John Howard and Mark Latham may have appeared on TV together in
the guise of a debate, but the highly stage-managed Q and A session was
a far cry for the sort of action should rightly expect of a political
debate. Now the The National Press Club has responded to Crikey’s
challenge during the election campaign to its executive and board: get
off your backsides and organize a platform for a debate between Howard
and Latham.

Updated – October 19, 2004

Friday October 15, 5pm
Email from Press Club President Ken Randall to Crikey Subscriber Luke Priday

Thank you for taking the trouble to contact us after the Crikey
editorial a few weeks ago. In my view, the editorial was a typical
piece of smart-Alec Crikey self-promotion, which misled as many people
as it motivated. (More of that in a moment.)

Nevertheless, more than 80 people emailed me to ask/demand/challenge
the National Press Club to organise a ‘real’ Howard/Latham debate. I
thought that was quite a significant response from such a small base,
so we approached the two camps offering to host such an event on the
afternoon of Sunday, October 3. Roughly the same format as the US
presidential debates, 90 minutes in duration with a live audience (but
no meal). As we expected, the Labor campaign as enthusiastic; the
Liberal side was not interested.

The Crikey piece gave some of its readers the impression that the Club
only had to snap its fingers and it would all happen. If they live in
the real world, ‘Crikey’s hard-hitting editorial writing team’
(presumably Hugo Kelly) must have known that that was rubbish.
Other readers inferred that we were afraid or somehow ‘not game’ to ask
the party leaders to take part in a debate. That was equally silly.
Most of the messages took the ‘more in hope than expectation’ approach,
which is realistic.

The National Press Club introduced the concept of a televised leaders’
debate in Australian Federal campaigns two decades ago. It was
successful enough to ensure that the commercial broadcasters
immediately poached and ‘glamourised’ it. Every Prime Minister since
then sought to fiddle with the format to extract maximum advantage – and make no mistake, the incumbent calls the tune.

As a result, the Club developed a series of other pre-election events.
There was no point in formally trying to scrabble back into the debate
when our regular informal contacts left no doubt about the parties’
attitudes. So we have organised appearances for the party
leaders and the most relevant ministers with their Opposition
counterparts. Since we already had Howard and Latham booked for
individual appearances in the last week of the campaign, running a
Sunday afternoon debate with Latham and an empty chair was not a real
option.

Crikey said the failure to have a series of US-style debates was a
‘failure of the national body politic’. Clearly, the National Press
Club is not the national body politic and I cannot possibly see how a
failure to respond to Crikey’s lame, last-minute ‘challenge’ would
have been proof of weakness. We did respond, in deference to the people who approached us. But surely commonsense should have
suggested to Crikey that the responses should have been directed to Howard and Latham!

Crikey says it ‘spoke to’ our CEO Maurice Reilly, who confirmed that we
had not sought to book a Howard-Latham debate. Hugo Kelly did
phone Maurice Reilly and hang-up in his ear once he got the ‘confirmation’. He later apologised. He gave me about 20 minutes to
respond to an emailed copy of the original article. I didn’t bother.
Subsequently, Hugo Kelly ‘discovered’ that we had moved the leaders’
final appearances from the National Press Club premises to the Great
Hall of Parliament House. I’m glad he made the discovery, since we
spent a few thousand dollars advertising what was happening. I don’t
know what Hugo Kelly does with his working days in the Press Gallery if
he doesn’t hear about things like this.

We moved to the Great Hall for several reasons. It is more comfortable
for crowds of 300 or more. It is the Prime Minister’s preference and we
considered it obvious that the Leader of the Opposition should have the
same surrounds. And, yes, of course it makes us more money. But not
that much more. The reason the customer charges are so much higher is
the astronomical rise in overheads. We cannot provide our own catering
and pay a huge price to the Parliament House franchise holder. We pay
for the venue, the sound system, the security and so on and on.

I agree with everybody who wishes we could have something closer to the
US presidential debates. We will be very happy the day they come back
to us.

Keep up the pressure – on the politicians. And thank you for your interest.

Regards
Ken Randall
President, National Press Club.

—– Original Message —–
From: Luke Priday
To: Press Club board and executive
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 11:23 AM
Subject: Howard vs Latham

Good Morning all,

I have just finished reading the following article from crikey.com.au
(read below) and I couldn’t agree more. There currently exists an
opportunity for the National Press Club (NPC) to present the Nation
with a demonstration of the competing powers in this election and
arguably, shape the outcome of the election.

The “Debate” presented on Channel 9 was, unfortunately, anything but
great. It was simply a rote performance of tried and tested rhetoric
that bored the audience rather than engage them. This has never been the case with a presentation hosted by the NPC.

The discussions, presentations and debates hosted by the NPC are always interesting and far from “scripted”.

I therefore do request/hope that the NPC will strive to ensure a debate occurs between Mr Latham and Mr Howard, however, I do
recognise that it is up to the competing members to agree. Nevertheless, I would hope that an attempt would be made by the NPC.
Thank you for your time to consider my email and do continue the great work – it is always a joy to watch your presentations.

============================

Howard vs Latham: It’s Time for a REAL debate
Subscriber email – 23 September

Less than three weeks out, and Election ’04 stands poised on a
knife-edge. This campaign is starting to catch the public’s attention –
and it’s going down to the wire.

Against a renewed and invigorated Mark Latham, John Howard is looking
strong and determined as ever. He’s a consummate campaigner when it
comes to most set piece events. But he’s not so comfortable with the
old-fashioned meet-the-people tours, or one-on-one debates.

And this is the vital missing ingredient.

Apart from last weekend’s muddled, stage-managed, non-debate with Mark
Latham, Howard refuses to take on his opponent head-to-head.

This is where the National Press Club comes in. A quick look at the Club’s website highlights a glaring omission.

Notice something missing? Yep, there’s no debate between the two alternative Prime Ministers.

This is a sad reflection on the ability of the Prime Minister to bully
the august institution that started it all two decades ago. As Alan
Ramsey reminds us in The worm turns on the great debate, the first
leaders debate was organised 20 years ago by journalists and hosted by
the Press Club.

That’s right. There was an era when spin-doctors were not almighty and accountability existed.

The club has organised one leaders’ debate this election season: for
the ACT elections between a bloke called Stanhope and a fella called
Smythe.

And to be fair, the debate between Simon Crean and Peter Costello was a revealing affair. But that only underlines our point.

Organising a debate in Toytown is easy. This is the Big League, and the
stakes could not be higher. It’s time. Time for the Press Club to get
off its backside and schedule a debate in the final fortnight of the
campaign between Latham and Howard.

So what if one of the candidates doesn’t have the courage to turn up
and face the nation’s press live on the alternative National
Broadcaster, ABC TV?

Too bad. Just leave an empty chair and let the voters decide who’s the strongest leader.

We contrast this failure of the national body politic to stand up and
demand a series of public debates with the US situation. The Bush
campaign this week announced that it has agreed to three Presidential
debates.

The Prime Minister is cutting and running from a public debate in a
national forum in the vital, final, stages of the campaign. It’s a
victory of rat cunning over courage.

And unless they rise to the challenge, the Press Club stands accused of weakness.

We spoke to Press Club CEO Maurice Reilly this afternoon, and he
confirmed that the club had not tried to book a Howard-Latham debate.

We think they should. It’s time for the Crikey Army to raise its voice for democracy.

Email addresses for the National Press Club Board and CEO are publicly
available on the Press Club website. We encourage our subscribers to
let them know your view here.

In defence of the press club
Subscriber email – 24 September

A number of Crikey subscribers emailed the various National Press Club
committee members urging them to schedule a second leaders debate in
the final week of the campaign and this is one of the replies that came
back from News Ltd’s Malcolm Coles:

Thanks for your email. While I don’t agree with all your points, I
accept that your views are not uncommon. I would just make a couple of
points.

The first is that we already facilitate a quite lengthy program of
pre-election events, including addresses by all five party leaders and
debates on key issues.

The debate between the leaders is organised by the parties, and
strongly supported by the Press Gallery. We put both Prime Ministerial
candidates on the podium in the last week, and they are both grilled
for an hour by the most senior political reporters in the country. To
take up Crikey’s proposal would mean either halving the time available
to scrutinise them (by putting them both on the same bill) or
duplicating what we already do if one refused to debate.

We believe the format we have works very well in providing opportunity
for the two leaders to be thoroughly scrutinised. The reason we do
debates on the key policy areas is because there simply isn’t time to
put all of those ministers and shadows on individually.

Crikey’s suggestion is pointless and would represent a step back from what we currently do in terms of scrutiny.

Malcolm Cole

A subscriber explains the press club defence strategy as follows:

Hi Crikey, I’m sitting in the bar of the Sheraton in Melbourne (where
the Rodent and Hyacinth have been slumming it) and I’ve just heard
snippets of a very animated conversation you might be interested in.

I’m not sure who the man on the mobile phone was but it seems that this
afternoon’s missive calling on the press club to deliver a leaders
debate has ruffled some feathers. I couldn’t make out all of what he
was saying as he walked from one end of the room to the other but I
definitely heard “form letter”, “mail out” and what sounded like a plan
to light a fire under you and especially Hugo Kelly.

Good work. We have a dangerously lazy fourth estate so I’m glad someone is poking them.

Dave

Seven keen to host debate

Terry Television contributes to the political debate:

Peter Costello has dogged it by refusing to debate a ready Mark Latham
on the Seven Network this Sunday evening. And the Prime Rodent has also
rejected (through spokesman Tony O’Leary) an offer by Seven to debate a
ready to go Mark Latham.

Subscribers will remember how Cossie boasted that he would debate Iron
Mark anywhere, any time. Well, Seven jumped in with an offer to both to
debate live this Sunday at 6.30pm.

Latham said yep, I’ll be there. Cossie said nope. Can’t do it. It’s the
evening of the campaign launch and we can’t upstage that.

So Seven asked for any other dates and Cossie’s mob came back with a
no! So much for the alternate leader’s proud boast of being willing to
debate the alternate leader any where any time.