This morning Fran Kelly is at it again, reciting “Godwin Grech” like a mantra while she talks on radio with the Treasurer.

This obsessive focus on leaks and leakers is one of the less instructive aspects of the press gallery’s hivemind, and O’Brien and Kelly’s efforts to somehow ping Swan on it are only allowing the much more serious issue of the Coalition’s wilful avoidance of scrutiny on its costings to go through to the keeper. Not to mention the complete absence of discussion of some of the big and real economic issues we confront – housing affordability, a two speed economy, an over-reliance on resources being some inter-related ones that need to be aired, but are not being.

Hockey and Andrew Robb have now managed to completely avoid any rigorous scrutiny of the Coalition’s promises, as Hockey has been told that Treasury and Finance require 5 working days to cost pledges. That’s now impossible, because their juvenile demand for a leaks investigation hasn’t been met.

And then there’s the fact that there’s a clear smear on Swan, with Coalition figures ranting about the federal police, trying to misleadingly give the impression they want to convey of a “government in crisis”.

The campaign season is already half over — but what do the major parties have to offer? CPD fellow Ian McAuley joined a panel on Australia Talks on Radio National on 4th August to analyse the policy choices available to voters.

Listen to the audio here.

However, the interview was reported on Lateline as being likely to prove a “distraction” from the ALP campaign.

Rudd flatly denies being the leaker, indicates that he’s relaxed about what position he might have in a post-election government, and signals his intention to campaign on a wide basis for the re-election of the government.

The questions facing mankind are, essentially, the same as they have always been: the age-old questions about what is good, true and beautiful. How do we identify those characteristics in our own and others’ behaviour? How do we achieve them in our lives?

Inevitably, we will never answer them validly if – confusing the medium with the message, to put it in Marshall McLuhan’s discredited formula – we confuse the garments for the person, the cover for the book.

Apparently, the ABC’s remit is to pose (or answer?) eternal questions, and any management decision about Radio National demonstrates “relativism” and that “they hate religion”.

I’m actually not a huge fan of Stephen Crittenden’s, but there can be no doubt that discussing programming decisions in this fashion is, well, just demented. The ABC’s decision making is driven by twin (and overlapping) logics – the decline in funding for content created inhouse by specialists, and an attempt to be a leader in interactive content. It has nothing much to do with “relativism” and “postmodernism” except in the fevered imaginings of crazed columnists. There are legitimate questions to ask about all this – but the culture wars frame makes it literally impossible to debate them sensibly. A lot is changing in public broadcasting in this country, and we really haven’t begun to discuss it because the overhang of the culture wars mindset seems to persist. Probably this sort of craziness is best ignored, and its hyperbolic nature itself a sign that its time is past, but it’s worth noting if only to call for a much better informed and contemporary discussion on public broadcasting.

And speaking of News Limited and the ABC, Philosopher King Rupe is delivering this year’s Boyer lectures, billed as “Big Ideas”. “A Golden Age of Freedom” – so far – seems to be part weird Goldwater/Reagan fantasyland with a 19th century Australian bush legend manifest destiny twist combined with the denunciation of “bludgers” and a predictable amalgam of centre-right neo-liberal talking points. The only notable questions raised are what he’s doing there in the first place – even putting politics aside, why should a media mogul be assumed to be one of the “great minds examining issues and values” – and why Murdoch’s schtick resembles Paul Kelly bombast more than the crazed Tom Switzerism represented in his flagship newspaper’s editorial pages. The answer to the second question probably is that he just doesn’t care that much about what his Australian operation gets up to. The answer to the first, and to the general decline in the standard of the ABC’s independence and distinctiveness in current affairs? Its Howardisation must be part of it, but there’s got to be more to it than that.