There are wider issues around the behaviour of the late senator Kimberley Kitching — whose tragic and far-too-early death was marked yesterday in Melbourne — and that of her Labor colleagues than the fictions spun by much of the press gallery.
They are issues the press gallery will never, ever touch because it goes to the role of political journalists and the increasingly toxic role they play in our democracy.
M’colleague Guy Rundle brilliantly outlined many of those issues yesterday in a piece that told truths that political journalists have been unwilling to tell because they don’t fit the preferred narrative of Kitching as valiant human rights defender bullied to death by Labor.
There are other issues, too, that reflect the dire state of Australian party politics and the complicity of the mainstream media in it.
Kitching was an average senator. We shall look upon her like — the factional warrior and long-term party operative elevated to elected office and a higher public profile — again. In fact, you can’t avoid looking upon them right now if you look around either chamber. They’re everywhere.
She was a poor Senate committee performer, often mistaking aggression for forensic questioning in estimates, as her attack on Christine Holgate showed. Labor’s carefully prepared attacks in estimates hearings often faltered when Kitching was left to prosecute them.
And despite the myth that she was a stalwart defender of human rights, in fact she was highly selective in that. As human rights lawyer Rawan Arraf pointed out, Kitching was an ardent defender of apartheid Israel; clearly not all humans were, in her view, entitled to basic rights.
So as a parliamentary performer and consistent advocate, she was no better and certainly no worse than most of the people who shuffle through the Senate via the major parties. And none of that changes that she died far too young and with so much undone.
Where Kitching stands out, however, is an example of how hollowed-out our major parties are. For much of the past 50 years, the narrative around political party membership has been one of constant decline from the mid-century period of genuine mass membership. But in the past two decades, the inexorable decline of membership has morphed into the rise of factional players and powerbrokers.
Such figures have always existed, of course — but being a factional heavyweight in a party with large memberships and powerful unions is very different from being one in a party of double-digit branch memberships and unions that can’t muster 10% of the workforce.
As parties have shrunk, they’ve become ever more the plaything of small-time figures who can, by dint of drawing heavily from targeted community groups, stack their way to power branch by branch.
Kitching’s home state of Victoria, which has thrown up — in both senses — figures like Marcus Bastiaan and Adem Somyurek, is the best example of this process of hollowing-out of political parties that once, in an earlier century, could claim to be mass movements.
And this process has been enabled by the way we’ve allowed political parties to detach themselves from the community and exist independently of electorates. We’ve allowed parties to draw heavily on public funding and donations so that their lack of large memberships isn’t a problem. We’ve allowed the professionalisation of politics so that both sides are dominated by former staffers and party and union executives.
Kitching — who devoted her career to playing intra-party games, undermining factional opponents and pursuing the interests of her own political clique — was the perfect example.
And the media is complicit in the whole process of detaching politics from democracy. At the micro level, political journalists are more than happy to provide platforms for politicians to engage in factional warfare against each other (one press gallery stenographer lamented last week that he’d no longer be receiving prolific WhatsApp messages from Kitching). It makes for great copy, and saves the trouble of actually getting across genuine issues of public policy.
In the world of hollowed-out parties, the media is for leaking to, not holding the powerful to account; for using against your enemies inside the party, not speaking truth to power.
And at the macro level, the media benefits to the tune of tens of millions of dollars every election as political parties, devoid of mass memberships that could drive genuine grassroots election campaigns, try to advertise their way to victory.
The media, every bit as much as the parties, is trapped in an ecosystem where politics is divorced from democracy.
In the end that means that political journalists, as much as or even more than the politicians they cover, are detached from the public interest and the concerns of ordinary Australians. And neither are in any hurry to admit it.
Was Kimberley Kitching bullied to death by Labor? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
It is never easy, but definitely in the public interest in this case, to air some uncomfortable truths about someone who has died recently. And, as you have pointed out, “none of that changes that she died far too young and with so much undone.” Thank you, and thanks also to Guy Rundle.
If a media – more intent on playing favourites – isn’t going to hold them to account and try to reverse this decline, who is?
Why wouldn’t so many politicians choose to play fast and loose – with everything from ethics to our money, our honour and reputation – if they know they can get away with it : because influential elements of our media will run a protection racket for them?
To then watch the same media lament ‘the decline in politics’ and ‘the public’s loss of trust’ – without reflecting on their own (media) part in this devolution is beyond the pail and shows a complete disrespect for their calling – which is now an excuse to do what they want.
When they try to ignore – or distance themselves from – the ruin they indulge and even promote show’s a hollowness of self-awareness or reflection. “Everyone’s doing it ” doesn’t cut it – because they’re not al doing it, some (too few sadly) still have respect for their profession.
Excellent comment. One wonders how much this development was inevitable given the dominance of neoliberal values over the past four decades? Such values and their accompanying institutionalisation lead to a kind of “autocracy” of the wealthy that manifests in most–hopefully not all–institutions in society. It reflects power and wealth as intrinsic qualities, rather than instruments for helping the community more broadly. As such the exacerbation of the power-broker mentality–always present in some measure in political parties–reflects the lust to get to the top, merely for the sake of being there, and also a disdain for the broader community which political parties in theory should reflect. This is hardly surprising given the atomisation of society which is a consequence of neoliberal cultural values, reality television and social media.
The media are complicit of course. Apart from a few outlets like Crikey, Pearls& Irritations and the New Daily–amongst others–they are dominated by the lackeys of the wealthy and are defined by their capacity to provide entertainment and create fear in the general public. They too are considerably divorced from the broader community in succeeding always to facilitate the aspirations of the wealthy who control them and of those–many politicians–who seek to become part of the wealthy. I don’t know how this can be turned around in the short term. In the political sphere the rise of the independents may be helpful, if not an improvement in the number of Greens in parliament.
Or not?? Most independents are LNP aligned. Greens rather than indies on the showings so far.
It’s a bread and circuses sort of world …. and/but we’re the Christians.
If I had been writing your post klewso, I would only have omitted “sort of”.
I agree with everything you say apart from the bit about “the independents”. Rather than being some new wave of politics, they are a gaggle of disaffected Liberals who represent a de facto split within the party – fallout from the right wing takeover that started with Howard. Their sanctification by sections of the media reflects the lack of serious analysis that’s typical of the media today. Yes, these independents take a reasonably good position on climate change (ie they are about up to where the Libs should have been a decade ago), and they’re annoyed about their exclusion from the action, so they talk about integrity in politics at lot. But that’s about it – they are all privileged individuals who push the usual neoliberal line on everything of importance. Neo-liberals with a smiley face.
Sam Maiden’s performance on Insiders last Sunday was a prime example of how the media is being played and how it has become a player.
Part of that media-politics daisy-chain.
Another blatant “Insider’s revue” was from Porter’s mate Van Onselen….
They’re everywhere in positions of influence.
Yes, she lost me I am afraid. And David speers let her take over with nothing dribble.
Speers was a bit crestfallen when Maiden contradicted the Markson version of reality that he was pushing…. that marks(on) how far Insiders has sunk.
But she has a book to sell!
While the other three on the panel had an income stream to protect.
Maiden lost much of my respect for her , at times incoherent, rant of the topic.
Similar to a gossipy squabble at the bowls club.
An appropriate time to reflect on the recent words of Peter Malinauskus’ in his gracious victory speech, when he declared that the Liberals were their adversary, not their enemy. This applies equally to the factions within their own party.
Be nice if the Lib/Nats said the same but I doubt that would
ever be the case until the present bunch are gone from politics, completely.
And the public get more and more sick of politicians. This works well for democracy when it results in more independents being introduced into Parliament to “keeps the bastards honest”. It works less well when the like of our very own Trump, Clive Palmer, purports to be the answer.
Good ‘ol Clive waffling his money away, while his little fat mate babbles on about who knows what. Politics for the brain dead and disaffected old gets with belligerent opinions to burn