppable force for “change”, although hopefully she will get a chance to win in 2016. Sarah Palin of course was chosen as a token, not of her femaleness or intelligence, but of her ability to grunt speeches at the equally nutty Tea Party wing of the Regressive Republican Party. But how many talented women in all three countries have never had a chance to even seek the top job?

Now that’s a lot of best prime ministers (and presidents) we’ve never had.

Yes Prime Minister

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , ,

I wrote the original version of this piece in July 2011, at a time when Julia Gillard had been PM (and won an election in her own right) for less than a year. Now as we approach three years, and the next election, I thought it was time (also prompted by the excellent recent post by Rodney Lever on the same topic) to re-evaluate, see if my view had changed. And to spell out in more detail my reasoning. See what you think.

In the last 70 years (a period which neatly uses the war years as the start of modern Australia, and allows me to consider only prime ministers serving in my lifetime) Australia has had 13 prime ministers (excluding the temporary Mr Forde, Mr McEwan) just as both the US and UK have had 13 leaders each. You would have to say by any objective measure, and ignoring sniping by people like me, we have been by and large very lucky and very well served by our baker’s dozen. We have avoided having any real dunces (unlike the US with Ford, Reagan, Bush and Bush) or crooks (Nixon). Our 13 also exceed the average quality of 13 British PMs (who avoid the US highs and lows) over that period.

I have, in the past, tried to separate out tops and bottoms. But this would be invidious among a continuous spectrum, and besides I find my opinion alters over time (Fraser up and Keating down for example). So let’s try to assess them over a range of qualities (not including IQ which I reckon averages high and pretty even).

OK, how might we judge the best of these thirteen? Lack of ideology; flexibility of mind; ability to relate to people; difficulty of political circumstances faced; ability to work with colleagues; concern for ordinary people; concern for minorities and the powerless; awareness of the big picture; ability to embody some aspect of the country; hard-working; willingness to take expert advice; someone I can imagine having an intelligent conversation with; someone I could imagine having a beer with; someone who can achieve outcomes; someone who can stand up to vested interests.

Applying those filters quickly begins to whittle down the big thirteen. McMahon, Holt disappear immediately, lightweights who were barely up to ministerial level, let alone PM. The next seven go for different reasons. Rudd and Gorton because of inability to work with colleagues; Howard because of his narrow-minded stubborn ideology; Keating because of his obsession for free markets and against environment; Fraser because of the unprincipled way he seized power, all go out in the first round. Then it gets hard Whitlam and Chifley are reluctantly, because of the magnificent achievements of both, eliminated in the second round. Chifley because of the miner’s strike. Whitlam because his best days were the duumvirate with Lance Barnard. After that he saw himself as the Emperor leaving his cabinet to do their thing, which after 23 years they were mostly not up to in the face of the Murdoch onslaught.

Which leaves just four in the grand final of Australia’s Got Prime Ministerial Talent – Curtin, Menzies, Hawke and Gillard. Now any of those would be a Winner you could argue for, give a standing ovation to, and I reckon you, my fellow judges, might easily disagree with me. Curtin is there because he seems by any measure one of the most decent, and  was the only one faced with stopping Australia being invaded in wartime in face of the self-interest of UK and US. Menzies, not because I think much of him (or his over-rated wit), but because you simply can’t ignore 18 years in The job. Hawke, again not because I think much of him but because, in contrast to Whitlam, he put together an extraordinarily good team, arguably the best in Australian history, and kept the public and media onside 

But, drumroll, my Winner is, on the basis of consistent performance overall – Julia Gillard. Yes, I know, I was surprised too. I fed all the data back into my PM “Difference Engine” (the very latest from Mr Babbage), and waited while the cogs whirred and spun, differences calculated, levers pushed for carries. Yes, it was still Julia by a nose. Do the calculations yourself (and get Ms Lovelace to double check, be analytical) I am sure you will agree.

So, what did the print-out show? That she’s really the only one who has had to deal with complex minority rule (Curtin did briefly in simpler circumstances). That she has had to deal with an Opposition determined to smash parliamentary conventions, and also in extraordinarily unprincipled moves force out two members of parliament to try to destroy the majority.

She has had other problems shared with other PMs, for example family difficulties (eg Hawke, Chifley), a persistent rival (again Hawke, plus Howard, Gorton), virulent press opposition (Whitlam, Keating, but I’ll come back to this), difficult world financial circumstances (Keating, Hawke, Rudd, Chifley), but no one else has faced them all simultaneously. Nor carried them off while remaining calm and pleasant and working well with all her colleagues except her predecessor and several of his supporters, and succeed in passing record amounts of legislation, much of great importance (carbon price, NBN). A number of them have given fine speeches, but none perhaps as significant as Gillard’s now world famous “misogyny speech”, the response to the constant nasty misogyny from the Opposition, outraged that a woman dared to be in charge.

Oh, look, I am no longer the starry-eyed boy who has political heroes like I once did (Jim Cairns, JFK). Julia Gillard is no Chifley or Whitlam in terms of Labor values. Her lack of interest in environmental matters is stunning. Her approach to asylum seekers leaves Fraser gasping. Her hard line on unemployed and single parents would have had her thrown out of Chifley’s cabinet. Her unconscionable pursuit of the Religious Right, in such matters as same sex marriage and school chaplains must have Whitlam and Hawke shaking heads. And so on and so on. Some of that has been forced on her by circumstances, some seems to be flaws in her thinking. But then all of them have had flaws of various kinds. If there is to be the perfect PM we haven’t quite found him or her yet.

So, best PM in 70 years, but there is another unique feature that distinguishes Ms Gillard from all her predecessors. No, not the size of her ear lobes, her hair colour, her clothes, her voice, her glasses. Give in? She has been subject to more personal abuse, vilification, hatred, death threats, than all of her predecessors put together.

At the same time she has been subject to the most one-sided unfair media coverage and constant virulent media attacks we have ever seen. The move by John Howard to not merely “neutralise” the ABC, but move it so far to the Right as to be able to run in harness with News Ltd has been decisive. As has the role of other media barons, their tame shock jocks, and their supportive “think tanks”. Not a government decision goes damningly uncritised, not a move is fairly reported, not a motive nastily unquestioned, not a fake leadership challenge left unturned. At the same time, the most incompetent, secretive, and low target Opposition in our history, has been not only left unchallenged, unquestioned, but praised in glowing terms, given dream runs, soft interviews, prominent soapboxes, on media outlets.

Both media and Opposition are determined to remove a vaguely left wing government and replace it with a hard right one which will undo all the advances Gillard has made and turn Australia into a ground as fertile for big business profit as America. If they succeed, and I reckon the chances are they will, then the baker’s dozen will end with her, a unique sequence come to an end. If Tony Abbott seizes the top job, then we will have not only taken on Tea Party politics from America, but their roller coaster leadership sequence in which some excellent, or at least above average, Presidents, can be succeeded by real dickheads, people who struggle to read a children’s book about a pet goat.

Anyway, over to you. Have I gilded the lily, overegged the pudding?

Steering the ABC Titanic

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Every now and then, often enough that the phrase is probably encoded as a single keystroke on ABC keyboards, someone from the ABC (Australia’s national public broadcaster, very similar to the BBC) will say “We get allegations of bias from both the Left and the Right so we must be very well-balanced”.

This specious, self-serving narrative has been increasing in frequency over the last three years in parallel with the increasing observations, by those of us on the Left, of the undeniable lurch to the Right that the ABC has made.

Sometimes this narrative might be accompanied by the observation that both a Labor Prime Minister (Keating) and a Liberal (conservative) one (Howard) in recent years have complained about the ABC. And indeed this is a valid observation in the 1990s (and previously) and tells you something important about what was going on. In both cases the objection was that the ABC was a public broadcaster was, without fear or favour, willing to speak truth to power. And since prime ministers of both parties rely totally on fear and favours to govern, and have absolutely no interest in their power being challenged, both hated the scrutiny by the ABC. The commercial networks of course, also greatly interested in favours and power, had absolutely no interest in rocking a conservative government boat too much.

And what sin did ABC journalists and presenters commit in those far-off, almost mythical times? Why, they asked questions of prime ministers and government ministers, of whichever party was in power. Asked questions! And sometimes, and my younger readers will hardly credit this, they would ask a follow-up question when the minister evaded a question the first time! Sometimes even repeat a question, quote a fact or two. If there is anything governments hate it is having their evasions and secrets and fact-free actions exposed to all the world like an Emperor’s new clothes.

So that is the first point. In my observations over many years the only bias in ABC programming was daring to ask questions that governments didn’t want asked, and being so presumptuous as to not accept answers governments wanted accepted. It could be suggested that conservative governments, with their born-to-rule mentality, resent questioning even more than left-wing governments do, and are more likely to see the asking of a question itself as evidence of bias, but neither kind of government is fond of scrutiny.

And so to the second point. The actual actions by Keating and Howard in relation to their anger were quite different. Keating kept on muttering away about how outrageous it all was, or would front a journalist at a function (or in a late night phone call) and set them straight about the error of their ways. But he did this to commercial and ABC journalists alike. No fear or favour there. And no consequences either.

No such ineffective inaction for Howard, who knew the importance of stopping the questioning. “We will decide what questions are asked and the circumstances in which they are answered”, I guess. No mucking around. Appoint members of the ABC Board who were not merely right-wing but culture warriors certain to be sympathetic to Howard’s agenda – not just one or two, but the whole Board. Then appoint a Chairman who in addition to that ideological qualification was also a close personal friend of John Howard’s. Appoint Managing Directors who had the right stuff and then they in turn would appoint senior managers who were politically correct for the new conservative times, and they in turn would appoint reporters and presenters with the right attitudes (often, I understand, from commercial media networks in all three cases). In the meantime shift one presenter, a particularly persistent question asker sideways, and have the Board ensure that there were no mistakes. Pretty soon the thing runs itself, although if evidence of recalcitrance emerges or might emerge, issue instructions, and, if that fails, issue reprimands of staff and apologies to the offended conservatives.

As well as getting the right personnel in place, start playing with the way the organisation does news and current affairs, long its great strength and glory. Add new current affairsprograms designed to be venues on which opinionators can spout forth in prime time. They have to be opinionators, not the “experts” who once appeared on the ABC, because reality has a well-known left-wing bias. And they will be almost all from the far right of the political belief spectrum – preferably the worst former conservative ministers and political staffers and the members of far right thing tanks (see my earlier post here). You justify this by saying you have to get these people on to “balance” the ABC. But since these programs didn’t exist before, the presence of so many right-wing opinionators completely unbalances the ABC, since the rest of the organisation is largely uninvolved in anything to do with politics and current affairs. This torrent of right-wing ideology pouring out of talking heads day after day, all over radio and tv outlets and the new online venue, unchallenged by any fact-checking (because fact-checking has been successfully framed as “bias”), has in itself shifted the ABC a long way to the Right. But wait, there’s more.

ABC News was always the jewel in the crown, the most trusted source of independent objective news in the country. Can’t have that. With a Labor government elected in 2007 it wasn’t enough just to have conservatism rampant in current affairs, the news itself needed to be massaged so that the public would both get the “right” news in the right form, but know the right way to think about it. So, almost un-noticed, the style of ABC News began to change. Instead of just reporting, factually with some information about content, say a Cabinet reshuffle, a policy change, a Prime Ministerial speech, no news bulletin could proceed without a cross to “our political reporter in Canberra” who would massage the news with his or her own ideological prejudices. It would turn out, inevitably, that the reshuffle was a sign of chaos in the government, that the policy change was a backflip, that the speech was shrill or strained. All said with the kind of sorrowful air that precedes a beating from a Thwackum or a Squeers. I can’t remember a single major government action in the last three years presented as simple news without it being massaged to be a negative for the government by a clearly right-wing reporter. Once upon a time this kind of “news interpretation” was left to radio shock jocks or commercial tv breakfast shows and would have been thought outrageous on an ABC news bulletin. Now it is taken for granted as the way one “does news”.

As is the more subtle manipulations involved in the choice of film clip or photo to illustrate a piece, the headlines and captions used, the terminology used (eg “carbon tax”) as derived from the conservative framing, the way the Prime Minister is referred to, the choice of which bits of an event to broadcast, the constant promotion of Opposition stunts, the carefully framed pictures of crowds and their reactions. There is the ubiquitous, apparently obligatory use of the phrase “Tony Abbott says”, “The Opposition said today” to begin items about something the government has done or announced, with or without a later brief comment from the minister concerned. There is even a constant use of Opposition members to comment on some internal Labor Party matter – a promotion, a retirement, a policy debate – which they could not possibly know anything about (the reverse process doesn’t happen). And there is the complete failure of ABC journalists to think or act in any independent matter at all. They no longer it seems do any research or work on their own questions, they simply ask a question that has been framed by the Opposition. Or, even more insidiously, as it has been framed by Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd publications. Members of whom also regular appear on the ABC to offer spin and interpretations, with any sense that there should be a line drawn between the ABC and its rivals totally gone.

Which brings us back to the proposition we began with about “criticism from left and right = Balance QED”. In spite of all that I have outlined above, the ABC still gets hammered by shock jock columnists and politicians of the stripe of Eric Abetz. In their eyes though the ABC can never be far right enough. If the totality of ABC programming consisted of someone from a Right Wing think tank reading press releases from Menzies House all day they would complain that the sound wasn’t turned up loud enough, or the set was the wrong shade of blue. They get outraged when the ABC dares to mention climate change for example (the stacked Board having insisted that the ABC run, in prime time, the appalling “Great Global Warming Swindle”), or might be perceived as doing something positive about refugees or same-sex marriage. No matter how many right-wing commentators spout their ideology, no matter how the news is massaged, it will never be enough for Eric and friends, in fact they won’t notice.

Conversely when I complain about right-wing bias it is because of what I have outlined above. I am not suggesting that every right-wing opinionator be replaced by a member of Socialist Alliance or Greenpeace, or that news bulletins be vetted by the prime minister’s office. I am suggesting that the obvious sources of bias be removed. That experts once again replace ideologues, that news bulletins contain, well, simply news, that unflattering photos and headlines are not deliberately chosen. The former board members and chairman have now been replaced by a much more neutral group, and this is a good start (although we need a mechanism to ensure that the blatant Howard Board stacking can never occur again). But it is going to take as long to turn the ABC Titanic around as it took to steer it towards the ice pack in the first place. Most of the young people on the staff now have had no experience of what a neutral, professional, objective ABC would actually be like. If I am asking for neutrality, and the Right is asking for even further movement right, it suggests not that the ship is balanced but that it is listing a long way to the right already.

With an Abbott government installed by the media the ABC is going to hit an iceberg and sink totally. We need to change its course before it is too late.

[Once again, apologies to my international readers for parochialism, but I suspect many of the points raised here will ring a bell with concerns about media in other countries]

Peris the thought

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Political parties are like those “3D images” where red and blue images don’t overlap, and by wearing glasses with separate red and blue lenses your eyes are tricked into seeing the third dimension, seeing the image as if it is a single object.
helene

(Helene, small, icy moon of Saturn. Irregularly shaped, about 36 by 32 by 30 kilometers, Helene orbits at Dione’s leading Lagrange point while brotherly ice moon Polydeuces follows at Dione’s trailing Lagrange point. The sharp stereo anaglyph was constructed from two Cassini images (N00172886, N00172892) captured during a close flyby in 2011. It shows part of the Saturn-facing hemisphere of Helene mottled with craters and gully-like features. APOD http://t.co/KpDILNJe )

There is the political party as the repository of a set of policies, ideas, ideology, world view, opposed to another party with a different set. In a battle to ensure that one party’s policies become those of the country.

Then there is the political party composed of individuals, flawed, talented, stupid, smart, angry, kind, jealous, competing with all the other individuals in the same party for personal supremacy.

We saw a clear case this week in Australia. Some background. Indigenous Australians have very rarely been represented in Australian parliaments. At federal level only three, all since the 1970s, one only since 2010. I think there has only been one at a state level (in WA some years ago), although there have been several in the Northern Territory with its high Aboriginal population in recent years.

Somewhat astonishingly the Australian Labor Party has never had an Aboriginal member of Federal Parliament, while the Liberals have had two (one reluctantly) and the Democrats one.

Anyway, in a first step to rectify this the Prime Minister announced she had, outside of the normal candidate preselection process, invited a well known Aboriginal former international sportswoman to be the Labor NT Senate candidate (and certain winner), to replace the current non-Aboriginal female Senator who has held the position for 15 years.

Ok, win win win all round eh? Loud applause from all concerned? Supportive media? Labor Party welcoming new recruit? Current Senator happily standing aside? Praise for Prime Minister’s creative thinking? Community discussion about ways to get more minority groups into parliament? In your dreaming.

Immediately members of the Labor party stated bitching and backgrounding the media. How dare the PM interfere? The members must decide. Poor choice, what had this woman done anyway? What had the sitting senator done wrong? Rudd (former Prime Minister) supporters outraged. And on and on. The Party members tearing at each other and in doing so opening up wounds that the media and the Opposition were happy to enlarge, the media undertaking, in its usual charming way, a witch hunt to see what if any dirt they could find. On a young woman who had done nothing except put up her hand and say she was interested in serving her country. The very thought of bringing in new blood to the party for a wider good was anathema to many in the Party.

Look I don’t know the background to this inside the Party. There are two diametrically opposed views here and here. I don’t know what qualities Ms Peris might have (although the tears of happiness she shed, standing by the Prime Minister, were a pretty encouraging sign). I have seen enough of life to know that public image, and perceptions, are often wildly at odds with the actual character and performance of some people in the public eye. But at face value Ms Peris seems a good person who has achieved a great deal in her life so far and now has the opportunity to achieve a great deal more.

The process of getting her pre-selected to seek election is one that could be followed a lot more to get other groups into parliament that are scarcely represented (and I don’t just mean ethnic groups, but scientists, artists, teachers, nurses, young people, old people, and so on). It should be welcomed by political parties concerned with their principles and with the well-being of the country.

In his famous call to the American people in that long ago Inauguration, Kennedy said “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”. It is a call that could be directed at politicians by substituting the word “Party” for “Country”.

Most of the time, the public, issued with those special glasses, sees political parties as they wish to be seen – whole idealistic public-spirited groups concerned only for the well-being of the country they seek to serve. The Nova Peris unpleasantness is one of those occasions where one lens has been removed, and we clearly see the ugliness and self-seeking nature of most politicians (though definitely not all) within their parties.

Time many of them took off their glasses and took a long hard look at themselves in the mirror.

Budge it on Budget

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by Economics, Media, politics • Tags: , , , ,

You may remember a year or so ago, enormous pressure on the Australian government, by the Opposition, with the full support of a baying pack of reporters, to “get the budget into surplus”. Failure to do this, it was said, no matter the economic circumstances, would brand the government as hopeless economic managers, spendthrifts, in contrast to the wise money managers of the Liberal Party. A failure to slash everything in sight (but certainly not increase revenue, any hint of which, like a super profit tax on miners, being blocked by Opposition, and howled down by the Media). It was clear the campaign of denigration would carry on and on.

OK, said the government, you want a surplus, we’ll give you a surplus, somehow. If we are not permitted to tax the rich a little more then we need to slash programs, and, as economic conditions worsen overseas, slash some more. Outrage from Coalition, media, interest groups. How dare you cut this, that, the other program? What’s wrong with you? The Coalition never specified an actual program it would cut, merely said it would cut “waste”, and the media accepted this unquestioningly.

Meantime, as the damage austerity programs were doing elsewhere in world became more obvious, economists began saying to the government, hey, you don’t need a surplus, really, a surplus is surplus to requirements, take it easy, go for a reduced deficit by all means, but a “surplus” is not only meaningless but would be economically damaging. Immediately media joined in, yes, what are you aiming for a surplus for? Just a “political” move, not an economic one. Silly incompetent government chasing a surplus, what useless economic managers they are. But, a mere hint from the government that, yes indeed, surplus chasing was as irrational as UFO chasing, an instant chorus from media and Opposition, see, we knew you couldn’t get a surplus you hopeless economic managers.

Finally, faced with the inescapable reality of world economic doldrums, falling resource prices, and coalition premiers sacking thousands of workers, government says, you know, you are right, chasing a surplus was an albatross around our budget necks. All the economists agree, silly to go on with it. Maybe next year if things improve. Okay? Immediate baying for blood from Coalition and media. Broken promise. Bad economic managers. Hopeless government. Can’t even get a surplus. Throw them out.

And so it goes.

Patchwork

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by Climate Change, politics • Tags: , , , ,

Here we are, back in the world of oncology. Two days of actual “hooked up to the beeping machine” treatment (over 8 hours total, they were taking it very very slowly and carefully because I had the adverse reaction last time), followed by a week or so of feeling like crap (mainly I think due to the bastard steroids), followed by slow recovery, trying to pick up the threads of normal life, as you get ready for the next beeping machine appointment. Which is where I am now.

Anyway, while that has been going on I have been taking my mind off it by watching “The Wire” on DVD. Been seeing glowing reviews of it for years of course, “Best tv series in the universe” and so on. Had reservations after the first series, but from the second one onwards it’s certainly right up there with Six Foot Under, Breaking Bad, Deadwood, Sopranos, West Wing (not to mention Angels over America, Boys from the Blackstuff, Brideshead Revisited, Carnivale, Edge of Darkness, Forbrydelsen, Forsyte Saga (original), Grass Roots, Hamish McBeth, Have gun will travel, Hill Street Blues, Jewel in the Crown, Northern Exposure, Pennies from Heaven, Sea Change, Singing Detective, Talking to a Stranger, The Bridge, This Life, and Twin Peaks in my all time top 25).

A couple of observations. First I don’t know if anything much has changed in Baltimore, but the city (and, allowing for poetic licence, I am assuming the series was not a million drug deals removed from reality) would have to appear on most people’s “Anti-Bucket-List” of places you would NEVER want to visit. It looks like the kind of hell to which all roads in the world of laissez faire capitalism and libertarianism lead. Followers of Grover Norquist should be sent to live in the slums of Baltimore for a year before being allowed to pontificate on government and the economy and taxes and regulation and free trade and all the rest of the neocon economic garbage.

Second I kept trying to think of a way of describing the overall structure of the series. Then I got it. They have created a giant tapestry from which many loose threads are hanging, with new ones being added all the time. The loose threads tantalise and tease you until suddenly one gets sewn into the backing and reveals itself as part of a pattern. Then another. And gradually the whole picture is slowly revealed. As I write there are still threads hanging and I don’t know what picture they will be part of. A remarkable creative achievement.

All a bit like an individual life itself really. As you go through your life some threads become incorporated into a pattern, new loose threads are added. They in turn eventually resolve into the picture of your life. Ultimately the story ends, the last threads in place, THAT’S what it was all about.

And a bit like what the newsreels used to call the “Passing Parade” of life on this warming planet. Everywhere it seemed, as I coped with my “Chemo Brain” (yes, a real thing with real biochemical causes), loose threads kept merging around the world, as they have for several thousand years since recorded history began.

Many loose threads (again as they have for several thousand years since recorded history began) in the Middle East. Israel back to killing Palestinians in big numbers. Then resisting the UN vote (this country established by a UN vote) attempts of Palestine to merely gain observer status in the UN. They have successful resisted this for years, but failed this time. And the very next day gained revenge by announcing another 3000 Israeli houses to be built on Palestinian land.

Elsewhere Syrians continued to massacre each other in big numbers while both sides claimed the moral high ground. In Egypt, to no-one’s surprise, an Islamist government, elected by the people, immediately set about turning itself into an Islamist dictatorship. When you have the one true religion on your side you sure don’t want that silly democracy stuff, do you?

In England Lord Leveson finished sewing his threads and concluded, as everyone knew, that there is a cancer at the heart of the British media, and it needs much more effective “self-regulation”. David Cameron, supporting for a year the need to do something, suddenly, within minutes of receiving a 2000 page report, decided that absolutely nothing needed to be done to rein in Rupert Murdoch, stop his minions unravelling the threads of people’s lives. as long as he was reliably pro Conservative.

In America the Republicans kept right on in their quest to smear Obama at every manufactured opportunity, pulling at old Birther threads, and adding new ones like Benghazi . And even newer ones like pretending that his victory, bigger than that of George Bush, somehow, unlike George, gave him no mandate, no legitimacy at all. And most recently to a thread attacking him for taking an occasional vacation, for unravelling the ragged sleeve of care of the Oval Office occupancy, in the pretence that no Republican President had ever taken a holiday, and that George Bush in fact hadn’t spent most of his presidency on holiday.

And in Australia the Opposition pretended to keep picking away at the twenty year old threads of the Prime MInister’s once brief legal career, pretending to find, in the most ordinary pieces of legal correspondence and action, and in the sleaziest of “witnesses” imported for the purpose by shock jocks, evidence of “criminality”, an accusation they were careful not to make outside parliamentary privilege, but which the media was happy to add its bully megaphone to day after day.

And on the biggest tapestry of all, the climate change threads kept revealing their grim picture as the ice caps and glaciers melted ever more quickly, storms created havoc and enormous cost, and droughts reduced food production in a grim foretaste of things to come for 7 billion people. It is now absolutely clear, if any had doubted, that Climate scientists and biologists, had in past restricted themselves to pale pastel threads, not wanting to be accused of alarmism, had muted their predictions to the cautious lower end, had even expressed optimism about this or that minor political development. Time now, they have realised, in the face of continued inaction, and ever rising CO2 emissions and temperature projections, to start using bright red threads, create a big bold warning sign. “Stop, environmental cliff ahead”.

Well there you are. Sorry not my usual tapestry of a post, more of a patchwork. Still, on reflection, a patchwork quilt of rags and patches is a better representation of most lives than a well organised tapestry. And indeed a better representation of the world.

On the way to the forum

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

A funny thing happened after an election last Saturday in a little town called Canberra not a million miles from Watermelon Headquarters. It’s only a little local political curiosity, perhaps, but it may, if I stretch a point, have some resonance elsewhere.

The leader of the local conservatives, out of power for some years, made an astonishing speech on election night claiming “victory”. He hadn’t actually won, you understand, no one had. Trends were clear, general features of the final result reasonably obvious, but he hadn’t “won” (and nor had anyone else!). But what he was saying was that there had been a “swing” towards his party, and that, therefore (the logic was a little fuzzy) he had won the election because a swing meant that the public were unhappy with the previous government (a coalition of Labor and Greens) and so wanted him.

Now this concept, that you don’t have to win a majority of seats (the Westminster system for several hundred years) to become a government, merely get more votes and seats than you got last time was stunning in its audacity, and if applied retrospectively would considerably alter the course of history in most countries. But it was so silly that I kept expecting the room in which he was speaking to erupt into laughter “yes, good one Zed, what a joker you are”.

But the very next day the federal leader of the conservatives (The “Liberal” Party, for historical reasons irrelevant for decades) joined in. Yes indeed, he suggested, good old Zed had a “moral claim” to be the next government. It was all a bit like losing a game of tennis, and later claiming that the rules were now changed and the person who hit the net the most was the winner; or a game of cricket where you claimed that padding the ball away was really worth six runs.

What both of them were intent on doing was bullying The Greens, obviously about to hold the balance of power again, into backing the conservatives, diametrically opposed politically to Greens, instead of Labor again, much more closely allied politically. The point of these statements was also, more importantly, to massage the media narrative, and through that the public expectations.

I was reminded of the 2000 US Presidential election where the Republican-friendly media prematurely declared Bush the winner in Ohio, another narrative massage, but then turned the Florida post-election legal battle into one where the people stealing the election were the good guys, and those appealing for justice and democracy were the bad guys ( representing “Sore-Loserman”). Australian conservatives have learnt a lot from Republicans, and this election night grab for power in Canberra was another example of Rovian tactics in action.

It is inconceivable that it will work of course, but even if it doesn’t it leaves behind a sense of injustice, even perhaps unlawfulness, if the media really come to the party. Helps to delegitimise the government in the same way Mr Abbott did after the 2010 election faced with a similar scenario. In fact another motive for him may well be to add support to his view he was “robbed” in 2010 by “that woman”.

Once upon a time it seemed that both sides of politics played by the rules. Fought an election hard, but then accepted the verdict of the people even in close contexts. Anything else would not be cricket. The outcome would affect the country economically, philosophically, culturally, but the ebb and flow of election results would balance all that out eventually over the years.

These days big money is involved. If you can get a conservative party into power then the government will be open to business. All kinds of restrictions will be scrapped, deals done, wars, quite possibly, started, mines opened, forests cleared, workplace wages and conditions substantially reduced. Big money for the corporations. And big money for the conservative politicians after they leave politics – seats on Boards, consultancies, media roles, and so on.

So now anything goes. War by other means. War to install conservative governments and reap the spoils of office.

Got a feeling we ain’t seen nothing yet.

The background. The Australian Capital Territory (ie the land on which Canberra, Australia’s capital, sits, and surrounding areas) with a population of around 370,000, gained self-government in 1988. It had previously been administered by a federal minister and department. Its parliament (the Assembly) currently has 17 elected members. There is a fixed term of office, with elections every four years, and a “Hare-Clark” electoral system, giving it, with Tasmania, the fairest election results in the country. Fairest in the sense of parties being represented in parliament proportional, as closely as possible, to their percentage of votes.

I won’t go into the considerable detail here. Just note that instead of 17 electorates, one per member, there are just three, two of which have five members and a larger one seven. Within each electorate, to simplify, each party gets a number of members proportional to its total vote (bearing in mind the limitation that members can’t be part people). The system is about as fair as it could be, breaking the stranglehold the two major parties normally have. As a result the ACT Assembly very rarely sees one party with a majority of seats, and negotiations and agreements have to be made with third parties (these days usually The Greens) or Independents.