Tony Smith became Speaker with the backing of Scott Morrison, according to Abbott cipher Chris Uhlmann. Smith's main opponent in the party room was Russell Broadbent, the last of the small group of backbenchers who spoke out against the Howard government's mandatory detention policies - policies since reinstituted by Scott Morrison as immigration minister, and endorsed by the ALP. Had Broadbent been elected as Speaker it would have been a massive fuck-you to Morrison, and to the Labor leadership that embraced the policy. It would have encouraged people who don't toe the line, people with ideas and the courage of their convictions - people who have all but been stamped out of public life by party machines and a compliant press gallery, relegated to the fringes and called "ferals".
The press gallery were happy to raise Broadbent's donations issues, but not smart enough to tease out the full story like this local-paper journalist, nor even wonder why they were set up to look like tools.
The Liberals most disaffected with Abbott are not the moderates. The idea that moderate centrists stab the Liberal Party in the back is a common right-wing trope, pushed heavily by people like Bronwyn Bishop, but there is no proof of it. The Liberals most disaffected with Abbott are the right-wingers who are watching the reality, the possibility, and the very precepts of their low-tax, high-religion, authoritarian program slip away. Support is slipping away from this government without any of the compensating respect that Howard used to attract, and which Abbott promised people like this gullible, whiny reactionary that he too could command respect when they didn't like him.
The Liberals most disaffected with Abbott are conservatives, who have for years looked up to and been organised and sustained by, Bronwyn Bishop. She kept the faith, both for conservatism and for Abbott, and he and they indulged her expensive foibles. When backbenchers started complaining that she was embarrassing them, she expected Abbott to support her. He was embarrassing them too, and he tended to stick by her. Over the last month or so, he equivocated.
The polls for this government are every bit as dire as they were for the last government, and every bit as stuck, for those who worry about such things. Tony Abbott was never good enough to become Prime Minister in the first place, and never had what it took to turn a difficult position around. All of the savvy journalists, the in-house urgers and party grandees who believed otherwise, have been cruelly exposed. They complain to one another that it's a recent, unexpected development, but it isn't really. It never was. Those people were, and still are, killing themselves.
Scott Morrison has not relied on Bronwyn Bishop to get where he is. She knows he's an opportunist but had been prepared to tolerate him. By standing up to Bishop when Abbott wouldn't, Morrison has displayed leadership credentials that Abbott has clearly lacked. Morrison has knocked off an Abbott loyalist and knocked down someone who made his life difficult in courting the right. Morrison isn't the right's least-worst alternative any more, some sort of speed hump to Turnbull. The prospect that Abbott might stumble is no longer a distant, theoretical prospect, it's the inescapable reality. Morrison is the right's standard-bearer now. He, not Abbott, is the man.
Bishop is furious, but so what? Her fury doesn't count any more. She isn't biding her time, she's out of time. When she refused to applaud Smith she showed that, despite what conservatives claim, she cannot acknowledge anything beyond herself. The contrast with the magnanimous departure of Gillard is striking. Bishop expected to go out on her own terms, not with a thud; the firebrand reduced to just another frail old woman in the departure lounge.
When Abbott and Pyne talked of Bishop in the past tense, they were also talking about themselves in the same way. Abbott will be gone after the Canning byelection. Pyne has passed none of his much-touted reforms and will be gone at the next election. Adelaide will take on the same political complexion as Newcastle or Canberra, while Nick Xenophon will become the moderate liberal champion that Pyne had promised but failed to be.
We're in a political interregnum where the dead lie unburied and where those who now call the shots are under no obligation to stick their heads up. This is a massive change in the power dynamic of the government, and Australian politics generally; to call it "modest" is to have no understanding of politics at all.
Abbott had promised all opposition frontbenchers that they would become ministers after the 2013 election. Tony Smith was one of the few opposition frontbenchers who didn't make it. Peter Costello has said plenty about Abbott being an economic ignoramus, and Abbott has taken this out on Costello's acolytes like Smith and Kelly O'Dwyer. Smith has a similar - eerily similar - physical appearance to Costello, and even copied the former Treasurer's physical and verbal mannerisms. In practical political terms, Victoria is no longer the jewel in the Liberal crown and so the Coalition is not obliged to over-represent that state on its front bench; Robb has the experience, Billson and Ronaldson have put in the hard yards, Fifield got work experience with Costello without drinking too much of his "Prime Ministerial" Kool-Aid, and Hunt has been neutered. With Smith there was nothing to neuter; he and O'Dwyer were out in the cold, with Frydenberg and Tudge on initial probation.
Abbott paid tribute to Smith copping his disappointment in silence without admitting his role in that disappointment. Abbott can claim no credit in helping Smith up after having knocked him down. He was gracious at overlooking Smith's utter absence of policy conviction, as I noted here and there at the time: Smith was responsible for the Coalition going to the 2010 election with no communications policy, and was deputy chair of the committee that came up with no policies for the one after that. He had practiced his non-policy skills on people who keep asking about policy but wouldn't know it if it bit them: the press gallery.
Smith might have been promoted if Robb and Ronaldson pull out before the next election, but in politics you take your chances when they arise. Now he's ascended to a role that's kind of high profile, like a minister but without all that policy stuff. By giving Smith a prize that Abbott had denied him, Morrison creates the sense that the Liberals are moving on from Abbott, freeing themselves from his errors of judgment.
The press gallery wanted to believe Smith's rhetoric about even-handedness and decorum, forgetting that all former Speakers - Bishop, Anna Burke, Slipper, and Jenkins - all said the same thing at this point in their tenures. Slipper and Burke were even-handed in a tightly balanced parliament, but that even-handedness made a boorish, policy-free opposition look more in control of the agenda than a wonkish, rattled government. An even-handed Speaker will expose a government that is not across what little policy brief it has. It's one thing for Abbott to be a dead man walking, but he has enough pride to prefer anything other than the perception that he is a dead man walking - or sitting, waiting for Shorten to rope-a-dope him again and again.
Labor will exploit Smith's desire for even-handedness, making him look like a mug and protesting too much when Smith calls them on it. Smith can be stiff and awkward in the face of raucousness and this will work against him, and the government. The government will also use Smith's basic, non-focus-grouped decency against him, not hesitating to make him and his office look foolish rather than bear any more of the responsibility which they never deserved, nor could even bear with any dignity. The anonymous Liberal sources who help the press gallery pad out their thin offerings will call for Bishop to return. The living will envy the dead in the end times.
If Smith's "friends on the other side" get the opportunity to bounce off him and score a direct hit on Abbott, they will take it. Abbott has ridden Labor for six years (!) and he is wounded now. Smith might not be happy about it but he'll understand: that's politics, baby.
Smith will have moments of decency that will shine all the more brightly for being contrasted against this government. This should not be surprising to supposedly experienced political journalists. At the next election he might lose his seat of Casey, a sprawling outer-urban electorate that resembles a slab of western Sydney, where the profile and folderol of his new office will count for exactly nothing. Then again, he might win, and pootle on in the same middling way he's spent the last decade.
Speaking of crap forecasts, I owe an apology to Independent Australia for setting them up with this - fancy predicting a woman! What was I thinking?
11 August 2015
10 August 2015
Mutually assured destruction
Once upon a time, when one major-party politician would abuse their entitlements so badly that even the press gallery noticed, a politician from the other major party would be found to have done something similar, and the checkmate would somehow neuter the story as far as the broadcast media were concerned. Today, things are different. First, the broadcast media don't set or control the agenda any more. Second, the major parties aren't the only options.
Policies on politicians' entitlements have been agreed by the major parties over many years. The press gallery avoid criticising them because they applaud bipartisanship as a good in itself, regardless of its impact on policy quality. If a politician has to fly somewhere to make an announcement that could just as easily have been made in Canberra, the broadcast media go along too and all regard it as a normal part of their jobs. They benefit from publicly-funded junkets despite the fact that the quality of reporting rarely improves.
Samantha Maiden is on Joe Hockey's case, as though he were the only MP with entitlements issues. This story adds heat but no light to the issue of politicians' entitlements, with not even the most timid implication that Hockey has breached 'the rules', and it even defends the indefensible Bishop.
Maiden's story includes an ethically questionable decision by her employer to run photographs of Hockey's children. Hockey is a public figure; his wife, Melissa, is an adult who chooses to join him in the public eye; but their children are not public figures. Nor are they adults as Margie-and-the-girls are. A decent news organisation would have pixellated pictures of the children or not run them at all.
With the focus on Bronwyn Bishop's travel entitlements, it was inevitable that there would be a Labor MP exposed doing something similar - and so there was, in Tony Burke, who apparently took his children of his former marriage on holiday with his current partner. Bishop's extravagance was not only a blow against the Coalition, but Burke inadvertently lent the story the sexual tut-tutting for which Murdoch papers exist (and which have helped fund their proprietor through not one but three divorces).
The Chris Pyne I knew from late 1980s student politics in Adelaide would have gone after Burke, calling him a hypocrite and worse, but the latter-day Pyne seems more conciliatory. Ease up on Burke, he says, making an unconvincing technical point about 'the rules'. Later we discover Pyne embroiled in a travel scandal of his own, and his office has the political tin ear to assert that Pyne's children had never seen the Sydney fireworks.
Whatever Pyne gained from the Adelaide frigates announcement, he lost on the Sydney fireworks. It was a let-them-eat-cake moment that you usually get from governments that have been in office way too long. Before you go on about first-term governments getting re-elected, consider that the Coalition has been in government for 13 of the last 19 years, with a frontbench pretty similar to the one behind Howard in 2007; now look at recent elections in Victoria, Queensland, and South Australia, and shut up about first-term governments.
Perhaps instead of flying his kids from Adelaide to Sydney at public expense during a time when airlines gouge passengers, it might have been cheaper for Pyne to write them a letter.
The tin ear for politics isn't confined to Pyne's office. Tess Randall is as entitled to run for Liberal preselection for her late father's seat as any member of the WA Liberals. Michaelia Cash and Christian Porter are two other second-generation Liberal politicians who have done exactly that. Leaving aside unkind remarks about the difficulty of being worse than Don Randall, Tess Randall may well be the Liberals' best candidate on preselection day; she may even become quite good as an MP. Her candidacy just feeds into the whole family entitlement thing that is killing this government.
I hold no brief for the alternative candidates. WA Liberal factional politics is incomprehensible even to other Liberals. Journalists covering WA politics avoid getting into it, and I don't blame them. It would be like taking a bucket of spiders and up-ending it over your head - you're in the dark, getting bitten from all sides, and if you open your mouth it will only get worse. I'm trying to think of a wimpy, equivocating WA Liberal politician, and frankly none come to mind.
It seems that apart from MPs' staffers and MPs' children, the only people winning Liberal preselections these days are members of the Australian Defence Force - particularly the Army. If turning back asylum-seekers was such a good and popular policy, one would expect a) Navy recruitment to have increased significantly, and b) the Liberal Party to be beset by preselection applications from naval officers with proud tales of boats turned back, bearing witness to the efficacy and rightness of the policy. One would expect RAAF officers to turn to politics for something to do; the last one to do so was Jackie Kelly. ADF personnel vote Coalition more than any other occupational group, but the long-running and badly-managed controversy over pay is yet another captain's call that has cost this government. The last non-commissioned ADF member to enter politics was Jacqui Lambie - expect more to follow.
ADF personnel don't get members of their family flown to meet them at public expense. They have to pay for any such trips themselves, on lower salaries than politicians get. MP's families should visit Canberra or wherever, but such trips should be paid for by the MPs themselves. The contrary case, the case for the status quo, cannot be made even by Canberra insiders. It should not have survived successive rounds of cuts by various governments.
Some countries, such as Indonesia, have quotas for serving armed forces personnel in parliament. In others, such as the US Congress, there has been a strong correlation between military and political service. Given the resonance of the Anzac legend and the relative decline of other institutions in our society, is Australian politics headed down this road?
Regardless who wins Liberal preselection, the Canning byelection will pretty much seal Tony Abbott's fate. It is interesting that Bishop did not issue the writs before she quit, and the party organisation has taken so long to get into campaign mode. There will not be a Liberal leadership spill before then, despite worthless commentary declaring the government's vacuity to be somehow recent and sudden. There will not be one afterwards in the highly unlikely event that there is a swing toward the Liberals; a swing against, especially if the Liberal candidate loses the seat, will make the empty chair that ran against Abbott in February look pretty good.
The inquiry into entitlements is made up of the same sort of ex-politicians who are petitioning the High Court for more lurks - those from the major parties. In a two-party-preferred political environment, an agreement by major parties can contain the political fallout. We don't have such an environment - entitlements scandals depress the vote of both the Coalition and the ALP, to the profit of independents and minor parties. Those who've never been part of the you-scratch-my-back bipartisan arrangements will get the benefit of the doubt, not incumbents who swear to do better or protest some non-existent right to bill the taxpayer for a family jaunt.
There used to be two types of MP who stood against politicians' entitlements - only one is still in public life.
The first were those abstemious, self-educated ALP types who'd take homemade lunches to work in a paper bag, who were so grateful for an indoors job with no heavy lifting that they would spend their own money on raffle tickets, community events and other incidentals. Labor don't make this type of politician any more, replaced with fixers who cut the sorts of deals that led to this plethora of 'entitlements'. Noely Neate is very good on the issue of public entitlements and party fundraisers.
The second are conservatives with a bit of money behind them. Clive Palmer and Malcolm Turnbull have made disparaging comments about entitlements - and the related issue of political donations. All are well-travelled and don't need to have all their receipts picked over in public; those they don't wish to appear in public are paid from their own pockets. They will not be so vulgar about hotel sites or helicopters as Bishop was - I mean, fancy having to rent a helicopter. Neither have much trouble in raising funds, and both benefit from the implicit perception that their wealth insulates them from being unduly influenced.
They have done little to spoil the fun of their less fortunate colleagues, who are using public resources to do the mind-broadening travel many of us did in private capacities. I'll tell you what I want to tell you about my travels. Have a look at the reports that politicians do from "study tours", and question how much could have been done from within Canberra using the internet.
The idea behind giving politicians a salary and entitlements, and moving the capital to Canberra, was to get them to focus on our interests over their own. Private interests upped the ante with lobbyists and fundraising, so - as in the 19th century - political-class members deal with our interests when they're not too distracted with their own perks and lurks. A kick-the-bums-out parliament might not be the sort of timocracy that we saw in colonial parliaments before Federation, and that we see in developing countries today. Raising your perspective beyond today's major parties opens options they cannot face, they dare not face, and will not present as options to a Parliament that will still largely vote the way party bosses bloody well tell them to vote, never you mind why and don't even ask.
The press gallery will not be able to deal with an entitlements system that isn't bipartisan, but the emergence of a political system that goes beyond today's major parties assumes the press gallery has even less influence than it does today - and as regular readers can imagine, I'm OK with that.
Policies on politicians' entitlements have been agreed by the major parties over many years. The press gallery avoid criticising them because they applaud bipartisanship as a good in itself, regardless of its impact on policy quality. If a politician has to fly somewhere to make an announcement that could just as easily have been made in Canberra, the broadcast media go along too and all regard it as a normal part of their jobs. They benefit from publicly-funded junkets despite the fact that the quality of reporting rarely improves.
Samantha Maiden is on Joe Hockey's case, as though he were the only MP with entitlements issues. This story adds heat but no light to the issue of politicians' entitlements, with not even the most timid implication that Hockey has breached 'the rules', and it even defends the indefensible Bishop.
Maiden's story includes an ethically questionable decision by her employer to run photographs of Hockey's children. Hockey is a public figure; his wife, Melissa, is an adult who chooses to join him in the public eye; but their children are not public figures. Nor are they adults as Margie-and-the-girls are. A decent news organisation would have pixellated pictures of the children or not run them at all.
With the focus on Bronwyn Bishop's travel entitlements, it was inevitable that there would be a Labor MP exposed doing something similar - and so there was, in Tony Burke, who apparently took his children of his former marriage on holiday with his current partner. Bishop's extravagance was not only a blow against the Coalition, but Burke inadvertently lent the story the sexual tut-tutting for which Murdoch papers exist (and which have helped fund their proprietor through not one but three divorces).
The Chris Pyne I knew from late 1980s student politics in Adelaide would have gone after Burke, calling him a hypocrite and worse, but the latter-day Pyne seems more conciliatory. Ease up on Burke, he says, making an unconvincing technical point about 'the rules'. Later we discover Pyne embroiled in a travel scandal of his own, and his office has the political tin ear to assert that Pyne's children had never seen the Sydney fireworks.
Whatever Pyne gained from the Adelaide frigates announcement, he lost on the Sydney fireworks. It was a let-them-eat-cake moment that you usually get from governments that have been in office way too long. Before you go on about first-term governments getting re-elected, consider that the Coalition has been in government for 13 of the last 19 years, with a frontbench pretty similar to the one behind Howard in 2007; now look at recent elections in Victoria, Queensland, and South Australia, and shut up about first-term governments.
Perhaps instead of flying his kids from Adelaide to Sydney at public expense during a time when airlines gouge passengers, it might have been cheaper for Pyne to write them a letter.
The tin ear for politics isn't confined to Pyne's office. Tess Randall is as entitled to run for Liberal preselection for her late father's seat as any member of the WA Liberals. Michaelia Cash and Christian Porter are two other second-generation Liberal politicians who have done exactly that. Leaving aside unkind remarks about the difficulty of being worse than Don Randall, Tess Randall may well be the Liberals' best candidate on preselection day; she may even become quite good as an MP. Her candidacy just feeds into the whole family entitlement thing that is killing this government.
I hold no brief for the alternative candidates. WA Liberal factional politics is incomprehensible even to other Liberals. Journalists covering WA politics avoid getting into it, and I don't blame them. It would be like taking a bucket of spiders and up-ending it over your head - you're in the dark, getting bitten from all sides, and if you open your mouth it will only get worse. I'm trying to think of a wimpy, equivocating WA Liberal politician, and frankly none come to mind.
It seems that apart from MPs' staffers and MPs' children, the only people winning Liberal preselections these days are members of the Australian Defence Force - particularly the Army. If turning back asylum-seekers was such a good and popular policy, one would expect a) Navy recruitment to have increased significantly, and b) the Liberal Party to be beset by preselection applications from naval officers with proud tales of boats turned back, bearing witness to the efficacy and rightness of the policy. One would expect RAAF officers to turn to politics for something to do; the last one to do so was Jackie Kelly. ADF personnel vote Coalition more than any other occupational group, but the long-running and badly-managed controversy over pay is yet another captain's call that has cost this government. The last non-commissioned ADF member to enter politics was Jacqui Lambie - expect more to follow.
ADF personnel don't get members of their family flown to meet them at public expense. They have to pay for any such trips themselves, on lower salaries than politicians get. MP's families should visit Canberra or wherever, but such trips should be paid for by the MPs themselves. The contrary case, the case for the status quo, cannot be made even by Canberra insiders. It should not have survived successive rounds of cuts by various governments.
Some countries, such as Indonesia, have quotas for serving armed forces personnel in parliament. In others, such as the US Congress, there has been a strong correlation between military and political service. Given the resonance of the Anzac legend and the relative decline of other institutions in our society, is Australian politics headed down this road?
Regardless who wins Liberal preselection, the Canning byelection will pretty much seal Tony Abbott's fate. It is interesting that Bishop did not issue the writs before she quit, and the party organisation has taken so long to get into campaign mode. There will not be a Liberal leadership spill before then, despite worthless commentary declaring the government's vacuity to be somehow recent and sudden. There will not be one afterwards in the highly unlikely event that there is a swing toward the Liberals; a swing against, especially if the Liberal candidate loses the seat, will make the empty chair that ran against Abbott in February look pretty good.
The inquiry into entitlements is made up of the same sort of ex-politicians who are petitioning the High Court for more lurks - those from the major parties. In a two-party-preferred political environment, an agreement by major parties can contain the political fallout. We don't have such an environment - entitlements scandals depress the vote of both the Coalition and the ALP, to the profit of independents and minor parties. Those who've never been part of the you-scratch-my-back bipartisan arrangements will get the benefit of the doubt, not incumbents who swear to do better or protest some non-existent right to bill the taxpayer for a family jaunt.
There used to be two types of MP who stood against politicians' entitlements - only one is still in public life.
The first were those abstemious, self-educated ALP types who'd take homemade lunches to work in a paper bag, who were so grateful for an indoors job with no heavy lifting that they would spend their own money on raffle tickets, community events and other incidentals. Labor don't make this type of politician any more, replaced with fixers who cut the sorts of deals that led to this plethora of 'entitlements'. Noely Neate is very good on the issue of public entitlements and party fundraisers.
The second are conservatives with a bit of money behind them. Clive Palmer and Malcolm Turnbull have made disparaging comments about entitlements - and the related issue of political donations. All are well-travelled and don't need to have all their receipts picked over in public; those they don't wish to appear in public are paid from their own pockets. They will not be so vulgar about hotel sites or helicopters as Bishop was - I mean, fancy having to rent a helicopter. Neither have much trouble in raising funds, and both benefit from the implicit perception that their wealth insulates them from being unduly influenced.
They have done little to spoil the fun of their less fortunate colleagues, who are using public resources to do the mind-broadening travel many of us did in private capacities. I'll tell you what I want to tell you about my travels. Have a look at the reports that politicians do from "study tours", and question how much could have been done from within Canberra using the internet.
The idea behind giving politicians a salary and entitlements, and moving the capital to Canberra, was to get them to focus on our interests over their own. Private interests upped the ante with lobbyists and fundraising, so - as in the 19th century - political-class members deal with our interests when they're not too distracted with their own perks and lurks. A kick-the-bums-out parliament might not be the sort of timocracy that we saw in colonial parliaments before Federation, and that we see in developing countries today. Raising your perspective beyond today's major parties opens options they cannot face, they dare not face, and will not present as options to a Parliament that will still largely vote the way party bosses bloody well tell them to vote, never you mind why and don't even ask.
The press gallery will not be able to deal with an entitlements system that isn't bipartisan, but the emergence of a political system that goes beyond today's major parties assumes the press gallery has even less influence than it does today - and as regular readers can imagine, I'm OK with that.
04 August 2015
Losing it 1: The spearhead
Traditionally, an issue has popped up in the media, squadrons of journalists rush out with pre-prepared cliches to smother any public interest, and the issue dies and is replaced by another one. They may be weighty issues, they may not; but you can be sure that the media will churn through them.
In recent years, editors and news directors have lost control of this media churn. The decline in consumption of traditional broadcast media means there's a strong correlation between social media users and the remaining readers/ listeners/ viewers of the broadcasters. The smarter people in the broadcast media realise this, while the less smart ones - disproportionately found in the press gallery, and "media management" roles in the political class - persist with the view that social media are somewhere between annoyances and competitors. They can't dismiss us out of hand (the old saws about cats or breakfast pics have had their day) but they dare not admit we keep them up at night.
Adam Goodes' Indigenous dance celebration at scoring a goal didn't seem so strange to those of us from northeastern Australia, as Preston Towers observes in his masterful account of the controversy. Rugby league player Greg Inglis does a goanna move after he scores tries, which is just Inglis being Inglis; it is not worthy of booing even by fans of teams Inglis pays against, or by those who (for whatever reason) don't like him.
It's true that New Zealand's rugby union team, the All Blacks, do a Maori war dance (haka) before every match, facing their opponents at close range, sometimes including a genuinely menacing throat-slitting move. It's also true that the Australian team, the Wallabies, did a half-hearted Aboriginal-derived response, but that they haven't done it for decades. Because this guy doesn't realise that he isn't quite as Proud Of Our Aussie Heritage as he might imagine.
It also makes this whole debate beside the point. Rugby fans are no more/less Australian than AFL fans, no more/less uncouth or passionate, and no more/less across issues of structural racism.
Goodes is not, as one cranky fan pointed out, the first Aboriginal AFL player; he's not the first prominent Aborigine who uses his public profile to help young people. What makes him different to those who came before, like Nicky Winmar or Graham "Polly" Farmer, is that prominent Aborigines these days can mix it in public debates. Prominent Aborigines like Goodes, Rachael Perkins, Larissa Behrendt, Noel Pearson, or Marcia Langton are central to public debates involving indigenous people unlike previous generations of leaders like Harold Blair, or Bennelong.
The idea that Goodes ought not express pride in his heritage, or that he's being aggressive in doing so, is rubbish. Ron Barassi has spoken of his Italian heritage, including the harassment his father suffered during World War II when Australia was at war with Italy. Dermott Brereton's hardscrabble upbringing is not unlike the disadvantage suffered by many Indigenous people. He has spoken of his Irish heritage and the threats he received as a result.
Did Brereton really never offer any support to the terrorist organisation IRA? Has Goodes ever supported terrorism, openly or otherwise? Brereton's criticism of Goodes is curious. He looks like an old stager who doesn't get it. Mind you, that puts him firmly in line with the gutless all-about-the-money AFL Commission.
When he was called an "ape" showed a deft touch in raising the issue, then defusing the anger that arose from it. He insisted the child be protected from the ravages of tabloid (broadcast, "professional") media, and kept the focus on structural, endemic racism. Accepting his Australian of the Year accolade last year he did much the same thing: raised harsh truths squarely, and then called on everyone to face them together.
I wish we had a Prime Minister who could do that.
The man who has not handled Goodes' comments at all well was racial discrimination offender Andrew Bolt:
People who loathe Bolt will show that image for the rest of his life, and probably beyond it. Bolt has to keep up his persona of the disappointed conservative. Even after his conviction he was "disappointed" and, like Goodes yesterday, took time away from his job. Bolt finds accusations of racism directed at him to be "chilling", as the young people say.
Appearing calm and measured is essential to keeping onside well-meaning conservatives who don't pay close attention to media controversies, but who want a respectable champion of their values in the media when they do dip into it.
If Bolt blows his cool he loses those people. The idea that he's a hate-filled, seething bigot will turn advertisers away, and NewsCorp will drop him. James Packer, a major shareholder of the TV network that broadcasts Bolt, has already shirtfronted him. If there is a "war" over "race hate" between Goodes and Bolt, then Bolt has already lost it.
Spittle-flecked partisans aside, pragmatic and experienced media professionals like Jo Hall expected this to blow over:
I agree with Carol Duncan and Paul Daley: we do need a discussion, one that doesn't end with recriminations and moving-on-to-the-next-story but to somewhere productive, the "brave and fine" conversation we've always been promised but could never quite manage by ourselves.
The AFL had only planned to have one Indigenous Round but has effectively been forced to have a second this past weekend - without Goodes present, and with the possibility that he might retire rather than continue as a lightning-rod for the country's worst instincts. The AFL Commission has not done the leading when it comes to this issue, it has been led. But this goes beyond one sport, which bears more responsibility for the nation than it can reasonably bear.
Again, I wish we had a Prime Minister capable of leading such a discussion. The press gallery promised us that Abbott was both sincere and capable when it came to Indigenous policy issues, and they acted all surprised when neither turned out to be true.
Abbott has gone to ground, which he usually does when the going gets tough. He could have leavened his clearly difficult experience with Bronwyn Bishop by stepping up with even some noble words on this issue - that would have been enough for the mugs in the press gallery. He's not going to talk about on-piste matters. He might not understand AFL or race relations, but he's in that job because he knows how to fool the broadcast media. If he absents himself from the media, the thinking goes, the broadcast media will run out of new angles and the story will die. All that's happened for him and his office is he's been left behind. The broadcast media promised us he was "Prime Ministerial", when he was never anything of the sort.
The broadcast media have now been abandoned at the very point where social media is running rings around them, and they need to borrow Authority from external sources. They're just there to be used and abused by this government, a realisation everyone has come to except them.
They still believe that an endemic issue will just churn through and Good Old Tony will come through for them once more. He'll play them, and they think they play him too, bless them. When they do start focusing on another issue, they might find less public engagement than traditional broadcasters are enjoying now. They become less adept at picking the right issue for their One Daily Story, and their Access Privileges count for less and less with a smaller, more engaged audience.
The worst thing journalists can be is not biased, or even shallow, but obtuse. On Indigenous issues generally, and on Goodes in particular, the media sure have been obtuse. This can't end well for traditional access-oriented broadcast journalism.
In recent years, editors and news directors have lost control of this media churn. The decline in consumption of traditional broadcast media means there's a strong correlation between social media users and the remaining readers/ listeners/ viewers of the broadcasters. The smarter people in the broadcast media realise this, while the less smart ones - disproportionately found in the press gallery, and "media management" roles in the political class - persist with the view that social media are somewhere between annoyances and competitors. They can't dismiss us out of hand (the old saws about cats or breakfast pics have had their day) but they dare not admit we keep them up at night.
Adam Goodes' Indigenous dance celebration at scoring a goal didn't seem so strange to those of us from northeastern Australia, as Preston Towers observes in his masterful account of the controversy. Rugby league player Greg Inglis does a goanna move after he scores tries, which is just Inglis being Inglis; it is not worthy of booing even by fans of teams Inglis pays against, or by those who (for whatever reason) don't like him.
It's true that New Zealand's rugby union team, the All Blacks, do a Maori war dance (haka) before every match, facing their opponents at close range, sometimes including a genuinely menacing throat-slitting move. It's also true that the Australian team, the Wallabies, did a half-hearted Aboriginal-derived response, but that they haven't done it for decades. Because this guy doesn't realise that he isn't quite as Proud Of Our Aussie Heritage as he might imagine.
It also makes this whole debate beside the point. Rugby fans are no more/less Australian than AFL fans, no more/less uncouth or passionate, and no more/less across issues of structural racism.
Goodes is not, as one cranky fan pointed out, the first Aboriginal AFL player; he's not the first prominent Aborigine who uses his public profile to help young people. What makes him different to those who came before, like Nicky Winmar or Graham "Polly" Farmer, is that prominent Aborigines these days can mix it in public debates. Prominent Aborigines like Goodes, Rachael Perkins, Larissa Behrendt, Noel Pearson, or Marcia Langton are central to public debates involving indigenous people unlike previous generations of leaders like Harold Blair, or Bennelong.
The idea that Goodes ought not express pride in his heritage, or that he's being aggressive in doing so, is rubbish. Ron Barassi has spoken of his Italian heritage, including the harassment his father suffered during World War II when Australia was at war with Italy. Dermott Brereton's hardscrabble upbringing is not unlike the disadvantage suffered by many Indigenous people. He has spoken of his Irish heritage and the threats he received as a result.
Did Brereton really never offer any support to the terrorist organisation IRA? Has Goodes ever supported terrorism, openly or otherwise? Brereton's criticism of Goodes is curious. He looks like an old stager who doesn't get it. Mind you, that puts him firmly in line with the gutless all-about-the-money AFL Commission.
When he was called an "ape" showed a deft touch in raising the issue, then defusing the anger that arose from it. He insisted the child be protected from the ravages of tabloid (broadcast, "professional") media, and kept the focus on structural, endemic racism. Accepting his Australian of the Year accolade last year he did much the same thing: raised harsh truths squarely, and then called on everyone to face them together.
I wish we had a Prime Minister who could do that.
The man who has not handled Goodes' comments at all well was racial discrimination offender Andrew Bolt:
People who loathe Bolt will show that image for the rest of his life, and probably beyond it. Bolt has to keep up his persona of the disappointed conservative. Even after his conviction he was "disappointed" and, like Goodes yesterday, took time away from his job. Bolt finds accusations of racism directed at him to be "chilling", as the young people say.
Appearing calm and measured is essential to keeping onside well-meaning conservatives who don't pay close attention to media controversies, but who want a respectable champion of their values in the media when they do dip into it.
If Bolt blows his cool he loses those people. The idea that he's a hate-filled, seething bigot will turn advertisers away, and NewsCorp will drop him. James Packer, a major shareholder of the TV network that broadcasts Bolt, has already shirtfronted him. If there is a "war" over "race hate" between Goodes and Bolt, then Bolt has already lost it.
Spittle-flecked partisans aside, pragmatic and experienced media professionals like Jo Hall expected this to blow over:
I agree with Carol Duncan and Paul Daley: we do need a discussion, one that doesn't end with recriminations and moving-on-to-the-next-story but to somewhere productive, the "brave and fine" conversation we've always been promised but could never quite manage by ourselves.
The AFL had only planned to have one Indigenous Round but has effectively been forced to have a second this past weekend - without Goodes present, and with the possibility that he might retire rather than continue as a lightning-rod for the country's worst instincts. The AFL Commission has not done the leading when it comes to this issue, it has been led. But this goes beyond one sport, which bears more responsibility for the nation than it can reasonably bear.
Again, I wish we had a Prime Minister capable of leading such a discussion. The press gallery promised us that Abbott was both sincere and capable when it came to Indigenous policy issues, and they acted all surprised when neither turned out to be true.
Abbott has gone to ground, which he usually does when the going gets tough. He could have leavened his clearly difficult experience with Bronwyn Bishop by stepping up with even some noble words on this issue - that would have been enough for the mugs in the press gallery. He's not going to talk about on-piste matters. He might not understand AFL or race relations, but he's in that job because he knows how to fool the broadcast media. If he absents himself from the media, the thinking goes, the broadcast media will run out of new angles and the story will die. All that's happened for him and his office is he's been left behind. The broadcast media promised us he was "Prime Ministerial", when he was never anything of the sort.
The broadcast media have now been abandoned at the very point where social media is running rings around them, and they need to borrow Authority from external sources. They're just there to be used and abused by this government, a realisation everyone has come to except them.
They still believe that an endemic issue will just churn through and Good Old Tony will come through for them once more. He'll play them, and they think they play him too, bless them. When they do start focusing on another issue, they might find less public engagement than traditional broadcasters are enjoying now. They become less adept at picking the right issue for their One Daily Story, and their Access Privileges count for less and less with a smaller, more engaged audience.
The worst thing journalists can be is not biased, or even shallow, but obtuse. On Indigenous issues generally, and on Goodes in particular, the media sure have been obtuse. This can't end well for traditional access-oriented broadcast journalism.
28 July 2015
The wrong way around
Mark Kenny reckons Abbott has Bronwyn Bishop in his pocket. As usual with him, the official press gallery bunny of this blog, Kenny has it the wrong way around.
Bishop is a major force in the Liberals' right-wing. Abbott was only ever a minor-to-middling figure. In the late 1980s, when Abbott was a seminary dropout admiring the doomed NSW ALP government of Barrie Unsworth, Bronwyn Bishop was NSW State President of the Liberal Party.
She has been raising money and otherwise supporting rightwing Liberals continuously since that time, building and maintaining an impregnable base among conservatives. He has only been doing general fundraisers for the party as a whole the last decade or so. He's the one on P-plates, not her.
She has been intimately involved in every challenge for the leadership since the late 1980s; since he entered Parliament in 1994 he has voted the way she told him to vote, including the 2009 ballot in which he was a candidate. His victory in that ballot over not one but two moderate leaders owes more to her tactical shrewdness and hard work than his dumb luck.
In recent days, journalists have dug into the paper trail left in Bishop's wake, recording her helicopter trip here or limo trip there, questioning what "official business" she might have transacted on a given day in Hawthorn or Geraldton or wherever. Digging this stuff up can be hard; this hard work should be recognised - but no more so than, say, digging up a road or preparing a tax return from a shoebox full of receipts.
What those journalists have missed, of course, is the context.
Bishop, as with most politicians, knows that you have to put yourself about if you want to build and maintain your base. The reason why the rules on parliamentary entitlements are like that, and why they won't change much, is because politicians from all parties agree that you have to travel a lot to maintain your base.
To most people, there is a clear delineation between work and social events. The social events that political parties stage as fundraising events are designed to be social for those contributing money. For the politically ambitious, they involve all the performance-indicator aspects of work with the addition of social skills like seeming pleasant, knowing who to chat to (and if they're really important, how to chat to them) and not drinking as much as you might at a purely social event - particularly if you're going to many such events in a day.
For most people, a golf course is unambiguously a social place, different from Bishop's workplace in the green room under the hill in Canberra. Bishop regards her job as going where her job requires: Collaroy, Launceston, Ottawa, wherever. She has been in politics so much and for so long that she is genuinely astonished that turning up to a fundraiser might lie outside a reasonable definition of a politician's "work".
Political journalists also travel a lot. If there's an announcement in, say, Adelaide, journalists not based in Adelaide will have their travel costs there met by others. So too will those doing the announcing, and any politicians having to stand in the background nodding during the announcement. Every time there's a kerfuffle about travel entitlements, politicians and journalists alike are unprepared: both groups, regardless of employer/party, are keen to bury any such story as soon as possible.
She displeased him when she sought to ban head-coverings in the public galleries of the House of Representatives. It took days for her to back down, days when he copped public opprobrium on her behalf.
Joe Hockey stuffed up the delivery of the 2014 budget and has not yet secured this year's, putting the fate of the government and the economic well-being of the nation in peril. Malcolm Turnbull niggles about the one issue Abbott has left, national security. Both of them have a secure political base, within and beyond the Liberal Party, which Abbott doesn't have. Bronwyn Bishop also has a secure base, and it shows: nobody is voting to replace her with an empty chair.
Bronwyn Bishop has held a few press conferences in her time, so why was the one she held last week such a disaster? Because she couldn't be bothered. She was blithe with what she thought was a non-issue, she was rude with journalists to whom she owes nothing. Look who is copping the full force of public scorn: Abbott, and easy-come-easy-go Coalition MPs in marginal seats. Look who isn't: Bishop. She didn't care, and nobody could make her care.
People with real power don't cop flak. Gina Rinehart benefits from the abolition of the mining tax and our continuing reliance on coal: Abbott cops the flak for making those things happen. Bronwyn Bishop still has her cushy job: Abbott cops it every day she stays. If she goes the new Speaker won't be as protective of his clumsy ministers as she has been, and he will have a relentless enemy on the backbench. This is why Kenny is flatly wrong in his analysis: his "Right now", and "Leaving aside her past performance in the chair", and "No other criteria are relevant" are simply the wrong ways to view the situation before us.
This goes to the question of privilege, which is the core problem for this government:
Abbott is powerless in the face of self-indulgent behaviour. He is not keeping his powder dry, he has no powder. Once the backbench realise this he is finished.
The Cabinet sets the policy course for the government. The only person who has been brought into the cabinet since 2013, Sussan Ley, is there because she has superior policy and political skills to the only person who departed it, Senator David Johnston. Bishop is 72 years old; she would take a seat for which others half her age have made a stronger case. The fact that Kenny - alone - considers her a serious candidate underlines both his incompetence, and Bishop's enduring power. That power undermines the premise of Kenny's article. It undermines his already thin credentials as an analyst of our political situation.
Kenny is trying to be flippant about a story that he doesn't believe is a big deal, but which clearly is bigger than he can imagine. It's big because it goes to the question of what The Narrative is, and who sets it. Before 2013 the press gallery narrative was that the government was dishonest and incompetent. This government is dishonest and incompetent too, but also has a ferocious sense of self-entitlement - and this narrative is being imposed upon the press gallery by the facts at hand, rather than people like Kenny coming to their own conclusion and agreement. The press gallery has lost control of the narrative. Maybe Kenny should give up and go skiing.
This government has always been self-indulgent and lazy, and so has the press gallery that covered it. The press gallery is not entitled to pretend this self-indulgence, and incompetence, is a new development and one the gallery can be forgiven for not noticing. Their observations are becoming less valuable as each day passes, which is why their circulation, influence, and financial viability are in terminal decline.
Bishop is a major force in the Liberals' right-wing. Abbott was only ever a minor-to-middling figure. In the late 1980s, when Abbott was a seminary dropout admiring the doomed NSW ALP government of Barrie Unsworth, Bronwyn Bishop was NSW State President of the Liberal Party.
She has been raising money and otherwise supporting rightwing Liberals continuously since that time, building and maintaining an impregnable base among conservatives. He has only been doing general fundraisers for the party as a whole the last decade or so. He's the one on P-plates, not her.
She has been intimately involved in every challenge for the leadership since the late 1980s; since he entered Parliament in 1994 he has voted the way she told him to vote, including the 2009 ballot in which he was a candidate. His victory in that ballot over not one but two moderate leaders owes more to her tactical shrewdness and hard work than his dumb luck.
In recent days, journalists have dug into the paper trail left in Bishop's wake, recording her helicopter trip here or limo trip there, questioning what "official business" she might have transacted on a given day in Hawthorn or Geraldton or wherever. Digging this stuff up can be hard; this hard work should be recognised - but no more so than, say, digging up a road or preparing a tax return from a shoebox full of receipts.
What those journalists have missed, of course, is the context.
Bishop, as with most politicians, knows that you have to put yourself about if you want to build and maintain your base. The reason why the rules on parliamentary entitlements are like that, and why they won't change much, is because politicians from all parties agree that you have to travel a lot to maintain your base.
To most people, there is a clear delineation between work and social events. The social events that political parties stage as fundraising events are designed to be social for those contributing money. For the politically ambitious, they involve all the performance-indicator aspects of work with the addition of social skills like seeming pleasant, knowing who to chat to (and if they're really important, how to chat to them) and not drinking as much as you might at a purely social event - particularly if you're going to many such events in a day.
For most people, a golf course is unambiguously a social place, different from Bishop's workplace in the green room under the hill in Canberra. Bishop regards her job as going where her job requires: Collaroy, Launceston, Ottawa, wherever. She has been in politics so much and for so long that she is genuinely astonished that turning up to a fundraiser might lie outside a reasonable definition of a politician's "work".
Political journalists also travel a lot. If there's an announcement in, say, Adelaide, journalists not based in Adelaide will have their travel costs there met by others. So too will those doing the announcing, and any politicians having to stand in the background nodding during the announcement. Every time there's a kerfuffle about travel entitlements, politicians and journalists alike are unprepared: both groups, regardless of employer/party, are keen to bury any such story as soon as possible.
Forget about an independent chair. And forget about a system of accountability where the executive arm is subject to the scrutiny of the legislative arm. These were rarely delivered anyway, and right now, they are not even worth pretending about."Right now"? How about: at no point whatsoever in almost two years since the last election. Has Kenny been asleep? Is he, like his press gallery colleague Katharine Murphy, just waking from some two-year slumber (but, like Murphy, rolling over and going back to sleep after realising it's all to hard)? Seriously: have you been paying any attention at all to Australian politics over recent years?
Leaving aside her past performance in the chair, the PM's "P" plate declaration makes her no different from any minister in his team.Garbage. His opinion of Rudd, Gillard and their ministers was even lower, and their political standing was independent of "his team". And: "leaving aside her past performance in the chair"? That performance is the issue here. He's not just missing the point, he's attempting to shun it by sheer force of will.
The terms of Bishop's engagement are identical to theirs: if she displeases him, she's gone. No other criteria are relevant.This is bullshit.
She displeased him when she sought to ban head-coverings in the public galleries of the House of Representatives. It took days for her to back down, days when he copped public opprobrium on her behalf.
Joe Hockey stuffed up the delivery of the 2014 budget and has not yet secured this year's, putting the fate of the government and the economic well-being of the nation in peril. Malcolm Turnbull niggles about the one issue Abbott has left, national security. Both of them have a secure political base, within and beyond the Liberal Party, which Abbott doesn't have. Bronwyn Bishop also has a secure base, and it shows: nobody is voting to replace her with an empty chair.
Bronwyn Bishop has held a few press conferences in her time, so why was the one she held last week such a disaster? Because she couldn't be bothered. She was blithe with what she thought was a non-issue, she was rude with journalists to whom she owes nothing. Look who is copping the full force of public scorn: Abbott, and easy-come-easy-go Coalition MPs in marginal seats. Look who isn't: Bishop. She didn't care, and nobody could make her care.
People with real power don't cop flak. Gina Rinehart benefits from the abolition of the mining tax and our continuing reliance on coal: Abbott cops the flak for making those things happen. Bronwyn Bishop still has her cushy job: Abbott cops it every day she stays. If she goes the new Speaker won't be as protective of his clumsy ministers as she has been, and he will have a relentless enemy on the backbench. This is why Kenny is flatly wrong in his analysis: his "Right now", and "Leaving aside her past performance in the chair", and "No other criteria are relevant" are simply the wrong ways to view the situation before us.
This is hardly the institutional arrangement one would choose if genuine independence were of any import.For almost two years Abbott has behaved as though they were of no import - even more if you include his disgraceful treatment of the Speakers in the last two terms of Parliament. Has Kenny only just noticed? Is he blind, or stupid?
On the plus side, it might now be said that there are effectively three women on the Abbott frontbench rather than the paltry two we knew of: a Ley (Sussan) and two Bishops (Julie and Bronwyn).Throwing Bishop in there does not make anything more effective, or less paltry. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Then there is the separate but equally important question of the role of the Speaker as chief guardian of parliamentary standards.Again, this happened ages ago - where have you been? Did you not notice the shambles of accountability from a government that thinks it is above it? This is not a new thing, and you are not entitled to pretend that it is.
That too has been trashed.
In refusing to make the Speaker repay wrongly claimed travel entitlements for attending a colleague's wedding way back in 2006, Abbott has both endorsed her defiance of proper standards and rendered hollow his own efforts to salve an offended public.So: he wants her to pay back the money, she won't pay - that tells me she's the one who has prevailed, not him. She's the one with the power, not him. That "P-plate" designation looks like more bullshit from Abbott rather than anything that meaningfully limits her, officially or otherwise. Kenny has it arse-about.
This goes to the question of privilege, which is the core problem for this government:
- A bad government has all of the privileges of office while shirking the responsibility to govern well.
- Julia Gillard was accused of acquiring the privileges of a new bathroom from AWU members who hoped their membership dues might be spent on them. This accusation was not proven, but Abbott was happy to create the impression.
- George Brandis, Bronwyn Bishop, Barnaby Joyce, Joe Hockey, and the late Don Randall all claimed travel entitlements for journeys that were loosely, if at all, tied to their official responsibilities. Bishop has been asked to pay back a small fraction of these.
- Joe Hockey sued a media outlet unsuccessfully, obscuring his efforts with the 2015 budget and casting doubt over his judgment and economic nous.
- Christopher Pyne proposed a number of reforms to his portfolio area, Education. He is seen to be the government's master tactician in parliamentary matters, yet his reforms have been rebuffed by the Senate. He is the senior Liberal from South Australia, a state ravaged by decisions made by this government on cars and shipbuilding; he has fixed nothing for his constituents or their neighbours. Rather than redouble his efforts he has instead written a book about himself, and is using interviews that could be used to promote the government's message to instead plug his book.
- When the going gets tough, the tough go skiing (note that Abbott's family was not present as the Murdoch tabloid claims, and that Frances is Abbott's daughter, not Credlin's).
- The Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption failed to make the case that Bill Shorten had misused the privileges of office in the AWU for his own benefit, strengthening him as the alternative to the hapless, self-indulgent Abbott.
- The onus is on the government to both a) curb its own self-indulgent behaviour and b) point out even worse instances of it by the alternative government, and c) fend off independents and minor-party challengers protesting said self-indulgence. I bet it can't succeed at all that, but then I'm biased against this government. Those who aren't require vast reserves of faith in the ongoing acumen of Bishop, Abbott, and other members of this government.
Abbott is powerless in the face of self-indulgent behaviour. He is not keeping his powder dry, he has no powder. Once the backbench realise this he is finished.
Remember, he already, repaid his claimed travel allowance for the same event.Well, he said he did - and the journos believed him!
This bizarre situation reveals that even the pretence of impartiality in adjudicating the people's house has been abandoned and the pantomime of probity has ended with it.The very idea that Bronwyn Bishop might be an impartial Speaker was always rubbish. Mark Kenny should have been smart enough not to fall for it. The proof against the idea has been very strong for years now, without any countervailing proof for it. Having not been smart enough to see through Abbott rhetoric, Kenny is too proud to admit he's been gulled, and pretends that Bishop's unfitness for office is a recent development.
And for that matter, why not make the Speaker a formal cabinet post? Don't think for a moment Bronny wouldn't accept it - even now, amid all of this.A stupid end to a stupid article, by someone who has spent so long covering politics he doesn't even understand what Cabinet is.
The Cabinet sets the policy course for the government. The only person who has been brought into the cabinet since 2013, Sussan Ley, is there because she has superior policy and political skills to the only person who departed it, Senator David Johnston. Bishop is 72 years old; she would take a seat for which others half her age have made a stronger case. The fact that Kenny - alone - considers her a serious candidate underlines both his incompetence, and Bishop's enduring power. That power undermines the premise of Kenny's article. It undermines his already thin credentials as an analyst of our political situation.
Kenny is trying to be flippant about a story that he doesn't believe is a big deal, but which clearly is bigger than he can imagine. It's big because it goes to the question of what The Narrative is, and who sets it. Before 2013 the press gallery narrative was that the government was dishonest and incompetent. This government is dishonest and incompetent too, but also has a ferocious sense of self-entitlement - and this narrative is being imposed upon the press gallery by the facts at hand, rather than people like Kenny coming to their own conclusion and agreement. The press gallery has lost control of the narrative. Maybe Kenny should give up and go skiing.
This government has always been self-indulgent and lazy, and so has the press gallery that covered it. The press gallery is not entitled to pretend this self-indulgence, and incompetence, is a new development and one the gallery can be forgiven for not noticing. Their observations are becoming less valuable as each day passes, which is why their circulation, influence, and financial viability are in terminal decline.
22 July 2015
Debates and outcomes
And we'll paint by numbers 'til something sticksNot far from where I live is a bend on the Parramatta River called Kissing Point. You might think it's called that because the outlook shimmers prettily in the moonlight, because it's secluded without being remote, and is therefore a perfect place for young lovers to go for a pash without being interrupted. It is, but that isn't why Kissing Point is so called.
And I don't mind doing it for the kids
(So come on) jump on board
Take a ride (yeah)
(You'll be doin' it all right)
Jump on board feel the high
'Cause the kids are alright
- Kylie Minogue and Robbie Williams Kids
The kissing-point is a nautical term for the furthest point up a river that an ocean-going ship can go. Ships that are big enough to withstand the big waves of the open ocean can go varying distances from the open sea up a particular river. On mighty rivers like the Yangzi or the Amazon, ships can travel hundreds of kilometres before hitting the kissing-point. On the Parramatta River, the kissing-point is less than thirty kilometres from the river's mouth at the Heads of Sydney Harbour.
Debates over Australia's head of state and our flag are a bit like nautical processions up the river. They start off with great pomp and splendour, cheered on by the city's great and good from their glass-fronted balconies; then they start having to weave and dodge around smaller craft as the Harbour narrows into a river, before foundering at - or turning back ahead of - the kissing-point.
What is the kissing-point in our national debates about symbolism? The nation grudgingly accepts the political class and places public resources at their mercy, but baulks at handing over its symbols to them.
This is what Peter FitzSimons and Tim Mayfield miss in their attempts to revive old debates and anticipate old objections.
First step: the way that article is set out, you could be forgiven for thinking Mayfield is just another Guardian Australia journalist. He isn't: he's the Director of the Australian Republican Movement, which isn't disclosed in that article as I write this.
Second: FitzSimons was appointed to his role, not elected from a wide range of candidates in a vigorous campaign among the people. A supposedly democratic movement that calls for popular input but seeks to manage the outcome? Sounds like one of the major political parties, whose social base is small and getting smaller.
Peter FitzSimons is arguably Australia’s king of Twitter ...So is anyone, really, given that medium's democratic nature.
You'll note, as I have, that FitzSimons uses social media to shout out to political-class mates like Joe Hockey and Christopher Pyne. How is he going to break it to them that he is out to rock their world? Easy: he isn't. Neither the head of state nor the flag will undergo any change of which they do not approve. Indeed, any such change would be in their gift, their plaything if you will:
FitzSimons said he favoured keeping the current system where the prime minister chose the governor general, but that the choice should not require the assent of Buckingham Palace.There are good arguments for and against that position, but they aren't being made here.
Days after the Speaker of the House of Representatives has presented herself as proof, yet again, that the Age of Entitlement is not over, it is the wrong time to assert that a new high office should be created and handed over to the political class. This is not to say that political-class appointees are absent from the Governor-Generalcy - they aren't, but appointees are required to distance themselves from the political class in a way that isn't obvious with a presidency.
In 1999 people saw Malcolm Turnbull, with his blithe exterior barely concealing a control-freak modus operandi learned at the feet of Kerry Packer and Neville Wran, making it easy for his opponents to make a case against a politicians' republic. Turnbull said that very little would change under the model he proposed, while at the same time a great deal would change.
What Turnbull saw as a selling point was in fact the fatal flaw of his proposal, all the trivia and administrative adjustment of a symbolic change without any substantive effect. Government departments merge, demerge, and change their names and logos regularly, but these changes are not put to a public vote: if they were, they might suffer the same fate as the 1999 republic.
Turnbull got the message that if he wanted to go into politics, he couldn't just glide into the top job but had to join a party, win a seat, etc.
FitzSimons appears to be offering something similar to Turnbull: happy to court popular support but not happy to let outcomes elude his grasp. Perhaps this is why Mayfield's piece goes heavy on FitzSimons' yarn-spinning and up-the-guts rugby abilities (journalists hailed Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, and Senator Glenn Lazarus for similar biff-and-barge qualities, which haven't necessarily translated well to public debate).
The idea that we might build a social movement big enough to change the environment in which the political class operates without them noticing or participating is rubbish, and most people realise this. Let's look to other public debates to see how a republic might fare.
Four months ago, the Treasurer promised us a genuine, sensible and mature debate on tax reform. He and the Prime Minister then set about ruling out taxes that weren't up for discussion, jumping all over the very spectre of a carbon tax for good measure. We have now arrived at a point where:
- the only tax open for discussion is the regressive GST, and
- against all evidence, ACOSS and the BCA still believe that broader tax reform is possible; and
- nope, that's it.
The press gallery dares not report that the BCA has lost confidence in the Liberal Party, a politically seismic event that would lead to more independent politicians and place public debate further beyond the BCA's capacity for influence.
Mayfield claims around 50% of voters support a republic in general terms. At least that amount support same-sex marriage, an issue stymied by the political class to the point where it brings on learned helplessness.
The idea that debates about national symbolism distract from bread-and-butter issues is palpably false where it is so clear that a focus on those issues yields such poor results.
FitzSimons still appears to be a director of Ausflag, which expands the scope of the change he seeks to effect to our national symbols. Conventional media management practice suggests that the scope of an issue for public debate should be narrowed rather than expanded; Turnbull was careful to separate the republic from the flag but FitzSimons has not.
Nothing will kill public affection for the current Blue Ensign flag faster than Tony Abbott's use of multiple flags as backdrops for security announcements, or galoots wearing them as capes.
FitzSimons does not appear to be a director of the other great symbolic issue of our time, recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders within the Constitution and removal of racially discriminatory passages within it. This issue - and the practicalities of what such recognition might mean - is part of Australia's national identity as much as the flag or the head of state. Again, broadening the scope of debate will appal message-control freaks; either the issue must be embraced by republicans and flag-changers, or abandoned as it was in 1999.
The one thing we need to hear from proponents of a republic - and by "we", I mean both supporters of a republic (in whatever form) as well as opponents of any form - is what they have learned from 1999. To reference one of FitzSimon's books: we need the Knight Commander Monash of Le Hamel, not the duffer in the gully at Gallipoli. FitzSimons appears to have learned nothing from 1999 while opening more fronts for debate than he can possibly handle. 1999 made second-rate operators like Sophie Mirabella and Tony Abbott look like tactical geniuses.
We have a press gallery, and a wider system of news/current affairs reporting in our broadcast media, that can only report on decisions that have been taken (and not even do that well). They are easily fobbed off when questioning politicians. Over the past ten years they have assured us of the suitability of politicians for high office who are manifestly not suited for responsible office at all. They have no ability to involve people in those decisions that are yet to be taken. The broadcast media is limited and exclusive. FitzSimons - an employee of a broadcast-media organisation - is starting from the wrong place to launch a far-reaching and inclusive movement.
Schoolchildren are taught to debate issues without any expectation that those debates will change the issues under debate. Political debates are like those school debates, taking time and resources but resolving nothing, giving the impression that real decisions are made elsewhere. When John Howard said that he was "happy to have the debate" on an issue, it meant his mind was made up and that he could engage in pointless banter until his opponents gave up.
Quite why FitzSimons is, as Mayfield insists, the man to inspire the Youth Of Today toward a republic is unclear. He may well wish to inspire his own children, but apart from that his youth appeal is not as obvious as he might insist (here is the segue to the quote at the top of this post, incase you missed it). After 1999 republicans seemed to agree that their cause should wait, like a watchful vulture on a dead tree, until Queen Elizabeth II has died; that commitment appears to have been abandoned, but again it is not clear why.
A far-reaching public debate - one that might change the way media and the political class operate - is both what the country needs, and the outcome least likely. Far easier for them to burn FitzSimons, to portray him as some unfocused nutter, and reduce him to an irrelevant caricature of his rugby and his yarns ("Did you hear the one about the winger in the lineout? ... I gotta million of 'em!").
The very idea that we might have a sensible and wide-ranging discussion on national symbolism is beyond wrong, it's absurd. Our public debate is so inadequate, and the proponents of change appear to have learned so little from earlier debacles. They arrogantly underestimate the amount of thought necessary to build a wide-ranging, inclusive movement of people with both goodwill and focus. Peter FitzSimons is not the person to lead his organisation, nor the nation, toward a new system of government that might be better than the one we have.
The clearest and best example of how to conduct a wide-ranging, complex, and mature debate that involves everyone - politicians and journalists, policy wonks and frontline workers and even victims - is the debate around domestic/family violence. Leaders of the debate, like Rosie Batty, are prominent without being grandstanding. They can handle themselves in media interviews without over-egging the "importance" of either broadcast or social media in themselves. They bring politicians with them while making it clear they may not take credit or use the issue to score points.
The broadcast media's traditional tools of hype, cliche, and bullshit have been applied sparingly to coverage of this debate. Mercifully, nobody asks whether Rosie Batty has "won the night" or "had a good week", is she "feuding" with other stakeholders, or who she is wearing. This debate, the media, and the nation - from the highest offices of state to the poorest individuals who've just been abused by members of their household - are better for this absence of media business-as-usual. They can so take serious issues seriously. They should do it more often.
19 July 2015
Reclaiming George Christensen
George Christensen has been a Queensland Nationals apparatchik all of his "life". He was a staffer for former Dawson MP DeAnne Kelly, then set up "community newspapers" that were designed to raise funds first and distribute news second. In 2010 he won Dawson, knocking off the Labor MP who had replaced Kelly. Christensen's racist, sexist and antisemitic student jottings had come to media attention in the campaign, but Abbott shrugged them off and therefore so did our fearless media.
It's a mistake to assume, as many commentators have, that Christensen is some out-of-control maverick who is addressing the racist Reclaim Australia rally and that there's not a damn thing Tony Abbott can do about it.
Whenever the media narrative has gone against the government, Christensen runs interference. He comes out with a wacky idea that garners media attention, allows him to bag Labor, and then shrug off government deniability because hey, he's just a backbencher:
Christensen is a government whip, which means he helps develop parliamentary tactics and enforce Coalition unity on the floor of the House. Mavericks don't get or keep jobs like that. He is not some freewheeling dude from the far north who goes where the northern winds take him: he is a careerist suck who does what he's told.
By standing with violent racists, and being careless about the effect this has on his community, Christensen displays a low regard for the people he represents. This isn't the first time he's done this. During the 2015 Queensland state election his most significant contribution was to bandy about a cartoon of now-Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk naked, on a wrecking ball, similar to Miley Cyrus' video for her song of the same name. Labor won the state seat of Mackay at January's election, and in the other state seats within Dawson there was enough of a swing to rattle poor George. Again, he hopes that the votes he attracts from boofheads will exceed those he turns off.
He is more than happy to win ugly. After the next election he will almost certainly become a Coalition frontbencher, whether the Coalition wins or loses, provided he keeps his seat. No other Coalition MP is as effective in diverting attention away from the beleaguered Speaker right now. Christensen is not a diversion, he is Abbott's main game. When he and I were in the NSW Young Liberals, Irfan Yusuf was regularly wrong, but this piece is a mixed bag.
Yusuf is right here:
Yusuf is wrong here:
He was, in short, gulling people like Irfan Yusuf: too dumb to realise they've been had, too proud to admit it. The entire press gallery is in the same boat, realising that Abbott is doing a lousy job as PM but not daring to admit he was never up to it - and that their assertions to the contrary were simply wrong.
If it helps, I thought Phillip Ruddock was a decent and principled person. You just have to admit you were wrong and move on.
Christensen may be right in thinking that sexist, racist crap plays well in his electorate. Abbott, as Prime Minister of the nation, has wider responsibilities. To focus on Christensen is to let Abbott off the hook, once again, which is how he got there and why he gives great hope and succour to worms like Christensen.
Christensen is a generation younger from Abbott but cut from much the same cloth. They were never fearless investigative journalists, but could be relied upon to pad out an already established conclusion, or create a diversion as required. Abbott is playing a double game and Christensen is happy to play along. Calls for Abbott to rein in Christensen are calls to a sense of decency that the current Prime Minister lacks, and did not ever have (no, Irfan, never). You can't persuade such people, but you can vote them out and stop assuming they might have anything useful or constructive to say. Vote for people who engage on important decisions that are yet to be taken rather than look-at-me stunts and diversions.
It's a mistake to assume, as many commentators have, that Christensen is some out-of-control maverick who is addressing the racist Reclaim Australia rally and that there's not a damn thing Tony Abbott can do about it.
Whenever the media narrative has gone against the government, Christensen runs interference. He comes out with a wacky idea that garners media attention, allows him to bag Labor, and then shrug off government deniability because hey, he's just a backbencher:
- While the government was micromanaging ABC TV and approving coalmines in prime agricultural land, George wanted to cane ice dealers. He doesn't know or care whether the measure works, but he's keen for some spanking because it draws attention away from whatever ails the government.
- When the government was being caned over the TPP, Christensen pretended to stand up for sugar farmers. The Australia-US Free Trade Agreement of 2006 explicitly excluded sugar, and so will the TPP, but Christensen looks like he's doing something by kicking against a closed door.
- The proposed coal loader at Abbot Point is in his electorate. The jobs created in building and operating it will be for his constituents - or at least he hopes so, which is why he's so against FIFO agreements that have done little for the economy in his electorate. As demand for coal declines, Christensen blames environmentalists for killing his dream rather than question whether it was a dog of an idea in the first place.
- His electorate contains little of the pretty and accessible parts of the Great Barrier Reef - except for the Whitsunday Islands, which are tightly held and cater to a select market that mostly lives far from Dawson. This is why he's not going into bat for tourism jobs over coal; tourism providers are few and small and less generous to Christensen's campaigns than coal people.
- Christensen is desperately holding the line that same-sex marriage must be a matter of Coalition policy - and that policy must be to oppose it - rather than allow a conscience vote, which would see it get up.
- He was a vocal supporter of stripping Australian citizenship from those accused of terrorism.
Christensen is a government whip, which means he helps develop parliamentary tactics and enforce Coalition unity on the floor of the House. Mavericks don't get or keep jobs like that. He is not some freewheeling dude from the far north who goes where the northern winds take him: he is a careerist suck who does what he's told.
By standing with violent racists, and being careless about the effect this has on his community, Christensen displays a low regard for the people he represents. This isn't the first time he's done this. During the 2015 Queensland state election his most significant contribution was to bandy about a cartoon of now-Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk naked, on a wrecking ball, similar to Miley Cyrus' video for her song of the same name. Labor won the state seat of Mackay at January's election, and in the other state seats within Dawson there was enough of a swing to rattle poor George. Again, he hopes that the votes he attracts from boofheads will exceed those he turns off.
He is more than happy to win ugly. After the next election he will almost certainly become a Coalition frontbencher, whether the Coalition wins or loses, provided he keeps his seat. No other Coalition MP is as effective in diverting attention away from the beleaguered Speaker right now. Christensen is not a diversion, he is Abbott's main game. When he and I were in the NSW Young Liberals, Irfan Yusuf was regularly wrong, but this piece is a mixed bag.
Yusuf is right here:
Brisbane's Courier Mail reports Christensen declaring he will defy even the PM's orders and attend the rally.You'll note that there has been no order from Abbott to Christensen not to attend. Christensen is not defying any instruction, nor would he ever do so.
Reading through the 24 pillars of the Reclaim Australia manifesto, I couldn't help but wonder why Abbott would object. There is a call for "[t]he right to exile or deport traitors", which I guess is akin to Abbott's original call for people engaging in terror-like activities to be stripped of their Australian citizenship even if it was their only one ...
The ideology of Reclaim has a distinctly supremacist feel to it. But in case you thought it was fringe, the reclaimers are singing from virtually the same rhetorical and policy songbook as the federal Coalition on cultural and security matters. Despite trumpeting separation of religion and state, Reclaim's manifesto mentions Christian values and rights numerous more times. How often have we heard Abbott and his ministers lecture us on how Australia has a Christian heritage?
Yusuf is wrong here:
... Tony Abbott held the opposite view. He regarded multiculturalism as a fundamentally sound and inherently conservative social policy. Abbott was one of the few frontbenchers who refused to join the chorus of Muslim-phobic and migrant-phobic hysteria around issues of citizenship and national security. In addresses to various audiences, Abbott recalled what it was like for him and fellow Catholics during previous decades when Catholics were demonised.Abbott has never known what it was like for Catholics to be demonised. He was risking nothing by spouting what conservatives like Bronwyn Bishop regarded then and now as wishy-washy ecumenical kumbaya nonsense. He was reaching out to a broader base in the Liberal Party that enabled him to knock off both Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey, and have people declare before the 2013 election that he's actually quite a decent and sensible fellow who will be moderated by the demands of office.
He was, in short, gulling people like Irfan Yusuf: too dumb to realise they've been had, too proud to admit it. The entire press gallery is in the same boat, realising that Abbott is doing a lousy job as PM but not daring to admit he was never up to it - and that their assertions to the contrary were simply wrong.
Abbott is a victim of the far-right.Oh, please.
A former staffer of his walked out to join Pauline Hanson.David Oldfield was the last man in Australia to regard Tony Abbott as insufficiently right-wing. Even people who like Oldfield regard him as a special case.
Abbott and his allies worked hard to ensure One Nation was made accountable for financial irregularities.They went beyond the law, Hanson and Ettridge were pardoned. Yusuf is a lawyer and knows not to confuse a quashed conviction with one that remains in force. That case should have informed those who profess to be shocked, shocked at Abbott's lack of respect for legal processes and common-law rights.
... Abbott's quite brilliant manifesto Battlelines ...Let it go, Irfan. It was navel lint rendered into words.
If it helps, I thought Phillip Ruddock was a decent and principled person. You just have to admit you were wrong and move on.
If Abbott does give the order to the federal member for Dawson not to attend this rally, it will sound almost hypocritical.Yes it would. Abbott is the dog that is not barking. It's part of the pattern, established with those entitlement rorts referred to earlier, where this government does what it pleases and is accountable to no-one.
... discussions (or lack thereof) on national security in Australia are rarely conducted in a sensible manner. Phillip Adams recently wrote in the Weekend Australian: "The current liturgy chanted in unison by ministers prime and junior in the Gregorian manner, including Stop the Boats and Death Cult. They are not designed to encourage discussion but to end it. To drown out doubt, debate, calibration, nuance and context."This takes us back to George Christensen. He started out doing PR for a backbench MP, merely passing on decisions that had already been made without his input. He did not get where he is today through Socratic dialogues or pondering deeply the changing nature of society. He got where he is by managing how the media report on decisions that have already been taken, decisions that are irrevocable, decisions that need not be explained persuasively and with an emphasis on shut up and do as you're bloody well told. He got where he is by pandering to boofheads, and by being one.
Christensen may be right in thinking that sexist, racist crap plays well in his electorate. Abbott, as Prime Minister of the nation, has wider responsibilities. To focus on Christensen is to let Abbott off the hook, once again, which is how he got there and why he gives great hope and succour to worms like Christensen.
Christensen is a generation younger from Abbott but cut from much the same cloth. They were never fearless investigative journalists, but could be relied upon to pad out an already established conclusion, or create a diversion as required. Abbott is playing a double game and Christensen is happy to play along. Calls for Abbott to rein in Christensen are calls to a sense of decency that the current Prime Minister lacks, and did not ever have (no, Irfan, never). You can't persuade such people, but you can vote them out and stop assuming they might have anything useful or constructive to say. Vote for people who engage on important decisions that are yet to be taken rather than look-at-me stunts and diversions.
16 July 2015
The smell of kerosene
The history of political rorting goes way back and involves politicians of all parties and none. Accusations of rorting usually come from outside the political class rather than inside. Proof of such rorting tends to be highly protected; where an example escapes it is usually matched by a counter-example, and tends to die down after a few days of tabloid media outrage with little real change (except to jack up security procedures).
Let's look at the history of rorts under this government, and see it for what it is: set-pieces of political theatre, whose wider significance is missed entirely by supposedly savvy observers.
When this government was first elected George Brandis and Don Randall were accused of rorting their entitlements. They made contrite noises and the debate moved on, as though members of a newly-elected government had made forgivable newbie errors.
When Joe Hockey delivered the 2014 budget, and it became clear that the government's problems were structural rather than anecdotal, News Ltd papers ran a half-hearted campaign to dump Hockey. Samantha Maiden was put up to do this. Neither Maiden, nor any of the almost two hundred other members of the press gallery, bothered to investigate whether the practice was widespread among MPs. Nor did it instigate one of those fabled NewsCorp campaigns to reform entitlement rules so that no politician could enhance their family's asset base at public expense.
Look at the dogs that did not bark here and give me no more of your nonsense about a fourth estate.
Hockey was set up for a fall. NewsCorp papers and talkback radio went after him in the hope that the pressure would get to him, he'd chuck in the high-pressure role of Treasurer, and the government's perceptions of incompetence would go with him. Hockey didn't quit, Abbott stood by him, and NewsCorp backed off when he sued Fairfax. When the result of that case proved inconclusive, NewsCorp declared their former target gloriously triumphant under the enemy-of-my-enemy principle, to the bemusement of Richard Ackland.
Now the rorting spotlight has fallen on Bronwyn Bishop. This, however, is no grassroots campaign from far beyond the manicured lawns of Canberra. It's not even a NewsCorp stitch-up, and it certainly isn't opposition research. It's an inside job from the government.
Bishop had been a ferociously partisan NSW President of the Liberal Party in 1986-87, around the time I joined the Young Liberals as a teenager. Fluffy profiles of Bishop like this do nothing to prepare people for what she was to be like as Speaker, helping the press gallery build the perception that an Abbott government wouldn't be all that bad, ha ha! As a result, experienced press gallery hacks fell about in amazement at her entirely foreseeable partisanship.
Bishop was always a soft target for rort accusations, for two main reasons borne out from her long record in Canberra. As Adam Gartrell points out, she has a taste for the finer things in life. As Gartrell doesn't, her record as a minister shows she's a clown. She demands fawning loyalty from her staff above all other considerations; this precludes those who are efficient or committed to principles other than her whims, to the point that they will stand up to her. A staff like that means that the minister will achieve little other than having become a minister, and such a record is fine by Bishop.
Infamously, Bishop's ministerial career ended when she was the minister responsible for regulating aged care, and it was revealed old people in nursing homes were being bathed in kerosene. The regulation of the sector was a shambles. When she was replaced by Julie Bishop, much younger and with a more substantial career behind her, stakeholders were consulted and the sector was regulated much better. This set the younger Bishop up for the higher offices that eluded Bronwyn.
The fuel used in helicopters is very similar to kerosene. It's funny how things go around, really.
This is why she's vulnerable: nobody in her office has that Credlin-like ability to get the job done and discourage would-be attackers. It is Bishop herself who stares down challenges from Labor strategists like Albanese or Tony Burke; her staff just do what she says. Bishop has hired people she thinks are loyal to her, and they might even think they're loyal, but none will die in a ditch for her.
Howard looked down his nose at Bronwyn Bishop, so did everyone really - but not Abbott. He is the son she never had. When it became clear she could not knock off the enfeebled John Hewson - and that the Liberal Party preferred even Alexander Downer, or Lazarus-with-triple-bypass John Howard, or newbie Peter Costello, or anyone really over her, Tony Abbott was elected to Parliament and her future became clearer than it otherwise might have been.
After she'd had her go in the Howard ministry, Bishop fought off Concetta Fierravanti-Wells for preselection in her seat because she knew she'd get a second, better chance in an Abbott government. When Abbott stumbled during the 2007 election campaign and in the two years after, Bishop had more faith in an Abbott government than Abbott did. She helped minimise the vote against him in February's challenge.
Bishop thought she was helping Abbott's national-security narrative by banning women from covering their heads in parliament's public gallery. When there was a backlash, one Bishop was inclined to ignore, Abbott took days to talk her down.
Abbott elevated Bishop, Bishop protects Abbott. Labor and the press gallery makes much of her one-eyed bias, but with any other Speaker Abbott would be strafed every time in Parliament. Labor's zingers would hit home. Given some people's focus on the "optics" of parliamentary theatre, he'd be "beleagurered" and "embattled", with all sorts of flow-on effects in what is already a failing government.
Why were only Bishop's expenses leaked, and why now? Aren't journalists supposed to be inquisitive? Isn't the whole point of experience to refuse to be led astray by lies, half-truths, fobbing-off, and other Canberra wiles? The press gallery thinks its job is to gratefully receive 'drops' of information like this and not question their provenance. You could say that the better press gallery journalists will ask these questions, and some might get answers: but those people will consider themselves under Chatham House rules not to disclose who's responsible or why, all for the sake of future drops, which puts them in the same league as those who take the drops and don't ask.
Bronwyn Bishop is close to Abbott, and not just because of their ecclesiastical surnames or adjacent electorates. Anyone who takes a shot at Bishop can expect a serve from Abbott, and vice versa. The leak against Bishop is designed to stoke public outrage; political insiders know how potent rort accusations are to non-insiders, like kerosene to a flame. It is designed to hurt Abbott at a time when he can't use the full force of his authority to hunt down anyone who'd embarrass her in this way.
Abbott, not Bishop, is the real target here. Since he was challenged for the leadership he has not fulfilled his promise to lift the government's fortunes. Whether it's national security, building submarines in Adelaide, the coalmine proposal on Liverpool Plains, the sudden discovery that solar panels are part of mainstream Australia - this government has been like a helicopter pilot revving the rotors at full speed, but still descending. The reason why same-sex marriage isn't getting up is not because of rock-ribbed conservatives, but those timid souls who would support it but fear shirtfronting the leader.
Lashing out at Bishop is a release, but also a warning. Those captain's picks haven't gotten any better. Early election talk only wards off the challengers if support for the Coalition goes up, not down. You could take a shot at Abbott directly, but you'd be finished if you failed. Far better to take on the hapless Bishop, and there will be a mob in every electorate to blast her indulgence; Abbott will get the message that he's the next target if things don't get better soon.
If Bronwyn Bishop had her way Joe Hockey would never have been elected to Parliament. All that money he raises goes to relative moderates rather than the conservatives she tends to favour. After all that's happened to him since, Hockey would be a dingo of the worst kind to turn on Abbott now - but he can turn on Bishop and it's fair comment.
You could say that it's in the nature of this government for a woman like Bishop to cop it for her rorts while men like Brandis and Randall get away with far worse. This is a fair point, until you realise Bishop's unrelenting hostility to lefty notions of feminism. She has always been able to mix it with men as friends or foes, but her most bitter contests have been with other women: Julie Bishop, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, and various moderates in Liberal Women's Council and the Young Liberals. Her only real female ally was Sophie Mirabella. Liberals who want to increase female participation in the party overall, including in parliament, are her sworn enemies. Peta Credlin is young enough to be her daughter, for goodness sake, without being nearly so deferential.
For once in her life, Bronwyn Bishop is just a patsy: Abbott is the real target. With the press gallery so busy writing the same story, and willing to drop it once Bishop announces a modest payback, they won't really think about the nature of the attack, who the real target is, and how little time and room for manoeuver he has left.
Let's look at the history of rorts under this government, and see it for what it is: set-pieces of political theatre, whose wider significance is missed entirely by supposedly savvy observers.
When this government was first elected George Brandis and Don Randall were accused of rorting their entitlements. They made contrite noises and the debate moved on, as though members of a newly-elected government had made forgivable newbie errors.
When Joe Hockey delivered the 2014 budget, and it became clear that the government's problems were structural rather than anecdotal, News Ltd papers ran a half-hearted campaign to dump Hockey. Samantha Maiden was put up to do this. Neither Maiden, nor any of the almost two hundred other members of the press gallery, bothered to investigate whether the practice was widespread among MPs. Nor did it instigate one of those fabled NewsCorp campaigns to reform entitlement rules so that no politician could enhance their family's asset base at public expense.
Look at the dogs that did not bark here and give me no more of your nonsense about a fourth estate.
Hockey was set up for a fall. NewsCorp papers and talkback radio went after him in the hope that the pressure would get to him, he'd chuck in the high-pressure role of Treasurer, and the government's perceptions of incompetence would go with him. Hockey didn't quit, Abbott stood by him, and NewsCorp backed off when he sued Fairfax. When the result of that case proved inconclusive, NewsCorp declared their former target gloriously triumphant under the enemy-of-my-enemy principle, to the bemusement of Richard Ackland.
Now the rorting spotlight has fallen on Bronwyn Bishop. This, however, is no grassroots campaign from far beyond the manicured lawns of Canberra. It's not even a NewsCorp stitch-up, and it certainly isn't opposition research. It's an inside job from the government.
Bishop had been a ferociously partisan NSW President of the Liberal Party in 1986-87, around the time I joined the Young Liberals as a teenager. Fluffy profiles of Bishop like this do nothing to prepare people for what she was to be like as Speaker, helping the press gallery build the perception that an Abbott government wouldn't be all that bad, ha ha! As a result, experienced press gallery hacks fell about in amazement at her entirely foreseeable partisanship.
Bishop was always a soft target for rort accusations, for two main reasons borne out from her long record in Canberra. As Adam Gartrell points out, she has a taste for the finer things in life. As Gartrell doesn't, her record as a minister shows she's a clown. She demands fawning loyalty from her staff above all other considerations; this precludes those who are efficient or committed to principles other than her whims, to the point that they will stand up to her. A staff like that means that the minister will achieve little other than having become a minister, and such a record is fine by Bishop.
Infamously, Bishop's ministerial career ended when she was the minister responsible for regulating aged care, and it was revealed old people in nursing homes were being bathed in kerosene. The regulation of the sector was a shambles. When she was replaced by Julie Bishop, much younger and with a more substantial career behind her, stakeholders were consulted and the sector was regulated much better. This set the younger Bishop up for the higher offices that eluded Bronwyn.
The fuel used in helicopters is very similar to kerosene. It's funny how things go around, really.
This is why she's vulnerable: nobody in her office has that Credlin-like ability to get the job done and discourage would-be attackers. It is Bishop herself who stares down challenges from Labor strategists like Albanese or Tony Burke; her staff just do what she says. Bishop has hired people she thinks are loyal to her, and they might even think they're loyal, but none will die in a ditch for her.
Howard looked down his nose at Bronwyn Bishop, so did everyone really - but not Abbott. He is the son she never had. When it became clear she could not knock off the enfeebled John Hewson - and that the Liberal Party preferred even Alexander Downer, or Lazarus-with-triple-bypass John Howard, or newbie Peter Costello, or anyone really over her, Tony Abbott was elected to Parliament and her future became clearer than it otherwise might have been.
After she'd had her go in the Howard ministry, Bishop fought off Concetta Fierravanti-Wells for preselection in her seat because she knew she'd get a second, better chance in an Abbott government. When Abbott stumbled during the 2007 election campaign and in the two years after, Bishop had more faith in an Abbott government than Abbott did. She helped minimise the vote against him in February's challenge.
Bishop thought she was helping Abbott's national-security narrative by banning women from covering their heads in parliament's public gallery. When there was a backlash, one Bishop was inclined to ignore, Abbott took days to talk her down.
Abbott elevated Bishop, Bishop protects Abbott. Labor and the press gallery makes much of her one-eyed bias, but with any other Speaker Abbott would be strafed every time in Parliament. Labor's zingers would hit home. Given some people's focus on the "optics" of parliamentary theatre, he'd be "beleagurered" and "embattled", with all sorts of flow-on effects in what is already a failing government.
Why were only Bishop's expenses leaked, and why now? Aren't journalists supposed to be inquisitive? Isn't the whole point of experience to refuse to be led astray by lies, half-truths, fobbing-off, and other Canberra wiles? The press gallery thinks its job is to gratefully receive 'drops' of information like this and not question their provenance. You could say that the better press gallery journalists will ask these questions, and some might get answers: but those people will consider themselves under Chatham House rules not to disclose who's responsible or why, all for the sake of future drops, which puts them in the same league as those who take the drops and don't ask.
Bronwyn Bishop is close to Abbott, and not just because of their ecclesiastical surnames or adjacent electorates. Anyone who takes a shot at Bishop can expect a serve from Abbott, and vice versa. The leak against Bishop is designed to stoke public outrage; political insiders know how potent rort accusations are to non-insiders, like kerosene to a flame. It is designed to hurt Abbott at a time when he can't use the full force of his authority to hunt down anyone who'd embarrass her in this way.
Abbott, not Bishop, is the real target here. Since he was challenged for the leadership he has not fulfilled his promise to lift the government's fortunes. Whether it's national security, building submarines in Adelaide, the coalmine proposal on Liverpool Plains, the sudden discovery that solar panels are part of mainstream Australia - this government has been like a helicopter pilot revving the rotors at full speed, but still descending. The reason why same-sex marriage isn't getting up is not because of rock-ribbed conservatives, but those timid souls who would support it but fear shirtfronting the leader.
Lashing out at Bishop is a release, but also a warning. Those captain's picks haven't gotten any better. Early election talk only wards off the challengers if support for the Coalition goes up, not down. You could take a shot at Abbott directly, but you'd be finished if you failed. Far better to take on the hapless Bishop, and there will be a mob in every electorate to blast her indulgence; Abbott will get the message that he's the next target if things don't get better soon.
If Bronwyn Bishop had her way Joe Hockey would never have been elected to Parliament. All that money he raises goes to relative moderates rather than the conservatives she tends to favour. After all that's happened to him since, Hockey would be a dingo of the worst kind to turn on Abbott now - but he can turn on Bishop and it's fair comment.
You could say that it's in the nature of this government for a woman like Bishop to cop it for her rorts while men like Brandis and Randall get away with far worse. This is a fair point, until you realise Bishop's unrelenting hostility to lefty notions of feminism. She has always been able to mix it with men as friends or foes, but her most bitter contests have been with other women: Julie Bishop, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, and various moderates in Liberal Women's Council and the Young Liberals. Her only real female ally was Sophie Mirabella. Liberals who want to increase female participation in the party overall, including in parliament, are her sworn enemies. Peta Credlin is young enough to be her daughter, for goodness sake, without being nearly so deferential.
For once in her life, Bronwyn Bishop is just a patsy: Abbott is the real target. With the press gallery so busy writing the same story, and willing to drop it once Bishop announces a modest payback, they won't really think about the nature of the attack, who the real target is, and how little time and room for manoeuver he has left.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)