The national political marketplace is being offered two competing products this year. A box full of Rudd Tricks or an Abbott’s Energy Bar.
But there’s another comparison that many consumers are likely to make, albeit with a product that’s no longer on the shelves because it had reached its use-by date. The Howard Consistency Pack.
John Howard was a mixture of many things — ideologue, pragmatist, loyalist, social conservative — but unlike the two products on sale now, he always remained true to his USP (unique selling proposition). He stuck to his guns on the issues that defined him and his government.
Now, in the choice between a box of tricks and an energy bar, it’s becoming clear that almost nothing matters but spin. Spin about health, about climate change, about population and, today, about smoking.
There may be plenty of policy options on the shelves in the politics aisle, but in the end they all turn out to have the same basic ingredient. Unhealthy doses of spin.
Wow – someone has forgotten the Howard years pretty quickly. They were nothing but spin and here’s Tim Dunlop’s take on it on 7th May 2007.
“The real story of the Howard Government, when it is finally told, will be the story of its media control, certainly the most successful and brilliant in Australian history.
Based on endless polling, a ruthlessness in how material is made available to the press, an unprecedented willingness to spend public money on political advertising, and a prime minister unequalled in his ability and willingness to spin a line anywhere at anytime on any subect, the Coalition has dominated the message market”.
Just reminding Crikey that Dunlop had it right and you are a trifle forgetful.
Without his ‘Brains Trust’ to advise him, Howard’s knowledge of spin would be confined to what a bowler does to a ball.