Three days ago it was teacher training. Two days ago, it was media law reform – with a “take it or leave it” offer to the crossbenchers to either pass or reject the bill within a very short space of time. Yesterday it was Creative Australia, the proposed national cultural policy, which proposes substantial reforms to the way that the Australian government enables and assists the arts in Australia. These are important issues. Perhaps not massive vote-shifters, but important, substantial reforms nonetheless.
And yet they’re being placed into the public domain in fairly short order; predictably, the media reforms have generated by far the most media interest, and the others are largely getting lost. One way or another, the compressed timelines for the media law revisions ensures that it will either pass into law, or not, before there’s been time for a proper analysis; other announcement around the same time will go through almost unnoticed outside small communities of interest. For what it’s worth, I’m sure the LP hivemind will try to bring you as much policy analysis as possible, either original or by drawing attention to the work of others.
From a naive policy perspective, clearly, this kind of legislation on fast forward is undesirable. Equally clearly, there’s a political strategy at work here. Presumably, the restriction of debate on the media laws is to limit the amount of time the News Limited outlets can use their massive reach to campaign against it. But what’s going on with all the other announcements in the meantime? Just deck-clearing in the remaining time available before the campaign proper stars, or is there more to it?
Regardless, for once is actively controlling the agenda, it’s talking about policy plans, and it’s getting some air to discuss them. I can’t help but think that whatever the broader strategy, it hasn’t been a bad few days for the government.
It doesn’t seem like they really want to get the legislation through or they would have been negotiating with the Greens and independents. Perhaps they’re just make a show of picking a fight with News Ltd because they think they’ll get some support for doing so? I’m no fan of Conroy, but having papers compare him to Stalin is probably going to help rather than hurt them.
It would also be a good shot across the Libs’ bows – if they oppose it (as seems likely in the time given) they can be painted as being subservient to News Corp.
If they do let it through then the government can put “media reform” in their list of achieved in this term.
The ALP caucus didn’t get a chance to read it before being told to endorse it either.
Great strategy though, piss the media off in the lead up to an election.
Another McTernan masterstroke.
I’ve been thinking that the mad dash to get the media regulations through may be an attempt to get this stuff out of the way before the budget season and before the election, with a mind to coming back to it after the election clears the decks and (hopefully) returns the government with a full majority. If it gets through, great, if not they can come back to it later; either way at least “media regulation” has had its day in the sun and the government can move on to other things.
The inevitable media hysteria would also help the government build the case that it’s been slowly working towards since Gillard’s “don’t write crap” comments: the mainstream media is no longer either trustworthy or credible. I’m actually hoping my hypothesis that this policy is a target balloon being floated for the response rather than a genuine policy is correct, and that after the election the government will use the great unhingement to argue for a proper response to both the Convergence and Finklestein reviews.
For all that you can say against Conroy, I think he has a good enough grasp of reality in his area of responsibility to know that tinkering around the edges is a waste of time. Let’s hope he (and Gillard) are playing a long game with this.
himi
Robert, I’ve been listening to Question Time this week. The Govt seems to have one biggish policy each day, plus other smaller ones. For example, there was legislation to protect penalty payments in the industrial relations arena.
What has been very noticeable this year has been the way Labor wins the day hands down in sheer debating terms, but this is simply ignored by the MSM. Gillard has been particularly confident in dispatching everything the bowl up to her. Swan has been doing pretty well also. The Dorothy Dixers reveal a very impressive and busy governmant over the last little while.
The MSM, including the ABC, has looked for a sentence or even a phrase or two to continue the ‘narrative’ of a government in disarray, or leadership turmoil. In the last couple of days they have been running out of that kind of material. But whether the Govt can ‘cut through’ as they say is the question. They did with the 457 issue, and I think that was partly what was behind it.
Oh, were the media even remotely well-disposed towards the government before this? I hadn’t noticed.
jumpy “piss the media off in the lead up to an election”
I don’t think the ALP can piss off the media. The media for whatever reasons (I’d like to know) will not cover policy and will not look at anything that is on offer. READ a policy document, are you mad.
It’s very sad – I did like the AFR upto ~18months ago. Fantastic dozen page liftouts of various policies with tables and such detailing impacts upon us .. me. Now it’s Carbon Tax scares and need to cut wages because labour productivity is horrible just don’t take notice of ABS.
I reckon the ALP is too timid. A stronger policy response, more of Finkelstein still would elicit the same response (what are the idiotic press going to do, compare Conroy to double-plus-Stalin)
There is no consoling or befriending of the press. It’ll may be impossible to ‘please’ them. Ignore them is the only option I can see and move on. More and more people are ignoring the media as well – there be rubbish.