Election 2010: Day 14 (or waste and mismanagement - the media)

As I say 95 percent of you can go home. You are, as they say in the army, a waste of rations.

And when it was announced that Kevin Rudd was in hospital to have his gall-bladder removed,well that was definitely it for the day for policy. The news was gone for the day. Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard might as well have spent the day playing tennis and golf.

And to top it all off, the journos decided to then have fun at Rudd’s expense on twitter trying to make up joke song titles about his having surgery. Because yeah surgery is such a laughing matter. Classy.

This blog to be honest was spurred by my reading of one of the best articles you’ll read this year. It will come as no surprise to many that it is by Laura Tingle. She writes of the media during the RSPT period, and of how the role of lobbyists has changed since the Hawke and Keating days:

Keating’s argument encapsulates much of what has changed since 1993 in the way public debates about policy and politics are conducted. In the age of major reform in the 1980s and 1990s, it was policy that ruled. These days it is politics.

Then, the community assumed governments would act in the interests of the community as a whole while business would act in its own interest. A reforming government made policy the base from which its political performance was assessed.

The ramifications for the way the media worked, for the way lobby groups worked and, as a result, for the way politics worked, cannot be underestimated.

A policy issue would be put up and debated not primarily on the basis of whether it was good or bad for the government’s fortunes, or whether industry groups would like it, but whether it was good or bad policy.

Lobby groups were seen as rent seekers or, pragmatically, as groups seeking greater advantage from a policy outcome, not ‘potent political opponents’ or representatives of the national interest whose claims about the impact of policy could go unquestioned.

In such an environment, Keating was able to assert Canberra’s better grip on the country’s needs and get away with it despite the devastation of a savage policy-induced recession.

This started to change under the Howard government.

It is fascinating reading from a journalist who, unlike 95 percent of her colleagues, has a memory that goes back more than 6 months. Read it!