Sometimes it’s hard to tell who is more out of touch: politicians or the media, two self-obsessed industries with deep reputational problems despite their endless self-congratulation. Events last week provided an illustration of the myopia of these two troubled groups.
As much as people in the press gallery — like me — hate to admit it, few Australians have much interest in what happens in parliament, or politics more generally. Last week’s parliamentary shenanigans — whether Scott Morrison fleeing in terror from his own parliament on Thursday afternoon, or Labor’s craven surrender on the government’s encryption backdoor bill — were a matter of indifference to most voters, and may as well have occurred in Gabon or Mongolia.
Thus the inevitable consternation at The Australian today about the confirmation that the Morrison government is one of the most deeply unpopular governments of recent decades: it continues to trail Labor in 2PP terms by 10 points. The narrative pushed by News Corp since last week is that Labor has made a stunning, strategic blunder on asylum seekers by supporting moves to transfer people for medical treatment in Australia, one that could hand Morrison the election.
This line, coordinated with the government’s claim that Bill Shorten was a threat to national security and was happy to help paedophiles, blah blah, hit a brick wall in the form of the company’s own polling. Worse, the one right before the country goes into a summer slumber until February.
No, voters paid almost no attention to the stupidity in Canberra last week. They have real lives, in the real world, with jobs, mortgages and kids to look after. They may have a vague sense that there were some particularly stupid games played last week, but that would merely confirm their impression of a political class that is only interested in itself.
Moreover — alas for News Corp — voters don’t think asylum seekers are a big deal, not unless there really is a genuine crisis of the kind Labor allowed when hundreds of boat arrivals swamped the system. In fact, Peter Dutton is presiding over his own massive loss of border control: we are now seeing tens of thousands of asylum seekers arriving by air, and they’re far more likely to be bogus claimants and economic migrants than those who arrive by boat. But for whatever reason, it’s only maritime arrivals that push our buttons.
In the absence of an immediate crisis, asylum seekers drop down to the bottom of the list of issues that affect how voters vote. And in any event, the top items on that list never change: the economy and jobs, health, and education.
And while much of the political and media class were obsessing about some asylum seekers last week, our understanding of the economy changed significantly in the wake of the September quarter GDP figures and the reaction of the Reserve Bank about where interest rates might go. The actual GDP number — 0.3% — might be revised upward next quarter, and in and of itself is less important than what it illustrated: the extent to which wage stagnation is now undermining economic growth, and how it is forcing households to save less and less every quarter despite regular complaints about the level of household debt.
The national accounts were mainly of interest to economic journalists; their significance appeared to pass most political journalists by. But if you want at least one important key to much of what is going on in politics currently, it’s wage stagnation and the way it fuels voters’ perceptions the whole political-economic system is working in the interests of the powerful, and the politicians they give so much money to, rather than citizens.
The significance of last week’s parliamentary carry-on had nothing to do with who “won” or “lost”, or whether any particular issue creates a wedge to help one side “win”. It was confirmation that the political and media class has no idea what it important to ordinary citizens, large numbers of whom now either simply don’t enrol to vote, or don’t turn out to vote, or vote as early as they can so they can ignore the campaigns run by political parties and the media at the cost of tens of millions, or vote for minor and third parties.
If you’re not talking seriously about wage stagnation — and the Coalition literally has no policy to do anything about it, beyond continuing to predict wage growth will increase in the forward estimates — then you don’t really have much to offer ordinary Australians, many of whom have gone backwards in real terms in the last five years.
And that applies to the media every bit as much as politicians.
What is this, some sort of festive season introspection from the scribbler who brought you headlines such as “labor cant be trusted on National security”?
Or even sillier “Dear Labor MP’s, stop with your bullshit about protecting our rights”……Rights to encrypted messaging no less….Oh the hoomanity.
still nothing on the latest stacking of the fair-work commission with proxies from employers groups I see.
I like to think the relentless criticism has actually got through a little bit even if he’ll never admit it.
It’s the fact that Keane is actually capable of getting the point as shown in this piece that had me subscribing to Crikey in the first place. It’s so rare in the press gallery to be capable of comprehending the Canberra Bubble (the real one, not the one Scott Morrison talks about. Real people outside the bubble DO care about a corruption commission, they do care about the leadership change, they do care about wages and penalty rates and they do care about renewable energy and the future for their kids, whatever Morrison thinks.)
The last four lines is an exellent summation, to which I would add Medicare and the PBS and more money for public schools.
Well, I think everyone gets that health and education matter to people – I was just citing things that I’m sure Morrison or other Libs have claimed to just be “Canberra bubble” or “Labor lies”.
Of course no one in the wider society is all that interested in any political party as they –
1. Are not representative of the electorates interests.
2. Do not demonstrate any sustained concern for citizens RIGHTS, PRIVACY, ECONOMIC SECURITY or LIFESTYLE/ CULTURE especially if it conflicts with moneyed interests.
3. Do not remotely understand the purpose of their elected positions and subsequently fail to take any appropriate action.
4. Are predominately greedy careerists, who have never performed any task in the public interest; they are created by and for party interests solely.
Political parties Like Labor, Liberal and Greens are doomed, they are unmanageable collectives of hypocritical, self interested, self promoting, bare faced liars who seem to think that if they say something frequently enough (though they may have said the the exact opposite previously) it will become truth for the population not just their deluded selves.
Shorten or Morrison no difference, both are shameless frauds and far to incompetent to lead the country.
Its Sooooo True its the elephant in the room!
THE ABOVE COMMENT HAS BEEN CENSORED / MODERATED FOR NO REASON
Shame ‘Crikey’, Explain yourselves. Are you the arbiters of what is acceptable to the views of your fee paying subscribers? Are your writers the only ones worthy of a point of view?
I could read it just fine – perhaps a sticky browser was the problem?
It was not posted for about 10 hours, I complained as always and someone must of read the moderated comment above. This happens about every third post for me, some are not posted for 48 hours. None contain offensive or derogatory comments
Even for the sake of the truth, politicians will not upset the cushy apple-cart of bipartisanship essential US and global foreign policy. On less important trivial issues they will jump up and down and grandstand to the press with all the theatrics and pretension that they are actually in opposition to each other….but the reality is they are one single party – the Lib-Lab Party Puppets dancing the dance of the Shiva for their puppet masters the international bankers.
Whooah, too true and spot on.
“In fact, Peter Dutton is presiding over his own massive loss of border control: we are now seeing tens of thousands of asylum seekers arriving by air, and they’re far more likely to be bogus claimants and economic migrants than those who arrive by boat. But for whatever reason, it’s only maritime arrivals that push our buttons.”
The roots of our bizarre refugee policy are that the turn-back-the-boats policy was originally (putatively) established to protect against loss of life. A “won’t someone think of the children (not) being thrown overboard” kind of thing. (it started with Labor so not the children overboard thing, but that was definitely part of the Howard Government push). So the “social license” the Australian people provided for the thing was premised on the idea that it was, at least partly, for the protection of peoples’ lives. And then the media was so managed to prevent what was actually going on from becoming public.
The policy never made sense – it was the same kind of demented logic that underpinned “it was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” But that was the originally stated premise.
The press went along with the strategy because it was stated that way – we had a media-managed refugee crisis that, on the scale of refugee crises was actually very minor – and then the Tampa election gave journalists (and the ALP) the notion that the Australian public were actually okay with demonising refugees. And I don’t think that was ever true – we’re a racist xenophobic country, but we’re not actually cool with torturing children or even adults, if we know it’s happening.
The press let “on water matters’ be a pretext for denying transparency. They could have boycotted opportunities to show politicians with flags, and made a bigger splash out of the denial of justice, but they let the Government frame the narrative. After all, Tampa showed the public was cool with it, right?
As with so many other social policy issues, images and stories got out over time. I think a key shift in the debate occurred relatively recently, when the world saw the Trump Administration introduce its own brutal child separation policy, and we saw worldwide revulsion. The difference, in that case, was that the First Amendment meant it was hard for the Trump Administration to prevent the images of children wailing. Australian Governments have tried very hard to block images like that from getting out. When they have got out, the Australian media hasn’t given them a great deal of attention, because Tampa showed the public was cool with it, right?
And so to 2018, and all of a sudden the policy is untenable. Because now we know more, and we know that living at Manus and Nauru might be almost as bad as dying at sea. And because destroying a village in order to save it only worked as a policy statement for so long. Tampa involved a different set of circumstances, and the public didn’t know enough to have formed an opinion about whether or not they were cool with it.
That time has passed.
Passed?
I think not.
Australian voters continue to be treated like the proverbial mushrooms: “Fed shit and kept in the dark.”
If the writers of these articles, and most of the commenters below them, really believe that they are privy to the goings-on in private, in the the boardrooms of corporations and in the multitudinous other ‘halls of power’, then they are seriously deluded.
The only thng that we can be reasonably certain of is that we are being manipulated by power and wealth for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful.
The rest is contrived illusion.
Your comment is very impressive. It shows you have a very deep understanding of the psychological machinations between govt and media ( the other govt ) manipulation of people’s cerebal cortex to bring about a political outcome. I think this is also known as brain-washing and conditioning.
It under-scores the relationship between the two and explains why the larger media companies are allowed to keep trading even though practically insolvent…too essential to fail. Too essential to who?..the govt.
I would say the govt of the day is essential to the media. Hense their control over who gets elected. As you said, the other govt, perhaps the real govt. Through who’s lens are we looking.
How good was that control in 2016 when every major newspaper in the country recommended the re-election of the Turnbull government(except the Age). The plebs very nearly revolted in their own interest for once.