GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 68
27 AUGUST 2010
SPECIAL POST-ELECTION ISSUE (MOSTLY)
● Correspondence – Read All About Deborah Cameron, Simon Sheikh, Get Up! And All That
● Nancy’s Picks-Of-The-Week: The Age Ignores Greens’ Victory On Liberal Party Preferences
● What Red Kerry O’Brien Didn’t Ask Labor’s Spinner Bruce Hawker
● Blasts From The Past: Alan Ramsey, Mungo MacCallum and Malcolm Fraser Have (Yet Another) Last Hurrah
● Nancy’s Five Paws Award: Shelley Gare’s Perceptive Comments On The Great Floods of Pakistan and Paddington
● Historical Howlers Of The Week: Janet Albrechtsen, Alison Carabine (Channelling Anne Summers), Michael Rowland and Laura Tingle – All Get A Guernsey
● Climate Elephant Scores “Cliché In The Room Award”
***
STOP PRESS – CORRESPONDENCE EXCLUSIVE
GERARD HENDERSON AND DEBORAH CAMERON ON THE ABC AND GET UP!
Deborah Cameron, who presents “Mornings with Deborah Cameron” on ABC Local Radio 702 in Sydney each weekday, is your typical ABC intellectual fashionista. You know the type. Ms Cameron lives in the inner-city, barracks for green causes, doesn’t much like business, has always worked in journalism where someone hands out a salary each month and so on.
So it came as no surprise when Ms Cameron lined-up leftist activist, and Get Up! national director, Simon Sheikh to give the first analysis of the election outcome on her program last Monday. Immediately after, Ms Cameron presided over a discussion on the environment debate in the 2010 election campaign. Guests were Rupert Posner (director of the Climate Group) and Ian Lowe (president of the Australian Conservation Foundation). You know, the kind of “debate” much beloved by the ABC where everyone agrees with everyone else and a thoroughly self-righteous ideological time is had by all.
Gerard Henderson took up the Get Up! matter with Ms Cameron. The correspondence is published here in the public interest – and mindful of the ABC’s very public commitment to the Right to Know Coalition.
Gerard Henderson to Deborah Cameron – 26 August 2010, 11 am
Deborah
I know you are busy. However, it would be appreciated if you could respond to my enquires set out below. But, first, some background.
On Monday 23 August on Mornings with Deborah Cameron you interviewed Get Up! national director Simon Sheikh. He was invited by you to assess the lessons of the 2010 campaign – as you will recall, Mr Sheikh saw the message in the campaign as a movement to the left.
In introducing Simon Sheikh, you made no mention of two facts:
• Get Up! ran TV advertisements during the election campaign advocating that Australians not vote for Tony Abbott.
• Get Up!’s advertising campaign against the Liberal Party leader was at least partly funded by trade unions – as reported in last Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald. The Herald also reported that Get Up! had declined to name the trade unions that funded its campaign against Mr Abbott.
My questions are:
• Were you or your staff aware of the above facts?
• If so, why did you not mention these facts when introducing Mr Sheikh? – especially since you have been quite outspoken on your program in calling for transparency and the reform of campaign contributions.
• If you or your staff were not aware of these publicly known facts, how did this come about?
It would be helpful if you could reply by this time tomorrow as I may mention this matter in my Media Watch Dog blog which comes on Fridays.
Best wishes
Gerard Henderson
Deborah Cameron to Gerard Henderson – 26 August 2010, 10.06 pm
Dear Gerard,
Thanks for getting in touch about this and apologies for not responding immediately. Very happy to take you behind the scenes at The Morning Show and the way that decisions are made about topics and guests.
There was really only one story to begin Monday’s program and it was the election. In my analysis of the result there had been the most unusual outcome – the country seemed to have stepped to the Right and the Left simultaneously. It was fascinating. But how to discuss it?
I am blessed in my team with early morning enthusiasm for ideas and quite rich contact books. My first choice was to contact former premiers or political leaders who could talk about the right/left groundshift. Was it a fact? How to make sense of it? In the event this did not pan out.
As we all know, Get Up! had played an interesting role in the election and was likely to have a view about the result. It is well known as an activist organisation that is of the Left. I do not think that this disqualifies it any more than CIS should be disqualified because it is of the Right. For all I know CIS (and for that matter the Sydney Institute) are also favoured by donors that may or may not be disclosed. This is a shame but it is not fatal to any organisation that is involving itself in a constructive way in any debate or matter of public interest.
I truly believe that good ideas have the potential to come from absolutely anyone and from any side.
I am sure that you can appreciate that I was glad to be at the end of the election campaign. I had a sleep-in, went for a walk in my neighbourhood and around a couple of garage sales and then went to the polling station to support my local school which had set up a stall. I did not thoroughly read Saturday’s Herald which meant that I did not see the story about union donations.
Thanks for allowing me to respond.
Yours sincerely,
Deborah
Gerard Henderson to Deborah Cameron – 27 August 2010, 11.35 am
Dear Deborah
Thanks for your prompt response.
I do not have any problem with Simon Sheikh being interviewed on the ABC – indeed, I have never queried his numerous appearances on ABC Radio and ABC TV. So, contrary to your attempt at verballing me, I have never said that Mr Sheikh should be “disqualified” from appearing on the public broadcaster because he is on the left. Indeed if left-wing commentators were excluded from the ABC, there would be many gaps in the public broadcaster’s programs. After all, the ABC has no conservative presenters or regular guests on any of its main programs – except for Insiders.
My point was that ABC listeners were not reminded by you on Monday that Get Up! spent lots of money running hard-hitting advertisements against Tony Abbott in the 2010 campaign. I am not aware that any similar activity has ever been undertaken by such diverse organisations as the Centre for Independent Studies or Per Capita in any election campaign. As for myself, I do not tell people how to vote. As for The Sydney Institute, speakers at the Institute in 2010 have included Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. If the ABC exhibited the same political balance as The Sydney Institute it would have fewer critics.
I don’t bang on about transparency, disclosure, campaign contributions and the like. You do. Consequently, I was surprised that you did not ask Mr Sheikh about Get Up!’s expensive political advertising in the 2010 campaign when you interviewed him on Monday.
Also, I remain surprised that no one associated with Mornings With Deborah Cameron was aware of Deborah Snow’s report in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday that a number of “progressive” trade unions had financially supported Get Up! advertisements against Tony Abbott to the tune of $1 million – and that Simon Sheikh had refused to disclose the names of these trade unions, despite the fact that Get Up! proclaims the need for campaign contributions reform.
That’s all. There is no need to reply to this.
Best wishes
Gerard Henderson
NANCY’S PICKS-OF-THE-WEEK
• Guardian-On-The-Yarra’s Free Kick To The Greens
What a great piece by Jewel Topsfield on last Monday’s Age titled “There’s a new light on the hill, and it’s bright Green”.
Ms Topsfield managed to tell readers of The-Guardian-on-the-Yarra how Greens’ candidate Adam Bandt had won the seat of Melbourne. She pointed out that the seat of Melbourne comprised “the former working class suburbs of Fitzroy, North Melbourne, Brunswick and Richmond” and is “home to many progressive thinking, educated, professionals”. How twee. The Age’s reporter also quoted an article written by Hugh Mackay in The Guardian in London (i.e. the real thing) that “the world has caught up with the Greens”. How very twee.
However, Jewel Topsfield neglected to inform Age readers that the Greens had finished second behind Labor on the primary vote – and that Adam Bandt was elected on Liberal Party preferences. The ALP polled 39 per cent of the primary vote, the Greens 36 per cent and the Liberals 21 per cent. After the distribution of preferences, Bandt prevailed over Labor’s Cath Bowtell by 54.7 per cent to 45.3 per cent. But you will be struggling to read about this in The Age.
• Red Kerry’s Free Kick To Labor’s Hawkers and Canvassers
Didn’t you just love the interview between “Red” Kerry O’Brien [is he the same Red Kerry whose CV does not mention that he was once a Gough Whitlam staffer? – Ed] and Bruce Hawker?
On Wednesday your man Bruce appeared live on ABC1’s 7.30 Report to discuss the current political situation. Bruce Hawker has been nominated by the three rural Independents to advise them – from a Labor perspective – about possible parliamentary reforms in light of the hung parliament and all that.
Talk about a soft interview. There were few of the normal O’Brien hectoring interruptions which are directed at the likes of Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard and the 7.30 Report presenter even allowed his guest to have more talk-time on air than him. Really.
But there’s more. Bruce Hawker – of Hawker Britton fame – is a key Labor operative who has played a key role in Labor governments, at Federal and State level, over the past two decades. Indeed, Mr Hawker is Labor’s king-of-spin and the public face of Labor’s faceless men. So what did Red Kerry ask Mr Hawker about Labor spin, Labor’s faceless men and so on? Answer – zip. Absolutely zip.
Nancy nearly choked on her own reflux as hard-as-nails Bruce discussed the rights of parliamentarians, accountability and so on. It was only in his last grab that Bruce Hawker reverted to type and had a free-kick at the expense of Tony Abbott. These were hard-as-nails Bruce’s final words:
Bruce Hawker: I think this was a very tough campaign for various reasons. We’ve been through that and we’ll continue to go through that as the weeks and months go on. But, it was hard for Gillard, I think, to really present a very positive picture to the Australian public, because of a lot of interference that was happening in the course of that campaign. Now that wasn’t the only reason, but it was one of the reasons. On the other hand, I think the handlers of Tony Abbott did a very good job in keeping him essentially in cotton wool throughout the whole campaign. We didn’t see the old Tony on display. Maybe we will in the future, but we didn’t see it …
Kerry O’Brien: Well, it might be a permanently new Tony.
Bruce Hawker : He may be. We will see.
Kerry O’Brien : Bruce Hawker, thanks very much for talking with us.
Bruce Hawker : Pleasure.
You bet.
ON THE 2010 ELECTION TRAIL: NANCY’S BLASTS FROM THE PAST EXPERIENCES
• Alan Ramsey Comes Out Of Retirement – Again
According to the anonymous hack who writes “The Prince” column in The Australian Financial Review, we have all lived through “an unspeakably dull federal election campaign that has put an entire nation into deep slumber”.
Not so, according to Nancy’s co-owner. The period up to and including the 2010 election has been one of the most interesting in Australian history. First Tony Abbott replaced Malcolm Turnbull. Then Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd. Neither Turnbull nor Rudd went away. And they were joined by former Liberal leaders Malcolm Fraser, John Hewson and John Howard – along with former leaders Bob Hawke and Mark Latham. [Did anyone think of digging up former Labor and Nationalist Party leader Billy Hughes for the occasion? – Ed.]
For Nancy, however, one of the highlights of the campaign was the return of retired members of the Canberra Press Gallery – namely the Canberra based Alan Ramsey and the Ocean Shores (circa Byron Bay) based Mungo MacCallum (whose views were run in The-Guardian-on-the-Yarra in the lead up to the election – see Issue 67). Mr MacCallum also created some attention at the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival when he criticised Julia Gillard for (allegedly) having “opened her legs” to the mining industry (see Susan Wyndham’s report in the Sydney Morning Herald, 14-15 August 2010). But, then, Mungos will be Mungos.
Alan Ramsey lurched into the 2010 campaign with an interview on the ABC1 Stateline program in the Australian Capital Territory last Friday. Interviewed by a gushing Virginia Haussegger, Alan (“I’m grumpier than you”) Ramsey really let fly. Let’s go to the transcript for Ramsey’s initial response to Ms Haussegger’s question – where he responded to a query about his reaction to the 2010 campaign?
Alan Ramsey: A pretty jaundiced one, Virginia, I have to say. I have no real love for the two leaders. I think they’re the poorest leaders I’ve seen and, consequently, we’ve seen the poorest campaigns. It’s all been about prejudice. It’s been not a debate about policy. It’s been about prejudice. About fear. About those sorts of things. Attacking one another. Very very negative campaigns. But, once again, by two leaders that I had no real support for. I thought the two leaders that should have been there were Rudd and Turnbull, and that’s a genuine, that would have been a genuine choice for the voters. I mean, I think Gillard is an accident, and I think Tony Abbott got there when the Liberal Party split. He won, he got the leadership by one vote – 43/42. God knows how it happened, but I would say that if Turnbull had been the leader, there would have been no contest, he would have absolutely given Gillard a bath in this campaign.
Virginia Haussegger: Why do you say that Julia Gillard is or was an accident?
Alan Ramsey: Because she replaced Jenny Macklin. Women only get into the leadership when they’re in Opposition. They don’t get brought in. When the blokes go wrong they bring in the women.
Virginia Haussegger : They do, they do.
Alan Ramsey : That’s right.
In fact, that’s wrong. They don’t. They don’t.
You get the idea. Ramsey thinks the Prime Minister and the Opposition leader are hopeless. Really hopeless. And he believes that the positions should have been held by Rudd and Turnbull respectively. Fine theory. It’s just that Labor and Liberal MPs don’t happen to agree with the Sage of Canberra. Also, Ramsey maintains that women only get into leadership positions when they are in Opposition. God knows what this means – since, for example, Julia Gillard became prime minister when Labor was in government. Also, Ramsey overlooked the fact that blokes like John Curtin, Ben Chifley, Robert Menzies, Malcolm Fraser, Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Kevin Rudd also got into leadership positions when their parties were in Opposition.
It was great to see Ms Haussegger barracking for Ramsey. However, things turned difficult when the interviewer used the “f” word – as in, wait for it, “feminisation”. Ramsey initially called this a “dreadful word” and later told the interviewer: “Stop using that word”.
Other highlights of the conversation occurred when the Sage of Canberra:
– described women in politics as a “decoration of leadership”.
– declared that television has not been good for democracy since it has “trivialised it”.
– opined that Kerry O’Brien was “the best” of the “political communicators” [sic]. It seems that Ramsey believes that O’Brien is more capable of communicating a political message than Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott or perhaps anyone else. Interesting.
– claimed that “the only thing that really matters in newspapers, and that sells the papers, are those accursed opinion polls” and asserted that “if there were no opinion polls most of the journalists would have nothing to say about what they think is happening”.
Alan Ramsey told an uncritical Haussegger that he was pessimistic about Australian politics. Ms Haussegger neglected to ask Mr Ramsey whether or not such pessimism might have set in soon after his birth in 1938.
But MWD’s favourite bit of the Haussegger/Ramsey exchange occurred when your man Ramsey replied to the suggestion that he was praising Kerry O’Brien because the interview was taking place on the ABC1 Stateline. Not at all, responded Ramsey. Let’s go to the tape:
Virginia Haussegger: Are you just saying this [about Kerry O’Brien] ‘cause it’s the ABC?
Alan Ramsey: No, no, no. He’s the best interviewer, and that’s why he’s disliked by both sides. That’s why he is disliked by both sides. Kerry doesn’t put up with nonsense. He won’t let you get away with a non-answer.
Er, not quite so. Red Kerry won’t let the likes of Tony Abbott or Julia Gillard get away with a non-answer or with having more time in providing answers than he takes when asking questions. A different standard is applied to Greens’ leader Bob Brown. Senator Brown invariably gets a soft run on the 7.30 Report and on other key ABC programs – including Radio National Breakfast and Lateline.
The Haussegger/Ramsey discussion was moving in parts. MWD really emoted when Mr Ramsey spoke up for women and proclaimed the need for “equal rights”. Funny that. MWD’s contacts do not recall that Mr Ramsey was a vocal supporter of womens’ rights – or, indeed, exhibited a feminine side – when he worked for Labor leader Bill Hayden around three decades ago.
However, MWD is grateful to the ABC in Canberra for bringing us up to date with the Thought of Ramsey on the 2010 election and all that. Especially since, on the occasion of the release of his book A Matter of Opinion last year, Ramsey declared that he had stopped reading newspapers and no longer followed current affairs on radio and television. (See MWD Issue 36 and the article “Alan Ramsey: A Matter of Self-Indulgence” which was published in the November 2009 issue of The Sydney Institute Quarterly and is available here.) Around this time Alan Ramsey said that his only reading was to re-read his past columns. [Why doesn’t the “Narcissistic Times” offer him a column? – Ed].
• Malcolm Fraser Backs Labor (Again)
What a wonderful Page 1 story and photograph in Wednesday’s Australian. Yes, former Liberal Party prime minister Malcolm Fraser was in the news once again.
In the lead-up to last Saturday’s poll, Malcolm Fraser said that Tony Abbott and the Coalition was not fit to govern (See Issue 65). He made this declaration with the authority of a former prime minister. Then on Wednesday in The Australian, Cameron Stewart reported Mr Fraser’s view that, in the event of neither major party winning a majority of seats, the leader of the party with the most seats should be asked to form a government. If the number of seats were equal, then “precedent suggests that the incumbent will be given the first opportunity” to form a government.
How frightfully interesting. So what authority does Fraser cite for his opinion? Well none – really. According to Cameron Stewart, “Mr Fraser studied constitutional law in Britain”. Did he really? In Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs, Malcolm Fraser and his co-author Margaret Simons write that he obtained a PPE (i.e. Politics, Philosophy, Economics) degree from Oxford University in the early 1950s. Mr Fraser has no legal qualifications of any kind – constitutional or otherwise.
Apparently, the former prime minister told Stewart that he studied constitutional law as part of his PPE degree. Well, that’s possible – just possible. A more likely scenario is that this recollection is another manifestation of what Mr Fraser himself has described as his “notoriously fallible” memory. (For a detailed account of how bad Mr Fraser’s memory is, see Gerard Henderson’s review of Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs in the July 2010 issue of The Sydney Institute Quarterly which is available here.)
In any event, Cameron Stewart’s coverage of Mr Fraser seems to have sparked an invitation for the former prime minister to appear on Wednesday’s 7.30 Report. Here Malcolm Fraser expressed concern that an Abbott Government might be unstable because it would not be “acceptable to the Greens”. How about that? Malcolm Fraser who, as Opposition leader in 1975 blocked supply, is now concerned about the need for governments to be able to rely on support in the Senate. How about that?
Then Heather Ewart asked Malcolm Fraser the same question which Fran Kelly asked him before the election. It was as follows:
Heather Ewart: Do you think Tony Abbott and the Coalition are up to leading a minority government?
Malcolm Fraser: Well it would be very difficult. They don’t have much experience. But my real concern is the intense conservatism that has embraced the party.
What a difference a couple of hours make. On Wednesday morning, Mr Fraser was suggesting that the leader of the party with the most seats in the House of Representatives should be given the first opportunity to form a government. By Wednesday evening, however, Mr Fraser was suggesting that Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott should not form a government – irrespective of whether the Coalition won more seats than Labor – since his team is (allegedly) inexperienced and too conservative.
But, then, as Cameron Stewart has informed us we should really take Malcolm Fraser seriously on this issue since he is something of an expert on such matters having (allegedly) studied constitutional law as part of a PPE degree in a foreign country circa 1952. That should be clear, then.
NANCY’S FIVE PAWS AWARD
Shelley Gare On The Big (Paddington) Flood
This week Nancy’s Five Paws Award goes to Sydney author Shelley Gare – who drew MWD’s attention to the great flood (in Paddington, Sydney).
I’m usually incredibly sympathetic to house upsets etc but I couldn’t help rolling my eyes as I read The Herald’s page three story today on that Paddington flood.
First, there’s the Porsche twin turbo-owning guy so anxious to protect his $85,000 worth of Harleys and his dirt bike that everything’s chained up and bolted to the floor so his neighbours can’t rescue them.
Then there’s the woman who moans about the disaster, that the phones and door buzzers aren’t working so they can’t have visitors … “There’s no reception for TV, there’s no Foxtel…” (She also lost three cars.)
Ummm….. Pakistan anybody? I know, I know, it’s an unfair comparison BUT ….
Have just seen Tomorrow When The War Began – all about Australia being invaded by a coalition of countries determined to make us share our lucky country. I hope no-one in Pakistan reads the Foxtel quote. (And I’d love to know if any of the residents said to reporter Matthew Moore – hey, yes, it’s terrible but, look, at least we’re not in Pakistan.)
HISTORICAL HOWLERS OF THE WEEK
The failure of either Labor or the Coalition to win an outright majority of seats in last Saturday’s election led to an inevitable onset of historical comparisons to the last time Australia had a hung parliament and a minority government.
At the Federal election held on 21 September 1940, the United Australia Party-Country Party Coalition won 36 seats, Labor won 32 seats, Lang Labor won 4 seats and two conservative Independents won 2 seats. Robert Menzies, the UAP leader, continued as prime minister with the support of the Victorian Independents Arthur William Coles (in Henty) and Alexander Wilson (in Wimmera). The possible comparisons with the 2010 outcome motivated some commentators and politicians to try their hand at history – not always successfully.
● Janet A. Forgets Artie F.
On Q&A last Monday, Janet Albrechtsen was the first panellist to raise the spectre of 1940 when she declared:
…the problem is that Independents tend to switch. If you look at the last time we had a hung parliament in 1940, the two Independents… that Robert Menzies depended on ended up switching to the other side. So, you know,… it’s actually inherently unstable to have a hung parliament.
Not so. Coles and Wilson supported Menzies. But, following pressure from both UAP and Country Party parliamentarians, Robert Menzies was forced to step down as prime minister on 29 August 1940 and was replaced by Country Party leader Artie Fadden. On 3 October 1941 Coles and Wilson crossed the floor and brought down the Fadden Government (not the Menzies Government). The Governor-General then commissioned Labor leader John Curtin to form a government – which he did with the support of Coles and Wilson and which survived until the scheduled election in 1943.
● Alison Carabine (Channelling Anne Summers) Remembers Something Which Didn’t Happen
On ABC Local Radio 702 on Tuesday Alison Carabine spoke to presenter Deborah Cameron about Independent MP Rob Oakeshott’s suggestion that Australia should have a national, or coalition, government – whereby the Liberal Malcolm Turnbull should join a Gillard Labor government or Labor’s Kevin Rudd should join an Abbott Liberal-National Party government. As Ms Carabine told Ms Cameron:
Now we’ve had coalition [i.e. national] governments in the past but normally only during times of national crisis.
Not so. There has never been a national government in the Commonwealth Parliament. Not during the First World War. Not during the Great Depression. And not even during the Second World War – when Australia was regarded as being under the threat of invasion. During the early years of the Second World War, Menzies wanted to form a national government but his approaches were rejected by Opposition leader John Curtin on behalf of the Labor Party.
Perhaps Alison Carabine was influenced by what she has read on this matter. For example, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald on 25 June 2007 – in praise of some Kevin Rudd initiative to set up a “national war cabinet” to handle sexual abuse of children in indigenous areas [whatever became of this one? – Ed] – Dr Summers drew comparisons with the early years of World War II. Wrote Dr Summers:
The last Australian political leader who invited the opposition to help handle a national crisis was John Curtin, who persuaded Robert Menzies to join his wartime cabinet. Is Rudd once again adopting the mantle of prime minister, telling [John] Howard how it should be done?
Great theory. Pity about the facts. Curtin opposed a national cabinet when he was Opposition leader at the commencement of the Second World War and continued his stance when he became prime minister in August 1941. (See The Sydney Institute Quarterly, Issue 32, January 2008). Britain has had a number of national governments – but not Australia.
• Michael Rowland’s Paradigm Ignores The Constitution
Then there was the discussion on ABC2 on Thursday News Breakfast when presenters Michael Rowland and Virginia Trioli spoke to former Melbourne Grammar headmaster and Test cricketer Paul Sheehan about the morning’s newspapers.
The discussion started badly when Paul Sheehan referred to the current political situation as providing “an opportunity, perhaps, to craft a different paradigm for politics”. When Trioli objected to the use of such a cliché, Mr Sheehan declared: “I hate using that word.” Quite so.
Soon Mr Rowland joined in what is fashionably termed “the conversation”. Discussion focused on what the Independents might want in reforming the Australian political system. Michael Rowland opined:
In talking about paradigms, it could be a positive way forward for Australia’s political system – in terms of reforming question time, reforming the way the government and oppositions relate to each other. Fixed four year terms, I think, is something [that] would go down very well with a lot of voters given they work so successfully in a lot of States…. So, er, yes we could be hearing a lot more of the word paradigm….
God help us. However, there will not be any paradigm shifts – or, indeed, any normal shifts – with respect to four year terms any time soon. The News Breakfast panel seemed unaware that three year terms are enshrined in Australian Constitution and cannot be altered without a constitutional referendum. The prospect of such a referendum succeeding in the current climate is almost zip. So this is one paradigm which will not be shifting any time soon.
• Laura Tingle Forgets Billy Snedden
Then in her Australian Financial Review column this morning Laura Tingle looks forward to what might happen if a Labor minority government takes office dependent on a combination of four Independents and one Greens MP. Ms Tingle attempted to put herself in Tony Abbott’s position and continued:
If Labor forms a minority government with independents, the Coalition can create havoc at every turn to further undermine Labor’s credentials in the hope of forcing it back to the polls. There is form here. Consider the actions of Charles Court in West Australia in 1973 and Malcolm Fraser federally in 1974 and 1975: create havoc, then exploit it by presenting yourself as the stable alternative.
Not so. When the Opposition effectively forced an early election in 1974, Billy Snedden – not Malcolm Fraser – was the leader of the Liberal Party. Also, Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam won the 1974 election – after he presented his Labor government as the stable alternative.
And now a note to journalists/commentators – Please keep those historical howlers coming.
THE CLICHÉ IN THE ROOM – AN ELEPHANT’S PERSPECTIVE (CONTINUED)
In a highly competitive field, the prize for the most persistent use of the elephant in the room cliché goes to the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. According to Ellen Sandell, the Climate Elephant followed the Prime Minister and Opposition leader around the country – cliché (carbon) mile after cliché (carbon) mile. So much so that, for a lot of the time, Climate Elephant became the elephant outside the room, as well as in the room.
Great cliché. But Climate Elephant had no impact on the climate policies of Labor or the Coalition. Still – to revamp the cliché – any cliché is better than no cliché.
Until next time.