A producer from a popular radio breakfast show woke me this morning to ask if I would come on the show to talk about why the Blanchett-Caton carbon ads were not very good and controversial.
I normally try to avoid early-morning radio interviews, partly due to standard early-morning fuzziness, and partly because of a tendency to say things that are less than measured. During an interview on Newcastle radio about the resource rent tax, when asked about the dire warnings of the mining industry, I remarked that miners had confronted every change in regulation, from removing child labour from the mines onward, as likely to totally destroy the industry. They had survived doing without child labour and I thought they might survive a new tax. This was probably the wrong comment in Newcastle.
The fact is that no one can really judge whether the ads are any good until research is done on community reactions. Until then it is just a matter of opinion. Moreover, the hostile reaction to the ads was more about the dire state of Australian media and political discourse than about the ads themselves. Some people would object to the ads if they were fronted by the Pope and the Dalai Lama — the ads were not the problem, it was that the message within them was a heresy that had to be rooted out.
After reluctantly agreeing to do the interview, and dragging myself out of bed, the producer rang back to say another producer had found someone else to comment. But by this stage I was awake and started to ponder why the ads had been received the way they had.
First, the News Limited media response was pretty predictably vicious and personal. The breakfast producer reflected the same populist propaganda framing. Every critic of the Gillard government’s communications skills ought to be asked to explain what they might do to combat the misleading propaganda of the tabloid and shock-jock media. If it was the Howard government it would have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on mass media advertising supporting its position but the Gillard government is apparently unprepared to be, as Tony Abbott so succinctly put it in the party room, “pragmatic” rather than principled.
Second, the populist media inevitably frame any involvement of artists in politics as unjustified elitist interventions. Freedom of speech is important for Andrew Bolt but Blanchett and Caton are somehow an exception. Nevertheless, The Institute of Public Affairs is having a free-speech seminar soon, with Bolt as one of the main speakers, and I have no doubt that the seminar will prove the exception to this rule with sessions being devoted to ringing endorsements of Blanchett and Caton’s right to appear in the ads and support a carbon tax.
Third The Economist Australia supplement was sadly right. The standards of political debate in Australia are simply embarrassing. Of course it’s not only that the debate is superficial, over-heated, misleading and negative — it’s also unoriginal. Abbott’s “great big tax on everything” is, for instance, an uncredited lift from a US Republican and Tea Party slogan on carbon trading.
The physicist Wolfgang Pauli, once said about a theory proposed by someone else: “Not only is not right, it’s not even wrong.” (To be precise: Das ist nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch, according to Wikipedia).
The radio producer this morning wanted to do an interview within such a framework — one that was not even wrong.
What I found curious , to me at least , was the response by the Murdoch press. I had only seen the ad once on the weekend and then find this confected fuss about it. Their response was neck and neck with its release at least on Vic. free to air. Another ad that has recently been on seems to be about the kindness of miners although the theme is a little blurred. No mention of the SES or government assistance just the mine helping out during a flood. Guess that means they provided everything , at least I guess thats the impression they want to give. Mines are caring, compassionate and a community service. Well they are not the devil but they are not angels either especially when it comes to community wealth rather than personal wealth.
Geomac – I too was warmed to know that when times get tough I can rely of the mining giants generousity, maybe they could take in some asylum seekers?
I also find it curious why it was only Blanchett who was targeted as “affording to pay” (which is ironic as she will actually have to pay unlike the “average australian” who while fully compensated is apparently hard done by) and not Caton?
As for the govt not selling it’s message, it is impossible for them to do it the media is required to get the message out and as all Australian media seems to follow whatever News Ltd says the govt has no hope. As it is they are accused of being all spin and not being able to sell concurrently.
Jimmy,
Most of the time I feel much as you do about the insurmountable difficulty which the Government appears to have in communicating in the face of hostile media.
I occasionally console myself with an observation I recall from the New Statesman more than forty years ago. It made the point that the Wilson Government of the day was faced with a similarly hostile press* (newspapers were the relevant political media in the 60s); they argued that what had historically made British Labour competitive was its army of foot soldiers (sometimes Party members, but frequently just committed supporters) who in workplaces, pubs and clubs and churches and wherever people gathered would argue Labour’s cause. However, this only “worked” to the extent that those people felt engaged and while they valued their allegiance, and felt valued by the organisation.
As our society has become more atomised, politics has been much more markedly professionalised, and the active political players have become more distant from these supporters, this function is compromised. Blogs these days offer a pale shadow of such exchanges, but those who are disengaged from politics are ever harder to reach, more alienated and more preoccupied with their self-interested obligations and commitments.
However, I do feel that re-energising the amateurs is a possible way to combat the ferocity of the unrelenting attack on the Government.
*I’m inclined to think the intensity of the present newspaper and electronic media is probably more sustained than any time in my life-time. The 1975 precedent was essentially a matter of a few months in which the media collectively got stuck in.
If instead of Cate Blanchett it had been a footballer we would not have had this reaction.The Arts are elitist for your average okker but football!!
“This was probably the wrong comment in Newcastle.” Don’t worry. They are not all bogans in Newcastle, and those who are are in desperate need of the facts.