The twilight of the elites: Labor must return to its heartland

One example was Mark Latham’s attempt to justify the inordinate delay of the opposition in coming to a decision on the FTA. His justifications - TV content and the PBS - were transparent distractions. And the commentariat fell for it.

The statutory entrenchment of the 55 per cent Australian content transmission quota was pointless. The reason? This quota is purely cosmetic. (The only real protection for Australian content is in the non-statutory sub quotas, particularly for drama). Most commentators, with some honourable exceptions, declared the intellectual property issues surrounding the PBS too hard to analyse.

They persisted even when Mark Latham, caught out on one supposedly necessary protection, quickly substituted another. A half-decent analysis would have shown he was protecting the people against something which was not going to happen, and even if it did, would not affect the prices the people paid for their medicine under the PBS. Instead, they took the easy and biased course of declaring Latham the winner on this stoush.

Another earlier example was the extent of the government’s knowledge of Abu Ghraib. Australians were just not interested, but the commentariat went into overdrive to ring every scrap of nothing out of it.

Both the ALP leadership and the commentariat are out of touch. Labor has to return to its heartland and to reflect their values. As for the commentariat, they are doomed to continuing irrelevance.