Liberal adviser Peter Phelps is something of a trouble magnet. He earned the undying enmity of many for presiding over the Howard government’s electoral “reforms” in its last term, as chief of staff to special ministers of state Eric Abetz and Gary Nairn. Phelps has earned the undying enmity of quite a few in his own party for his activities on behalf of the Right of the NSW Liberals. He embarrassed the Howard government in 2007 when he accused Labor candidate Mike Kelly of using “the Nuremberg defence” at a debate in the close-fought Eden-Monaro campaign. He clearly enjoys a stoush.
Today he’s in more hot water over an email in which he proposed some tactics for garnering media attention, which was subsequently forwarded on by a staff member in Malcolm Turnbull’s office. “Dig dirt, Turnbull office urges,” was the damaging headline.
You can see where this is going to go on a sitting day. A government minister will rise in question time and, courtesy of an appropriately worded Dorothy Dixer, will find their way onto, in the Prime Minister’s parlance, “the politics of fear and smear”, a line Rudd pulls out at the slightest provocation.
Apparently there’s a high road in politics, on which only policy is ever discussed and the air is filled with genteel debate on the merits or otherwise of different approaches to the complex issues of public life. And then there’s the low road of fear and smear, where dodgy characters defame and dig dirt.
Rubbish.
Phelps’ advice was perfectly sensible.
“You don’t get news stories by trying to change perceptions, you get them by reinforcing stereotypes,” Phelps wrote.
“While policy discussions are nice, the simple fact is that in opposition, the majority of our successful news stories are going to be ones which are a little quirky and which draw the attention of journos.”
Those words should be in the DNA of any opposition media adviser. If they’re not, they should be printed off and hung on the office wall. What’s wrong with telling the public about over-remunerated public servants and MPs? What’s the problem with talking about special interests getting handouts, or dodgy tendering processes?
Apart from the fact that it’s those stories that will get a run in the tabloid press rather than dry policy arguments, it’s part of basic parliamentary accountability. It’s what oppositions are supposed to do.
The fact is this opposition is good at neither the high road nor the low road. Its policies in most areas are still a matter of guesswork and confusion. And it has consistently struggled to pin down the government on poor administration, despite the stimulus packages and the willing aid of The Oz. It can’t stay consistently on message for more than about five minutes before it lapses into another bout of infighting, or someone opens their yap and distracts attention from the message. Its efforts at the one parliamentary set piece entirely devoted to finding fault with the government — Estimates — are all over the place.
The government, on the other hand, has a military precision to its campaigns along both roads. No opportunity is missed to point out divisions or stuff-ups in the opposition. There’s no media opportunity too obscure that a government adviser isn’t all over the transcript spotting errors and inconsistencies. Its control of the media cycle has been, until asylum seekers started hogging the agenda, nearly absolute.
At the moment the opposition isn’t even in the game. If they don’t think they need some advice on lifting their game, they’re kidding themselves.
Back in the day, I was quoted in Reportage (UTS publication) about getting coverage on environmental issues. And sure enough I referred to linking to iconic species and other superficial tactics.
At the time a good profile encouraged flippancy, and as time went on I seriously regretted explaining ‘how to make sausages’ for this critical reason: Quite objectively the logging industry in NSW was out of control, unscientific and vandalistic in the early 90ies, and not much has changed actually. These were serious enough policy concerns which should have been enough to gain public and big media interest applied to site specifics.
It did in fact help change the NSW Govt in 1995.
But there I was selling short the intelligence of the public and and journalists by reference to stereotypes. And no doubt student reporters were being taught from the article how to see behind ‘greenie tactics’. Being the cheap lowest denominator which does sadly apply to sectors of the big media (example “illegal immigrants” howler by Michael Usher in that Sixty Minutes story last Sunday night). True enough. But no need to pander to it.
Additionally the confusion in the Coalition is surely spiritual – as the pro Iraq War party they have no self confidence. And they won’t until that generation are gone, gone, gone. The irony is that Rudd takes no credit for that, rather Simon Crean for being anti war when it mattered in late 2002-3. Thus the ALP have a fresh moral start from 2007 in govt to work from.
And if you doubt this consider Howard Costello at Brendan ‘war for oil’ Nelson’s recent knees up and mutal backslapping. And they still don’t get it. When did monumental failure give cause for pride, go figure.
Where’s the nobility in digging dirt, especially when your Party consists primarily of a rabble of leftovers and hangers-on from the Howard era.
With nary a policy in sight or a position on anything (except opposing everything of course – how freaking Pythonesque) it doesn’t cut the mustard for me.
My main point is this ‘media cycle control’ thing you keep mentioning a lot in reference to the Rudd government.
Could you explain how the government are actually controlling the media cycle? As far as I know (notwithstanding being in the media myself) the meedja are free to report whatever stories they choose.
If you could pen an article detailing how the cycle is dominated, with a little bit of evidence, that would be cool.
To go a little deeper … At uni many years ago my media studies thesis was on the subject of media control. Historically the mass media did have some influence over public opinion, but that has changed substantially in recent times with the development of new and alternative media – like Crikey for example.
The conclusion I formed back in the late eighties was that the mainstream media, just like any business, chase $$$, and nothing more.
It seems you are implying that the media (excluding you) are a beholden mob to whatever the government feeds them. Poor swill troughers, they are all!
Bernard, the view that the media are somehow controlled/dominated by Labor politicians in government is farcical. Even if true, the Labor Party are simply refining the tactics employed by the previous government. That’s not appeasement BTW. But the media are free to report whatever will rake in the $$$ – AKA business profit model 101.
So what’s new?
Yeah – we must do something, this is something, let’s do this.
I’ve commented on Phelps (and Franklin’s appalling story) here. You’re not going to penny-ante your way back to government with tabloid headlines. It’s one thing to point out government waste, but if there is no overarching reason why your lot would be any different then there’s no point to all this busywork for the Opposition. The media can do their own work, or what passes for it: the Liberal Party have to be taken seriously as a party of government, and right now they can’t. Phelps assumes that a different kind of spin can make up for that – but it will only make the Liberal Party less relevant, not more so.
It’s only when the stereotypes fail that you go looking for a different way of doing things, and a different way of doing things will mean a change of government. When press-gallery journalists develop enough professional skill that they can get their own stories without recourse to a press release, and when they rise as one – not to confer over what The Story is, but to defenestrate that government adviser who’s been poring over Opposition inconsistencies, then we’ll have a media and a government worthy of one another.