No joy for the 'boys' on the campaign bus

In this campaign the key objective for Labor was to get pictures - for tonight’s TV news and tomorrow’s front page - of Kevin in either a hospital or a school. Smiling. For John Howard, the objective was to get a picture of Howard hugging blokes. Hugging women and children is a no no, but hugging blokes, particularly aspirational blokes from ordinary working families, shows that Howard is not mean and tricky, and that he’s not anti-worker - in fact he likes them so much he runs around the country hugging them.

And then, almost in a class of their own, are the visits to schools where the candidate gives high fives, signs autographs, and generally attempts to generate some hysteria among 14-year-old girls. What unmasks this as a campaign stunt is the fact that school kids can’t vote, but footage of them treating pollies like pop stars always makes the nightly TV news before the first ad break.

You can measure how successful the backdrops were by the number of times they are subsequently used by the TV networks as stock footage. Probably the most widely used stock footage of the 2007 campaign was that of Rudd and Peter Garrett in the glass bottomed boat at Green Island, and the subsequent sand kicking stroll along the beach. All staged for the cameras. The fact they were accompanied by a sun bleached blonde reef guide just added value to the footage. Labor subsequently won the seat of Leichardt from whence all that footage came.

On the road, preference is usually given at the “stand ups” to answering questions from local media outlets, so that at an announcement on water policy at some dried up waterhole in regional Australia, the reporter from the local Galargombone Clarion who knows bugger all about the macro-policy settings on the issue, will get the call, instead of a Gallery reporter who at least know what the initials IPCC stand for.

Very few media organisations are willing to expose the tactics; the 7.30 Report ran a desultory piece by Heather Ewart on a slow news day out of Melbourne.

Yes as we saw with APEC, the greatest threat to the daily campaign message comes, not from the unscripted, accidental encounters on the morning walk or in the shopping mall, from old ladies stomped by the media scrum, or silly old buggers, but from the equally disciplined, scripted, well planned and executed Chaser. It might appear anarchic, but it’s not. It is said that the war on terror never ends; let’s hope the same applies to the War on Everything because this is one battle Oakes and O’Brien, Brissenden and Bongornio are not willing fight in public.

Finally, by way of a footnote. The media organisations have to band together to take the election debates out of the hands of the parties, and out of that suburban drinking hole and gambling den that calls itself the National Press Club.