More than ever, this election seems to be about two parties pretending to be politicians, rather than actually being them. They know what politicians do, and how they do it, and they’re mimicking it, but it’s unconvincing, a script read by poor actors with no insight into their characters or genuine feeling for their lines.
Last night’s debate was more of the same. Debate is a misnomer; this was a joint press conference, with no interaction beyond the handshakes at the start and the finish. Of course there was no “knockout blow” — the contenders stayed in their corners the whole time and swung haymakers in the others’ general direction. The only blow that would be landed – like at your run-of-the-mill press conference – would be inflicted on themselves.
The ossified format, designed to ensure not merely that the candidates never actually spoke to each other but that the inquisitors couldn’t subject the leaders to any pressure, removed all possibility of either risk or interest.
Even so, the leaders stuck rigidly to their talking points, each determined to get across their key messages. You could see Gillard rework questions to get onto Workchoices; Abbott, more clunkily, position himself to get onto to his pet four-point plan. That’s what politicians do, after all, repeat things, home in on their opponents’ weak points, and doubtless they thought they were giving a reasonable impression of that.
One of the networks should dig out the footage of Paul Keating and John Hewson ripping into each other in 1993 and show us how real politicians used to do it.
The Press Gallery correctly surmised the event would be a dud and stayed away in droves. I don’t know if it showed up on TV but there were a LOT of empty seats at Press Club. Labor seemed to go most of the way to filling its allotment; Telstra had a row of seats behind the inquisitors that they filled; the media row behind that was mostly empty; the Liberals didn’t come close to filling their seats, although the Abbott family had the front row. Consequently the atmosphere in the room was as flat as the debate itself.
Compare and contrast the 2007 event held in a crowded Great Hall at Parliament House before a considerably livelier audience.
For the record, I thought Gillard edged it in content, but that in itself is a moral victory for Abbott. Gillard managed to connect both Abbott’s tax rises and Workchoices with cost of living issues, and presented something approaching a coherent story about where she wanted the country to go. Abbott made an effort to be less negative, but was at his best attacking incompetence and waste, and his line about not trusting Labor because Kevin Rudd couldn’t trust them was a good one. More to the point, I suspect there’s not a single voter in the country whose vote would have been affected either way by proceedings.
The only momentary interest came right at the finish. At the end of his closing address, Abbott said “so this election will determine whether the Prime Minister is to be elected by the people or by the powerbrokers. Whether Prime Ministers are to be chosen on the basis of the job they’ve done, or gender.”
If Tony Abbott think Julia Gillard became Prime Minister because of her gender, or that the only way she’ll win the election is if female voters reflexively vote along gender lines, then he really does have a problem with women, and not just a political one.
This is largely true, though I did hear a woman on an ABC Radio vox pop the other day say that she would be voting Labor on the basis of Gillard’s gender, and that alone.
If Tony Abbott think Julia Gillard became Prime Minister because of her gender, or that the only way she’ll win the election is if female voters reflexively vote along gender lines, then he really does have a problem with women, and not just a political one
So Bernard you are suddenly reversing your position after the Newspoll and Debate?
It will be those that vote for Julia Gillard on the basis of gender in ignorance of her record as a member of the infamous ‘gang of 4’ and negligent program management that have the gender problem, not Tony Abbott.
Well done, Bernard. There was only one contentious statement made all evening and you hit it on the head.
This has become a sad parody of an election, being fought by wimps, on whe wrong issues, without passion or energy.
Surely, in the dying few weeks of this “contest” there is still hope that an engaging issue will emerge, that debate with fire and venom will break out somewhere. I’m pessimistic about the chances, but I still hold out some hope.
This election will, otherwise, go down in history as one that was lost by both sides, in the sense that neither will emerge better for having been involved.