We’re in the regular campaign fight over the leaders’ debates, but this time its core is: who gets to ask the questions around here?
In claiming bragging rights for the May 8 debate, Nine director of news and current affairs Darren Wick was clear: we do — it would be “three of the most experienced journos in the country” who would be “quizzing the two would-be prime ministers”.
It’s part of the Weekend at Bernie’s flavour to election reporting this time around, as Australia’s reporters work hard to keep alive the pretence that it’s their day-by-day media reporting that makes a campaign matter.
Maybe once, when the campaign sashayed repetitively through its daily ritual: as the party leaders danced from morning radio, to a stand-up press conference for the boys and girls on the bus, and on to a hi-vis photo-op for the evening news.
When the gallery back-slaps Morrison over his campaigning skills, here’s what they mean: he’s great at dancing that dance, day after day from campaign beginning to end.
Now the dance is losing relevance and the traditional media has had to run its own campaign to prop it up: from its earnest “it really matters!” week-long gaffe explainers; to last Friday’s “media frenzy” when, first day back from iso, Labor Leader Anthony Albanese passed his daily presser over to the campaign surrogates; and on to the Nine masthead’s insistence on there being “fury” in Labor ranks at the leadership’s failure to understand that tightly paywalled, once-were-newspaper mastheads still set the day’s agenda.
But it’s not the campaign that most Australian voters experience. Right now, there’s another campaign that seems to be actually shifting votes, with electorate-by-electorate, in-your-face campaigning, largely beyond the media’s daily gaze.
By schlepping on through the well-worn steps of the dance, the traditional political media is missing a critical point about 2022: it’s not just another election. It could be a transformational moment that is remaking politics.
It’s a revolution that will not be televised. Late on Saturday night, we got a glimpse of the other side when Rob Baillieu, campaigner for Frydenberg’s teal independent challenger Dr Monique Ryan, tweeted: “75% of Kooyong has now been door knocked”. About an hour and half later, he updated: “It’s actually closer to 80%.”
The traditional media dismisses these sorts of data points. What’s that got to do with the Wage Price Index, after all? It’s surely that widely reported gaffes, not door-knocks, change votes.
As once a union organiser, I get how impressive it is to put this all together. It suggests there’s a deep and engaged activist team across the Kooyong community, each with their own networks, friendships and families, creating a presence and real stir that no voters will be able to miss.
It works on an old union organising saw: the best way — often the only way — to get someone to do something new (join a union, change the voting habits of a lifetime) is to ask them, one by one by one.
Look at the US 2020 election: due to COVID, Democrats held off door-knocking while Republicans kept at it. The result? Unexpected Democrat losses in local elections, even while Joe Biden was carrying the national vote.
This Kooyong data point, along with all the other scraps of news and social media out of once-safe conservative electorates, suggests something big is happening: we could be seeing the biggest shake-up of the blue side of Australia’s two-party system in one hundred years, probably the biggest since 1922 when the nascent Country Party seized the rural and regional base of conservative politics.
Since the late 1990s Hanson explosion, conservative parties have chased a certain type of voter: Howard’s battlers, Abbot’s tradies, Morrison’s quiet Australians. Rural and regional, white settler, manual workers, unlikely to have finished high school. It’s the base of right-wing populists around the world from Trump to Marine Le Pen.
Lech Blaine in his Quarterly Essay last year dubbed them (not unaffectionately) “parochials”. Guardian Australia’s Katharine Murphy last year called them “men at risk of voting Labor”.
Trouble is, in an urban and increasingly diverse society, the Howard-Abbott-Morrison strategy depends on the nose-holding of comfortably off-city voters in, say, Sydney’s North Shore and Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, as they stick with the party of their parents.
Election by election — particularly at the state level — that loyalty has weakened. Now it looks set to collapse. Here’s an election story: will Morrison’s legacy be that as he deepens the Liberal’s hold on regional “parochials”, he loses the urban base that is the future of any viable conservative politics in Australia?
As far as televised debates between the leaders are concerned, why the heck aren’t any and all debates hosted by the ABC? They are, after all, the national broadcaster and (repeatedly) proven to be impartial. Why should these debates be hosted by private enterprise TV chanels at all?
And especially by “pay-to-see TV” companies owned by any foreigner – privatising access to open democratic process through “elucidation” and possible enlightenment – when that same press pimps one side of politics over the other.
I think, commercial TV is rapidly losing credibility, and election reports are losing their independence, due to their owners whims. Gambling adverts saturate TV programs including news and sport broadcasts. Lets have the debate sponsored the betting agencies, It won’t bother me, as I won’t be watching.
If Laurie Oakes was one of the Nine journos involved in the debate he would lend gravitas. But those days are long gone following Oakes’ retirement.
The ABC should be hosting any debates, not commercial TV with vested interests.
I recall reading around the time of Malcolm Fraser’s death that he had been trying to produce a new centre/centre-right party. That is the true hope for the right of Australian politics. For the moderates to ditch the LNP right wingers and ideologues, to join with (or reintegrate) the rising tide of Teal independents, and create a true Burkean liberal party anchored somewhat closer to the sensible centre that the current LNP. Hardest part is getting hold of the Liberal name in some shape way or form, which clearly has brand power attached to it.
I hope we see a new political movement encompassing moderate liberals and teal independents. There is no hope that they can get the liberal name – but it carries baggage, they would be better off without it.
If such a party existed it could provide a sensible alternative government to Labor, with a shared understanding of reality and facts. We need this so that our Westminster democracy will function.
Main Stream Media has changed over the years from Reporting the News, to now lacing that Reporting with Opinion.
This is actually disastrous as we now have Media influencing Voters minds.
For instance, a quick daily read of the Australian each day will provide you with a very right leaning version of events, congratulating the Coalition, and criticizing Labor at every step, and their comments sections on articles have become an Echo Chamber. This type of Reporting is repeated in other Murdoch Media.
At times the Guardian and ABC seem to over compensate for the barrage of partisan reporting from the Murdoch Media, and have favorable articles to the Left side of Politics.
Interesting evolution and the comment ‘conservative parties have chased a certain type of voter‘. One would suggest the electorate is not organic but cohorts, demographics or otherwise, have been developed by media and pollsters for ease of industrial like national or state campaigns? ONe of the main cohorts now are the above median age who are still less diverse, educated and outward looking.
Further, why door knocks are effective for any MP or party and the nation is because it supports the main game of messaging more accurately, i.e. ‘word of mouth’, research has shown to be the most trusted channel and therefore, the objective of advertisers too to create a ‘buzz’ or ‘vibe’.
However, our media has become consolidated and hollowed out mass of three LNP allied players, while others limply follow, but due to the legislative support for the former, messaging on (their not people’s) policies has become top down and national, i.e. not targeted except easier dog whistling of sociocultural issues through mass media.
It had been found in the last election in the UK that tabloid &/or legacy media was having less effect (while same media proprietors are desperate to maintain influence), possibly being impacted by fewer older and rusted on consumers of legacy media formats?