I’m not sure how this one slipped through:
What the longevity of almost all state and territory governments suggests is that it is difficult for an opposition to come to power except through the electorate’s view that it is time for a change… It is unlikely, however, that this will stop the Canberra press gallery working itself into a state of excitement over this year’s national and state votes.
From The Australian today.
In related news, I was somewhat heartened by Greg Hunt’s declining to start ranting and raving over the ‘solar panels will burn your house down’ thing last night on Lateline, when effectively invited to do so by Tony Jones. The question followed a story which was clearly framed to build momentum for the ‘Peter Garrett Must Go’ campaign.
I thought, and still think, that Garrett’s position is worth debating, and as Roger Jones noted, the comments thread on the post here has been quite illuminating compared to the media coverage. But I’m not so sure that the press has the responsibility to collude in a campaign to take a ministerial scalp. My memory may well be faulty on this score, but I really don’t recall the same level of intensity and pursuit of Howard government ministers. Given recent admissions by AWB, it might be instructive to go back and look whether Alexander Downer faced constant front page stories on the Wheat for Arms scandal.
Sure, all the ingredients for a press frenzy are there in the insulation debacle, including human interest stories from relatives of those who tragically lost their lives, or workers who were injured themselves. But perspective seems sadly lacking, or even basic research, as Bernard Keane observes in Crikey today.
Just refresh my memory. Who was it who first boasted about rolling out large numbers of solar panels? I’m sure it was before November 2007 that there was a program by some government …
I guess we’re “informed” now regarding the entire process under which the insulation problem happened.
So the media has done it’s job, so to speak, and it is now up to the Opposition to prosecute the case as to why Garrett should no longer be Environment Minister, which shouldn’t be hard comparatively.
But the reason Garrett is still a Minister is John Howard.
Howard decided, after losing so many ministers 1996-1998 that we would just defend them all until they resigned because the ministers personally couldn’t take it any more, or had better judgement than the PM himself.
Really, the only think that matters is whether Rudd thinks Garrett should stay, for whatever reason.
Mark: Bernard Keane has just followed it up with The Government’s political insulation program: batts and solar systems get overhauled.
Thanks, Down And Out.
Note Morgan Poll today 57.5%- 42.5% – 1% up from last time
Large sample 1,811
The thing is, with a Labor minister or politician, you expect a little bit better than you would from self seeking philosophically directionless Tories.. its supposed to be the people’s party.
If the insulation incident was all there is to Garrett, no one would bother. But people who supported him as a conviction first politician are not really going to be bothered stepping to his defence on this, because it smacks of the same sort of dishonesty that came with his approval of Gunns mill and involving several other test case environmental issues.
Right across Australia, people have become fed up with a party promising to do great things involving the reversal of Toryism in this country, because they are saddened that it has become a shop front for rightist gangsters and their friends who have taken over the one party big enough to protect the communities interests, to turn it into (yet another) instrument for its downfall, dismemberment and plunder.
@ Howard @ 2: I don’t think ministers should be resigning just because a few workplace accidents happen/people die: it has to cut a bit deeper than that and the question is, “…does it?”
I’ve worked in a statutory authority that regulates a trade, and whomever was working for Garrett wouldn’t get a job there. It was avoidable, the information was with the Minister, and it went ahead because the economic stimulus was really important, so they didn’t have the time to properly digest all the information. They made a decision instead.
And does it get more serious than people dying as a result of a government oversight such as this one? (I’m sure I’m about to have it explained to me how it is – cheers guys
)
The framing of the question of ministerial responsibility around the deaths is I think wrong.If we go down that chain of reasoning very few ministers will survive in office for very long.
The responsibility for the deaths is probably more appropriately lodge in the OHS area and the coroner will provide the answers for that between failures of the company concerned or failures of the regulatory authority.
There is a question about the detailed design and implementation of the program and the extent to which the Minister acted in a timely on information which might have suggested that there were probelms of effectiveness and efficiency. There might be a case against the Minister on those grounds.
If that is the case then we have had some much more expensive failures in the Defence department over the years with a price tag in the multiple billions for which Ministerial heads might equally have rolled.
wWen all the media flurry has dies down and the audits completed I will be surprised if the failure rate of installations: that is the per centage of installations that were not properly installed and delivering energy savings proves to be as high as 10%.
The trajectory of this thread looks likely to veer and quite possibly merge with the thread concerning whether or not the Minister should resign.
Let’s get back to discussing whether or not the Australian journalistic fraternity will at some point be able to see the wood for the trees on critical challenges facing this country going forward.
Indeed, Rob@10. The other thread is available for that discussion. Gummo is already over there ready to throw off his leftist credentials and see Garrett tarred and feathered, again. It can’t be missed.
I know Wingnut @ 11. I cannot believe he (or she) is back!
Yes, please keep this thread on topic. Thanks!
Back on topic the answer to Rob’s question, going forward is NO!
Nice train wreck on that other thread though.
While there are substantive issues here, the media pile-on is reminiscent of, say, the periodic “Costello is going to challenge Howard” rumbles, which usually seemed to coincide with otherwise slow news days.
The government has announce that it has stopped both the insulation and hot water programs and will replace them with something else in a few months time. So the next question will be who gets the blame for job losses and damage to small business?
Will be interesting to see how much responsibility both the media and Abbot take.
So far the running has been driven by the smell of blood. However, the media should now ask Abbot why the opposition has suddenly dropped the campaign against the solar PV program once they realized they were attacking themselves.
The campaign against Garret has raised some serious questions apart from the media fairness issue. There are questions about what, if anything, a government dept should be taking about safety for programmes the dept is running, particularly when the program is outside of the normal type of work it does. (For example, the main role of the environment dept is managing environmental regulations, not building modifications.)
There may be a case for both sides to reach some agreement re guidelines about where dept responsibilities start and end. There may also be a case for setting up a group within government that either organizes and/or vets the making it happen part of government when safety, project management, construction etc. is involved. It may have avoided some of the problems associated with both Howard’s solar PV program and the insulation program.
Perhaps someone should ask Malcolm Turnbull what he did about solar PV safety when he was environment minister? Or ask Greg Hunt what responsibility he will want to accept for the accidents that his direct action plan will produce.
John D, I’d repeat my point about the topic of this thread being the media coverage, not the substantive merits/development of the issue.
You would have to be special type of moron to believe that a Minister is personally responsible for deaths created by providing or increasing funding for an area.
The industry was already in existence for many years and operating under the regulations and practices of the respective state.
To believe Ministerial responsibility for this would need you to ask the minister responsible for home owner grants, support for car finance and so forth as no doubt increased activity in any area increases the probability of accidents and fatalities.
But Minister, haven’t you heard some building sites are not managed properly, people could get killed. OK lets withdraw all funding for housing and ban housing construction across the country until it is 100% fool proof.
I find hard to believe that some are simple as to fall for Abbott’s malicious little games.
@18 – I’ll repeat for the third time that this thread is for the discussion about the media. Comments on the Garrett stuff can go on the other thread.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2010/02/10/should-peter-garrett-resign/
I’ll delete any further ones that are off topic.
Every year a poll is conducted to ascertain the most trusted and respected people and professions in our society and journalists nearly always vie for last spot with used car salesmen. Good reporters should be applauded and rewarded for their skill but they are few and far between.. Until very recently some hacks have been allowed to get away with all manner of half truths, distortions, dangerous levels of ignorance and shockingly obvious bias. Thank god for the blogosphere where all these disgusting failures can not only be exposed but ridiculed with excoriating wit. I await the paywalls where the acid test of profit will be applied to the alleged influence and popularity of all the usual suspects. Will people pay to read the third rate drivel of people like Janet or the rehashed bile of Andrew Dolt? Will Piers and his little cheer squad survive Murdoch’s last desperate bid to stem the tide of desertion on his doorstep? I think this is why Murdoch is going for Rudd’s throat. The threat to his empire is more immediate than people imagine. I liken him to the ENRON fiasco whereby people just assume that because a company is so vast and powerful it follows that it could not possibly collapse. He is desperate to have a Liberal government in power as he hopes the party can continue indefinately and that the party of big business will help him out of what he thinks is merely a tight spot. Murdoch is a very old man and the clock is ticking ever louder every day. It gives me great joy to see his carefully constructed empire begin to crumble. It gives me even greater joy to see the last vestiges of a pathetic little man being dragged kicking and screaming to the grave.
I think you are right Daisey May, but how do you explain the ABC and Fairfax?
They are both easy to explain. The ABC has been attacked by both the left and right since its inception. When Labour rules it dummy spits at the drop of a hat whenever it recieves bad coverage because it sees itself as a party of the people (whatever that means) and hates the fact that egregious funding fails to shut them up. The right however fully understand how to play the game and accuse the ABC of bias (regardless of evidence) which forces the ABC to offer up the sort of dross that the likes of TT and ACA can only marvel at. Fairfax is up against Murdoch and his considerable muscle and there is a long standing hatred between the two media groups. I used to have warm fuzzy feelings for the journos at Fairfax but age is a grand teacher. Sad to say but all media are less concerned with the truth than profits and shareholder sentiment. Cast your mind back to the last big story that Fairfax broke for example. When was that exactly?? I do feel oddly sympathetic toward journalists as they are people with families and need to make a crust but relaying the news of the day without telling the punters the truth opens the flood gates of scorn and hate filled derision that is richly deserved. Incidentally, as much as I loath the OZ, it still has Jack and George who do a good job of disseminating the neck deep bullshit they surely have to endure on a daily basis.
There is a long tradition in the Labor Party that the press are agin them. Its so engrained that in the early days of the party (early 20C?) it was ALP policy to set up a government run newspaper. The pro-Tory bias is nothing new. Its being going on for over 100 years now. Its just that sometimes its gets a bit fiercer than usual – eg Chifley, Evatt, Whitlam, Keating and now Rudd, sort of.
The Labor party one has to worry about is the one that doesn’t have the media frothing at the mouth.
As for the ABC – I still feel they live in fear of what might haoppen to them when the Libs get back in if they start being fair to the ALP – deep down, you can blame Ratty and his right wing totalitarianism for their decline.
The media frenzy over Garrett, during which the ABC disgraced itself yet again by running afer the baying pack, will erupt again, sure as apples.
There is a large element of male jealousy in all this, and it won’t go away. Every time he stumbles, there are enough inadequate males, who have never lifted a bale or carried a load, standing on the sidelines of national politics in their company commentary boxes, ready to call him him out as nothing more than a bald-headed rock star.
The next time, Garrett will be carrying all the lead in his saddlebags from previous media-generated scandals, so that eventually he will pulled down and shot. A decent man trying to do a difficult job destroyed simply to satisfy the media blood lust.
The only consolation for me is that our unruly, disrespectful and bullshit-detecting blogosphere is awake to this ongoing media campaign, and does not forget (its all there in the archives for instant reveal). This last anti-Garrett frenzy was leavened by the commentary and polling online where overwhemlingly Garrett was treated more fairly than elsewhere.
There is no doubt that these days the vast and complex Environment portfolio is one of the most difficult jobs in government, up there with teh Economy, despite the fact that most of the commentariat choose to characterise it as a doddle, that any idiot could manage. The only hope for Garrett is a double dissolution, followed by a new and refreshed ministerial line-up, which is looking more likely by the day.
I carry no flag for Garrett personally, but he deserves a fair go, as much as the next bloke, and I am sick of the politics of personal destruction in the midst of more exciting conversations about the state of Abbott’s prick.
I think it’s a lot of the media talking to itself over this narrative (as usual). As I just said on the arse-end of the other thread:
I think that a lot of people can put 2+2 together, in that they don’t personally see how Garrett has to personally supervise every OH&S site issue that might arise in such schemes. The media tries to lead public opinion on these matters and nearly always fails IMO. In other areas they severely lag actual public opinion – their feelings of importance are only self-importance.
There is no doubting that the underlying message in mainstream media today – and even throughout time, as Paul suggests @ 23 – is at the mercy of a select-few moguls.
At the heart of any message, in some way or another, is a desire to control the actions of another; the desire to influence the actions of another. That can manifest itself in a variety of ways: influence to buy the same newspaper everyday; influence to watch the same television program everyday; influence to cast a vote in a certain way; indeed influence to lead a life a certain way.
The challenge mainstream media faces – perhaps to a greater extent than it ever has before – is its capacity to maintain the influence of its audience: an audience that is increasing in absolute terms, but decreasing in relative terms thanks to the plethora of 21st century alternatives.
The audience then is increasingly viewed as a market-share proposition. Daisey @ 22 rightly refers to the precedence of financial and stock market performance. So it’s not surprising that our old friend – the doctrine of shareholder value – is a centrepiece of the discussion. Whether you agree with it or not, in a declining market this doctrine espouses one thing and one thing only: the cost of doing what you do is firmly in the spot light. Costs and quality have a tendency to move in unison: the latter has a price. And the threat of a declining audience requires one thing and one thing only: short, sensationalist, comprehensible, attention-grabbing, emotionally stimulating subject matter.
This cocktail of ingredients lays the foundation for media bias; and depending on who’s pulling the strings, the direction of that bias. The incessant quest to report that exclusive story, that controversial gaffe, or that profound ‘analysis’, in a bid to secure – or influence – the audience’s ever-waning attention span overrides the desire of mainstream media to produce anything close to considered journalism. Needless to say, considered journalism is a price that few are willing to pay: after all, it costs money to research something, critique something, and respond intelligently to something.
As far as Australia’s vestige of a public broadcaster is concerned, the financial imperatives are not relevant. But the ABC is charged with acquiescence; it follows the herd; its imperative is control and influence as well. If the cost of producing commercial journalism is lower, it should follow that the cost at the ABC is no different. There is no incentive to produce journalism to a quality over-and-above that which is produced by their commercial counterparts. Why? Arguably their audience is shrinking at a faster rate. To hang on, they fight crap with crap: but accepting crap lowers standards.
So what impact does all this have? I think where we end up is kind of where we are at the moment: a filtered message, conforming to an inherent bias, designed to hold attention for an extremely short space of time. Sadly, the idea of the media acting as a platform to facilitate – not influence – the engagement of a community and to disseminate content to allow for a complete societal discourse is a pipedream. Yes, the community itself has been compliant: for it has made the decision to be eclectic when it comes to satisfying its appetite for information. But the cost of this is not readily apparent. The message has the potential to become so filtered society ceases to receive any message at all. Mainstream media would have surely failed its responsibility.
Ultimately, the problem we face going forward is that the future message to be delivered will ever-increase in complexity and importance. A complex message cannot be delivered to a distracted or disinterested audience. They certainly can’t be delivered in a thirty second ‘sound bite’.
No, no, no, some of you in the ‘twenties post no’s here!
The underlying issue is that Garrett was warned about the problems with the system early and for some reason took no notice.
So as to relevence we ask, is it a beat up, or was there an example of an issue worthy of examination appropriately reported
Don’t get me wrong: I loath the MSM as much as any of you. Most of all the accelarating, devestating damage done to Fairfax and the ABC over the last fifteen years.
So whilst I agree that none should take notice of exponentially and incrementally septic rank poultices like Akerman, Albrechsen, Milne etc, it still behoves us to examine as dispassionately as possible the government’s performance.
I won’t vote for Labor next time, because I do not think it has done a good job on certain issues which for obvious reasons should remain prior to the others, specifically relating to ecology and environment; sustainability and wastage.
I wont vote Tory next election, in either form.
I’ll vote Green, as a protest and a plea for policy that finally responds to the real problems of a real world
I think sometimes we forget that the primary function of a newspaper is to sell newspapers. You’re only going to sell them if you get people interested enough to want to buy them. Controversy and hyperbole are easy, straightforward ways to do that.
The issue of whether newspapers/media do actually influence politics is secondary to that. I don’t think they do, all that much. At least, from what I’ve read over the years, opinions coming out of the media seem to be out of step with public opinion a large proportion of the time. But once again, it’s in their interests to believe they have an influence.
And the flow on from that is that people go out of their way to read journalists they don’t like. How many people click on links to a Bolt article just to work up some indignation at his latest breathtakingly stupid claim? Same with Shanahan, Milne, or any of the others. They’re not kingmakers, they’re little tinpot tyrants already.
A political site is always going to emphasis the nexus between journalism and politics, that is, what the influence of the first is over the second. But in general, journalism can only comment on what’s happening, not create it.
The Garrett issue is a case in point. I predicted early last week that it would run its cycle and then die as an issue, as long as no further damaging revelations came to light. Garrett himself has kept it in the headlines by scrapping the scheme, but that can only last a day or two longer. The media, as such, have had no bearing on the issue, despite a lot of shrieking and declaiming. It’s course was set more or less when the matter was raised.
Re the ABC: I think the issue there is that, some time under the Howard government (can’t recall exactly when) they were told to justify their existence commercially. Ratings suddenly became an issue for them, and merchandising has gone through the roof. They’re courting viewers, and are learning that the best way to do that is to be a bit more controversial. I may not be quite on the money there, but it’s certainly something in that area that’s been the catalyst for the change in approach there.
The ABC is not controversial. Its just ill-informed.
It goes a bit deeper than a case of being ill-informed. It is simply not following its charter at the moment, and is indistinguishable in most areas from its commercial counterpoints.
It is also shit scared of offending its right wing critics which is why you have an extremists like Andrew Bolt appearing in the name of balance. If the ABC was truly concerned with fairness we’d have some extreme left wingers given airtime.
Er…’counterparts’.
Trouble is, adrian, left wing journalists, let alone “extreme left wingers”, are an extinct species in Australia as they are never employed by any of the fake news organisations. And before anyone suggests it, David Marr is not, in my opinion, a left wing journalist.
Oh, and adrian, there is an interesting link for Overland that I commented about elsewhere that seems appropriate here, as well.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2010/02/20/saturday-salon-228/#comment-859259
Thanks joe2 – an interesting article, and it’s good to see that people are waking up to the deterioration and dumbing down of the ABC, not to mention its bias.
The ABC Insiders played a little joke on us all this morning, by putting Fran Kelly in the far right seat, with Piers in the middle next to Marr on the left.
Pay that one.
And wasn’t that on display on Insiders, this morning, as Fran valiantly attempted to cover up her most basic ignorance, of poll movements and implications, as she shared her opinion, that the government was now surely on the ropes?
Not that she was the only one misunderstanding the figures. While Cassidy and Marr endeavoured to explain the reality, there were two other references, in the body of the show itself, to the government now being behind in the polls. And that does not include anything Piers might have said.
Why would anybody include anything Piers might say. His only saving grace is that sometimes he is not as ill-mannered as Da Bolta.