A remarkable campaign

The campaign reminded me of the 1972 election. It had a similar feeling then, a similar sense of theatre, though a less consciously formed one, and 1972 produced what I would argue was a similar change in Australian politics to what we witnessed in the 35 days of the 2010 campaign.

The 1972 campaign and the 2010 campaign were peculiar for their Australian-ness.

It would have been very difficult to observe them from a distance and to be confident of knowing exactly what was going on.

It was their Australian-ness that made them special and removed them from the global campaign playbook that had dominated the 2007 campaign and some others before it.

Global instruments such as Twitter played a role but the role was distilled and localised by media, candidates and citizen participants, so that it would have been difficult for a follower in say, Charlotte North Carolina, or Belgrade Serbia, to get a real fix on what was going on.

Part of the explanation for the Australian-ness lay with the frame played out by the candidates - the issues were local thus the language and posture were also local.

There was no hint of elite-ism or snobbery from candidates not any attempt to elevate the campaign above discussion of budgie smugglers, sausage sizzles and rangas.

The peculiarly local was what made the campaign so exciting.

And its Australian-ness was played out by candidates of all stripes. Who will ever forget Penny Wong’s drawl, Kevin Rudd’s “time to zip”, Bob Katter’s hat, or Barnaby Joyce on a horse?

In a complex environment the media were not always across all the issue and matters that made up the campaign.

They were informed themselves to a certain level but beyond that they require the substantiation of experts and professionals to plug the gaps.

The 2010 campaign was therefore remarkable for its balance between seriousness of policy delivery by the government and the opposition and the flippancy and humour of many of the candidates - all of it reported by the news media.