Oz Election Thread #4 - Gillard's Labor

I hope it burns him in the electorate.

Unfair and unbalanced: how News failed to fell government
Rodney Tiffen*
September 21, 2010/the AGE

Fair and balanced. According to Chris Mitchell, the editor-in-chief of The Australian, the Prime Minister thanked him for the newspaper's election coverage being ''fair and balanced''. Is it a coincidence she used the much-mocked slogan of Rupert Murdoch's American TV news channel Fox News?

The slogan is so synonymous with the network that when the left-wing American media identity Al Franken titled his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, Fox (unsuccessfully) mounted a lawsuit, claiming the title infringed their trademark.

This most controversial of American news outlets - trusted according to a recent survey by 74 per cent of Republicans but only 30 per cent of Democrats - still provokes outrage. Earlier this year, the former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines thought Fox's conduct so betrayed journalistic standards that other news organisations should ''blow the whistle'' on its propaganda campaign against the Obama administration. Even Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law, Matthew Freud, said he was ''sickened and ashamed'' by Fox's ''horrendous and sustained disregard'' of journalistic standards.

More than any other media proprietor in the English-speaking world, Murdoch has recognised and cultivated the commercial and political benefits of partisanship. Having been an enthusiastic supporter of Margaret Thatcher in Britain, when he was building his American beachhead with the purchase of the New York Post in the 1970s, he was determined to make his mark.

He campaigned for Ed Koch for mayor, which Koch said made his victory possible. His opponent, Mario Cuomo, lamented that when Murdoch endorses you, he hands the whole newspaper over to your campaign.

In Australia, News Ltd titles account for about two-thirds of daily newspaper circulation, far higher than any proprietor enjoys in any other established democracy. Whatever the company's virtues, such domination is not healthy for democracy or for the development of professional excellence and media diversity. Increasingly, News Ltd manifests monopoly arrogance, not least in its attitudes to anyone who criticises it.

This year, Murdoch's Daily Telegraph published an editorial advocating the election of an Abbott government, starting on the front page and running over the next two. It is not only Labor sympathisers who thought the editorial views of the Telegraph and The Australian informed the papers' selective news priorities and the framing of their coverage.

When the Telegraph was following up one of the leaks disclosed by Laurie Oakes and Peter Hartcher, who reported that Gillard had privately opposed the size of the pension increases, it assailed her with many critical comments from pensioners - ''live a day in our shoes''. Strangely, none of those quoted expressed gratitude that the Labor government had increased the rate by $30 a week, or contrasted Labor's greater generosity compared with the Howard government's.

But the most notable aspect of the story was the image of a haggard 80-year-old Gillard dominating the front page. I cannot remember the Telegraph ever doing this to a male leader or to a Liberal, and it is hard to imagine it doing so.

Its opinion pages carry a constricted range of views, dominated by the prolific but predictable outpourings of the columnists Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt. My guess is that they have little impact electorally, read only by those addicted to a daily dose of outrage.

The Australian has a much greater pluralism in its opinion columns, even if still skewed towards the right. But the paper's key feature is the way its news judgments are filtered through its political prism. There is little clear air for alternative views or developments to emerge. Look, for example, at its coverage of climate change over the past few years. Only Labor government stuff-ups - never government achievements - are deemed newsworthy.

Of course, News Ltd bias this year never approached the levels of 1975 when, for the only time in our history, the company's journalists went on strike to protest against editorial distortion. Bill Hayden joked that if Gough Whitlam had walked across Lake Burley Griffin, The Australian's headline would have been ''Gough can't swim''.

But what is most remarkable this time is these papers' bizarre post-election behaviour. When the Gillard government gained majority support in the House, News Ltd were even sorer losers than the Liberal Party. The Daily Telegraph headlined it ''The Big Steal'' and its opening statement was that Gillard's offer of a ministry to Rob Oakeshott had secured her power.

An editorial in The Australian declared the Greens ''are hypocrites'' and ''should be destroyed at the ballot box''. Putting to one side the editorial's Cromwellian absolutism, more worrying is that the paper seems determined to afford its readers only coverage of the Greens that confirms its view of them. Without irony, it then denounced Bob Brown's criticism as ''bullying''.

Sometimes the paper seems willing to say anything that will create a sensation. How else to explain its chief political correspondent arguing five days after an election that we need another poll? Never mind parliament, never mind the constitution. Let's move from three-year terms to two-week ones. This was simply crazy - like a Fox.


*Rodney Tiffen is emeritus professor of government and international relations at the University of Sydney.

I wonder if the fact that NSW and Vic didn't destroy the ALP to the extent predicted, especially in the former, is partly due to them being the only two with non-New Ltd Dailys.

Of course, News Ltd bias this year never approached the levels of 1975 when, for the only time in our history, the company's journalists went on strike to protest against editorial distortion. Bill Hayden joked that if Gough Whitlam had walked across Lake Burley Griffin, The Australian's headline would have been ''Gough can't swim''.

Katter rounds on 'troublemaker' Abbott
Posted 1 hour 12 minutes ago

Independent Federal MP Bob Katter says Opposition Leader Tony Abbott will be harshly judged over his failure to honour a deal to allow pairing of the speaker in Parliament.

The deal, made by the two major parties and the independents after the federal election, would have made sure the speaker's side of politics was not disadvantaged by donating a member to sit in the speaker's chair.

Yesterday Mr Abbott confirmed that he was walking away from the agreement, saying the deal was unconstitutional.

It is now likely the Government will be forced to nominate a Labor speaker, which will reduce its majority from two to just one vote in the House of Representatives.

It means even a single absence from the Government's ranks could lead to defeat on the chamber floor.

Mr Katter says Mr Abbott's approach will undermine the Coalition cause.

"I think he has established a most unfortunate reputation for himself," he said.

"I think he is going in there with an adversarial attitude and is not seeing the bigger picture and I think that he's making a very bad political judgement there.

"The people are also sick and tired of this sort of approach. ...

Coalition MP to break ranks in speaker deadlock
Updated 33 minutes ago

The Federal Government has found a Coalition MP who is prepared to be deputy speaker and pair with Speaker Harry Jenkins, the ABC understands.

ABC News 24 political editor Chris Uhlmann has been told the deal is close to being sealed.

Any such move by a Coalition MP would preserve the Government's two-seat majority and would no doubt enrage the Opposition and its leader Tony Abbott.

This lunchtime Queensland Liberal MP Alex Somlyay, who was dumped as the Opposition's whip in the recent reshuffle, told ABC Radio Current Affairs that he had been approached for the deputy speaker's job and was considering his position.

Earlier he told ABC NewsRadio that he would speak publicly on the reported job offer later today. ...

Indigenous fight over wild rivers likely to turn ugly
Phillip Coorey
September 23, 2010

A nasty split has developed among the indigenous people of Cape York over Tony Abbott's plan to overturn the Queensland government's Wild Rivers Act.

Mr Abbott, acting on the advice of Noel Pearson, his friend and Cape York indigenous leader, will attempt to overturn the act from opposition using a private member's bill.

It will be a test of the new parliamentary arrangements with Mr Abbott needing the support of two of the Labor-leaning independents in the House of Representatives to be successful.

The Wild Rivers Act was passed by Queensland's Labor government in 2005. It limits development along pristine river systems to preserve them.

There are now 10 river systems protected by the act, including the Lockhart, Archer and Stewart rivers.

Mr Pearson and Mr Abbott argue that local indigenous people have lost control of their land and are unable to exploit the economic opportunities. They blame the environmentalist movement which drove the legislation.

But Murrandoo Yanner, of the Carpentaria Land Council, has joined calls from other indigenous leaders from the Cape and Gulf country to contend that Mr Pearson does not speak for them.

Mr Yanner backed a letter sent to the independent MP Rob Oakeshott on Tuesday by David Claudie, of the Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation, warning of ''unrestrained development'' should the act be overturned.

Mr Yanner said the act did not preclude locals from hunting and fishing and nor did it stop development. It just meant that there would have to be better environmental safeguards.

He noted there were negotiations afoot in the Wild Rivers area for the Lagoon Creek uranium mine on Westmoreland Station. ''You can develop anything provided you spend the extra money on the safeguards and so you bloody should,'' he told the Herald. Mr Yanner said Mr Pearson was a hypocrite who was ''leading whitefellas astray''.

''He took Abbott for a ride,'' Mr Yanner said.

Before the election, a private member's bill sponsored by Mr Abbott to overturn the Wild Rivers Act passed the Senate with the support of the independents Nick Xenophon and Steve Fielding. It was opposed by the Greens and Labor and never progressed in the House of Representatives.

However, under the reforms agreed to for this Parliament, time has been set aside to debate private members' bills and they must be voted on.

In his speech on Tuesday, Mr Abbott said overturning the act was the Coalition's first priority.

''Far better for the national Parliament to restore to the people of Cape York control of their own land than to inflict on them a new detention centre for asylum seekers,'' he said, a reference to the new detention centre planned for Weipa.

Senator Xenophon told the Herald he still supported overturning the act but wanted to talk to all stakeholders before voting again.

Queensland's Resources Minister, Stephen Robertson, said Mr Abbott had no mandate to overturn the act.

He had written to all the federal independents offering them a briefing.

Calculating by Tony - not such a big issue that it matters to him if he loses.

Kerry O'Brien ends reign as 7.30 host
Posted 18 minutes ago

Kerry O'Brien, the veteran host of the ABC's 7.30 Report program, has announced he is stepping down from the role.

O'Brien has been the current affairs program's editor and presenter for 15 years.

He says it is time for a new chapter. ...<cont>