The Independent Australian

 There has been a steep decline in the past decade in the quality and influence of Canberra’s Parliamentary Press Gallery at the same time as the ability of successive Federal Governments to manipulate and suppress information has greatly increased, according to Alan Fitzgerald* (Issue No 19, Spring 2009)

 

 There was a time when getting a job in the Press Gallery was seen as the pinnacle of a journalist’s career. Today being a spin doctor for the Government or a lobbyist and/or information director for private enterprise ranks higher.  In other words, today’s journalists have decided that if you can’t beat ‘em, you may as well join them.

 

It is doubtful if we will see again journalists who are prepared to spend decades working in the Press Gallery. The loss of their collective political knowledge will be felt in the media as their successors come and go.

 

Was there ever a golden age in the Press Gallery? It is doubtful although old journalists may like to think so when they get sentimental about deceased colleagues over a few beers at the National Press Club. But what has changed is the diminished standing and ability of the Gallery to do its work and inform public opinion.

 

The Gallery’s increasing failure to hold the Government to account is an example. How often these days the Gallery goes along with the Government’s spin and spends more time attacking the Opposition than the Executive.

Like sheep, the Press Gallery uniformly adopt a position and stick to it. The benefit of retreating into ‘group think’ is that journalists will be all right or wrong on major issues together. It’s a recipe for mediocrity.

 

Quite amazing that individuals in the Gallery can’t think for themselves but fall into line as if collectively seized of the truth.  The Gallery’s handling of global warming and the boat people are cases in point.

There are no global warming sceptics in the Gallery. They have swallowed the computer modelling whole. It’s the new religion that casts out doubters. Members of the Gallery prefer to hunt as a pack.  There is safety in numbers. For a profession that relishes exposing and standing in judgement on individuals, journalists are surprisingly sensitive and hostile to criticism directed at themselves.

 

The Howard-haters among them seem determined to use the current influx of asylum seekers (or illegal migrants as Greg Sheridan rightly calls them) to revisit the past.  What they hate is that Howard’s ‘Pacific Solution’ and the turnaround of the Good Ship Tampa, had the support of the Australian electorate. (The fact that Howard was playing a three card trick on the voters at the time is another matter).

 

They can only retrospectively punish the voters by becoming lobbyists for the refugee lobby and urging increased numbers as a way of giving the voters a two-fingered salute for veering from the path of virtue. If there is one thing the Gallery has in common with the  Rudd Labor Government it is a contempt for public opinion and a distrust of the voters having a say in events that rightly concern them. The Press Gallery like the Government hold to the illusion that only they know what is best for the country.  At least the politicians have the courage to stand for election.

 

The Press Gallery’s decline is matched by Parliament’s at the hands of the executive. The Prime Minister has not only kneecapped and gagged his own backbench but also treats Parliament and its procedures with equal contempt.

The losers in the relevance of Parliament are the voters and democracy itself.

 

The prestige of Speaker of the House of Representatives is hardly high  under its current incumbent. Genial he may be; but this hardly offsets a perceived  bias towards the Government.  He is not likely to want to engineer his own execution by a display of blatant independence. Meetings of the House are a sham if they are to be judged by the quality of the debates. Most members are absent from the chamber because they know the content of speeches in advance  - read in monotone rarely delivered extempore. They consist of clichés or the party line, words lacking in spontaneity, wit, or intelligence.

Is it any wonder that journalists report very little of what is said; preferring to work from the press release that says it all in summary form?

 

In defence of journalists, one could argue that lazy reporting has  much to do with the fact that media companies – their employers – are now run by cost cutting accountants. They are not interested in news or adequately funding bureaus to enable them to research and actually break stories of national significance. They prefer to have their ‘content providers’  top and tail the news agenda set by the Government,  so long as they also keep the phone bill under control.  

The public is offered ‘News Lite’, a bland miss-mash of comment and fact that can be regurgitated across multimedia platforms. It is spun so fine that if you held it to the light you could see through it.

 

Question Time almost succeeds on some days in reminding us all what a Parliament is meant to be about. Sadly, however,  it is increasingly undermined by the rehearsed Dorothy Dixes written for MPS incapable of crafting their own questions ‘without notice’. The backbenchers are like puppets dancing to the tune of the Government’s spin masters.

We might as well be watching the party cadres perform in the old Supreme Soviet or at a current meeting of the Chinese Communist Party. No wonder Kevin and the Chinese leadership get on so well together as natural authoritarians.

 

One amusing aspect of Parliament is watching who gets to sit behind the Prime Minister and any Minister standing at the despatch box. These four seats always on camera are set aside for ‘The Noddies’. These backbenchers, known only to their immediate families, are given ’exposure’ to their electorates and Australia at large. They, in return, are obliged to nod sagely at the wisdom of the government  Minister talking at the time, smile or laugh at the Minister’s comments about the Opposition.It is like watching a circus performance by trained monkeys. Apart from their obscurity, these MPs share two other characteristics: (a) they hold their electorates with small majorities and (b) they are as thick as two planks.The Noddies in the current parliamentary session are women. The blonde bimbo has been moved to the second row (left) , the ugly brunette brought forward to front (right). There must be some reason to vote for them.

Question Time has now become a tightly written show with a theme to the questions allegedly asked ‘without notice’ but which Government Ministers confidently rise to answer, reading from the script in hand which miraculously has the answer.

How clever of the front bench to have anticipated the question from ‘ The  Honourable Member who has shown a keen interest in this matter’.[cries of ‘author, author’ should resound from the government benches]. Parliament is further debased by the  stage managed ‘unruliness’ that erupts when the Government front bench employs mock indignation and feigned moral superiority over the Opposition.  In response, the Opposition resort to impotent points of order knowing they have no hope of succeeding. When did a Speaker last support an Opposition point of order against a Government Minister?

 

The Prime Minister (who loves the sound of his own voice) and the Deputy Prime Minister ) don’t answer questions - they phil buster, wasting time and reducing the number of questions that can be asked in the time allowed.

The Prime Minister lounges over the despatch box, back to the Speaker and half turned towards the backbench as he loftily expounds his views on world affairs. It’s a performance worthy of a PM in Victorian times and an insight into Rudd’s hubris. Julia Gillard’s voice, recorded on continuous loop, on the other hand would make an excellent tool to break down obdurate terrorists under interrogation but for the fact it would be banned by the UN as a step too far in torture.

 

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has acquired the diplomat’s ability to say nothing at length and has mastered the ability to obscure the facts rather than shed light on them.Recently, in response to a question about whether a boatload of Tamil asylum seekers had sabotaged their boat before calling on Australia to rescue them, Smith said he had seen a report in The Australian that morning but had no knowledge of the matter.  How about getting in touch with the Australian vessel that carried out the rescue and asking them the bloody question? As Minister, all he to do was get his staff put in a phone call. Smith has become the new Sergeant Schultz of Hogan’s Heroes fame. His response to any difficult question is to claim “I know nothing’’.

 

His performance in the House is only topped by that of the former Minister for Home Affairs, the utterly pompous Bob Debus.When an asylum boat was set on fire, and five people killed while RAN sailors were on board, Debus  claimed he didn’t know what had happened (and presumably didn’t want to know).  He was either lying or incompetent. He had the gall to say that as Minister it would be inappropriate for him to comment because the incident was subject to a police inquiry.  This was an attempt to close down debate about the asylum seekers for fear it would become an issue.

 

The Government puts more store in managing issues by dissembling than in solving them.

 

Five months later, the Northern Territory Police said they didn’t know who set the boat on fire, which doesn’t say much for their investigative skills. It says more about the asylum seekers ability to lie. They were rewarded for their non-cooperation by being given asylum and freed from detention. Surely keeping them in detention would be an incentive for them to tell what they knew.  The person(s) responsible for the manslaughter may be among those granted asylum.

It is surely unusual for a Government to be uninterested seeing persons brought to justice for a crime. Maybe there are new rules for asylum seekers on the way to citizenship?

 

The Minister’s response was that there will be a coronial inquiry into the deaths and if someone is found to be responsible then some action may be taken. The Government obviously would prefer not to know the truth.

It is not a far stretch to claim that across the board the Government routinely undermines democracy by refusing to answer questions journalists put to it about controversial matters. For a Minister’s spokesman to say ‘no comment’ assumes that the Minister somehow is above such accountability. He may deign to make a comment when it is to his advantage to do so. This may take place when the Minister and his advisors have had enough time to fabricate a plausible answer.

 

It used to be said that truth was the first casualty of war. Today truth is the inevitable casualty of government.

Wilson Tuckey, the cantankerous old backbencher from WA, was given the treatment by the Prime Minister because he suggested that any terrorist wanting to slip into the country could be among a boatload of asylum seekers. A very reasonable supposition because often these people destroy their identity documents.

 

PM Kevin Rudd went into unctuous moral hyper-drive, demanding that Tuckey be disendorsed for daring to raise such a question. The PM adopted his sincere voice for the occasion. He was a nano-second away from crocodile tears.

Rudd has several tones of voice and facial gestures he employs for various occasions. The ‘sincere voice’ is accompanied by the head turned down, the eyes narrowly focused and the face as expressionless as a masque.

The PM of course was using the Tuckey statement  to beat  Opposition leader Turnbull over the head. Turnbull, exercising his usual weak political judgement, obligingly criticised Tuckey. Game, set and match to a master of manipulation.

 

Malcolm Turnbull since he became leader has taken on the appearance of a Portrait of Dorian Gray. He has not only physically declined in front of our eyes but appears worn down by his daily attempts to square the circle.

 

The Opposition, which will be decimated at the next election, is not helped by the performance of the Deputy Leader who has all the charisma and bight of a teacher of domestic science. She once got up in Parliament and said Kevin Rudd should be sent to the ‘naughty corner’ for a misdemeanour. That childish language had some MPS imagining the rather sexless Deputy as a dominatrix, wearing black leather  and boots, wielding a whip in a house of pain and pleasure.

If that is the worst the PM has to fear then he has nothing to worry about from her.

 

A weak Opposition, a compliant Parliamentary Press Gallery, and an over bearing Prime Minister is a poor combination for the country. Thank God for the Senate, the only thing standing between us and a guided democracy.  Given half an opportunity, Labor will always go too far. You can tolerate many things that happen in the House of Representatives but when Anthony Albanese takes the high moral ground it is time to reach for a bucket.

 

 

*Alan Fitzgerald is a journalist and a past President of the National Press Club.