There’s a good old-fashioned stoush between politicians and media proprietors under way. Grab some popcorn, sit back and enjoy.
Tony Abbott first. Good on him for elevating the issue of the Government’s $500 million handout to the FTAs. It’s rare to see an Opposition leader ready to take on the FTAs. The last leader to do so was Mark Latham.
And like Latham, Abbott went for the big hit, claiming it was a bribe.
In doing so, Abbott cut the ground from under the shadow — or, given his profile, more correctly invisible — communications minister Tony Smith, who told Peter Martin last week “preserving quality Australian content is important and there is little doubt the cost of delivering that content is higher at present … While we acknowledge support is warranted during transition to digital television, we look forward to considering further details and the government’s costings.”
In demonstration of a process that will be repeated all the way to election day, if Abbott lasts that long, Rudd picked up Abbott’s shoot-from-the-lip looseness and ran with it, even though Abbott has started backing away from the “bribe” line. Out went the Prime Minister to the press gallery yesterday, under pretence of announcing $10 million — $10 million — for homelessness (another area where Abbott’s indiscipline undid him), to suggest that Abbott was claiming Laurie Oakes, Mark Riley and Paul Bongiorno could all be bought.
The FTA response was savage. Abbott copped an absolute bollocking last night on the three news programs that count with voters — the Seven, Nine and 10 news. The Nine coverage was devastating, with Oakes telling Abbott he couldn’t be bought and Abbott looking like he was trying to evade questioning.
See now why it’s a rare, and usually unsuccessful, politician who picks a fight with the FTAs?
Abbott has now carefully picked out the worst of all positions on the issues — he won’t commit to ending the handout, despite the coalition line about needing to rein in spending, but he’s enraged the FTAs.
Then there’s Rupert Murdoch, in town to celebrate his mum’s birthday on the weekend. Yesterday afternoon Crikey’s Glenn Dyer and the Ten Network found out that the mogul, who’s been having the odd senior moment lately, had a secret meeting with Abbott on Sunday morning. News Ltd papers this morning reported the meeting and the fact that the issue of the handouts had not been discussed.
Which means it’s pure coincidence that after stony silence for a week, Abbott only began pursuing the issue following his meeting with Murdoch. Not long after the News Ltd media began pursuing the story they steadfastly ignored last week.
Or perhaps it was being goaded by Crikey that did that?
The issue in all this is, has Murdoch decided to back Abbott? Labor sources are suggesting Abbott has promised anti-siphoning reform in exchange for News Ltd backing. This ignores the point that no politician who values their skin will ever undertake meaningful reform of anti-siphoning, for fear of the backlash from the FTAs, and eventually from sports fans infuriated that they have to switch to subscription television to watch the footy or the cricket.
Then again, The Australian, which continues to bleed money and readers, has ramped up its attacks on the Government this week to an hysterical pitch. Dennis Shanahan has been particularly florid, furiously spinning the Newspoll result while obscuring the fact that the 2PP outcome increased for the Government, and running the line that voters are shifting from Rudd to Abbott when the evidence over recent months suggests voters are switching leftward across columns — Labor voters to the Greens, denting Labor’s primary vote, highly conservative voters back to a more appealing Liberal party under Abbott, increasing the coalition’s vote.
The only risk in all that is that, as infuriating as it may be for Shanahan, the Government is still ahead in the polls and first-term governments rarely get tipped out. Murdoch knows it’s bad for business to back losers. And while Murdoch has been complaining about stimulus packages in America and the idea of big government apparently offends him, he’d be smart enough to be aware that all media companies have indirectly benefited massively from the Government’s stimulus package — particularly in terms of retail advertising.
As always when watching these stoushes, the problem is working out whether any of the participants have anything remotely resembling clean hands or pure principles.
I am no fan of Tony Abbott but the disgraceful attack on him by the journalistic attack dogs of the free to air networks shows that the $250 million “bribe” is already working. The networks have closed ranks in defence of this unsubstantiated hand out. They have been progressively receiving substantial concessions from government especially in the length and quantity of advertising that effectively stops me from watching this media channel and this is just the icing on the cake. The “attack dogs “should have been criticising the government for handing over $250 million per annum with virtually no strings attached, but of course this would be professional journalism.
This proposal “gift” is good politics, but appallingly bad public administration, and Rudd has been caught flat-footed try to justify it. The $250 million pa is a permanent concession which could have just as easily have been funded by direct government outlays targeting specific outcomes and leaving the charges to the networks unchanged.
The controversy concerning this gift has also been a convenient circuit breaker to take the heat off Conroy for the $43 billion NBN rollout with no business case, and his politically motivated Internet censorship proposals.
The solution to the ant-siphoning rules seems simple to me. Yes, let the FTAs have first pick but if they don’t guarantee to schedule their choices for live coverage across Australia, let pay TV have the rights. In other words, FTA get first refusal on the events on the list, keeping the politicians on side with the public. I’d guess pay TV will pick up a lot of extra programming this way.