The political is personal

[dolorosa_12]

Everyone expected me to become a journalist. My parents are journalists, and all their friends are journalists, and I grew up in Canberra, where it sometimes feels like everyone is either a journalist, a politician or a public servant. When I was growing up, the concepts of 'adult' and 'journalist' were almost interchangeable.

I say 'journalists', but what I really mean is 'political journalists'. My father is a very senior political journalist, and so are most of his friends. Hell, even the woman who introduced my dad to my stepmother is a senior political journalist.

I could tell you any number of wacky stories relating to politicians - like the time Paul Keating rang our home number in a blistering rage in 1992 because Dad had said something unflattering on the news, and I, a seven-year-old, answered the phone and had a rather surreal conversation with the surly Prime Minister. Or the time I got roped into a dinner at Bill Shorten's house (because his then-partner knew my stepmother) before Shorten became a politician, where everyone smoked indoors and he tried not to make his ambitions so obvious. Or the time when I was 22 years old and accidentally met Wayne Swan while I was wearing my pyjamas and he proceeded to grill me about opinions of Labor among young people.

Political journalists were my mentors. When I was a child they treated me like a sort of precocious pet, when I was a teenager they tried to steer me in that direction as a career, and when I did, briefly, become a journalist as an adult, they treated me as one of their own. I looked up to them and thought there could be no one as clever and eloquent and cynical and powerful as them. When my father broke very important political stories, I basked in reflected glory, and when Kevin Rudd first emerged as a credible candidate in 2007, I stood in the newsroom with the other journalists, glued to the TV and feeling as if I were participating in something powerful.

And I think it's fairly obvious that I'm extremely left-leaning, so I don't feel like I need to say anything about the horrors that have been going on in the Labor Party since it came to power, because you know what I will say, and what I will feel.

I have always responded to Australian politics like a journalist, even as a child, and even now, when it's five years since I could call myself such a thing. And that is why it hurts. Because political journalism in Australia, particularly after Gillard came to power, is a disgrace. It has reduced everything to personality - and so personality, not policy, came to matter. I am ashamed to have been a journalist, and to have had a journalist's mentality. My childhood memories are tainted. I feel like my trust has been betrayed.

The recent leadership spill upset me less because it will hand Australia to Tony Abbott on a plate, than because it is the crowning moment in a series of things that have shown the Australian political media in an extremely poor light. I know these priorities of mine are messed up, but it is what it is.

Comments

[ymarchoggwachul.livejournal.com]

I hope you're wrong about the electoral consequences of the spill - I'm not in love with Labor at the moment, but I think you understand what I mean... Anyway, I never liked the way in which Gillard became Prime Minister, but that says more about how I feel about Labor’s factionalism and fear of public opinion than about Gillard herself – she did her best under impossible circumstances.

Ronni, I have to share this with you. I was watching the ninemsn live feed last night during the leadership spill. My brother was complaining (with some justification) that they were filling in the time waiting with camera shot loops and banal observations about the corridor leading into the caucus, and about the parliamentary staff, whereas I played the devil’s advocate and asked him what else he'd expect in a live feed. And then… they started discussing the fact that the Coalition had prepared for Rudd’s return, and had released an advertisement two hours earlier… ok, fair enough…. BUT THEN THEY BROADCAST THE AD IN ITS ENTIREITY.

The vote result hadn’t even been made public and Abbott was already being given the kind of (free?) publicity, perfectly timed with a nation tuning in, that any politician would kill for. This wasn’t an ad break (ads were invisible on the feed anyway). The significance of the moment was obvious, as for all intents and purposes the actual 2013 election campaign started at 7pm last night.

It’s the kind of thing you see more often in the print media – the Herald-Sun (grr) or the SMH perhaps (although correct me if you think I'm wrong). I have compiled and shared lists of similar transgressions in recent years. Nothing (clearly) illegal, but a favourable six-page spread here ("YAY, Tony loves women!"), and there an almost-universal omission of the worst comments about Julia Gillard coming from the Coalition’s ranks… and suddenly a nation in support of things such as same-sex marriage and the just taxation of big business, that same nation will overwhelmingly advocate bringing a misogynistic, hyper-conservative like Abbott into power. The disparity between prevailing values and current voting intentions is almost incomprehensible.

As for the ad, I know a pro-Labor ad would never have been broadcast had this been a Liberal leadership contest. Can I prove it? No. Do I know I’m right? Yes.

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

Gillard never should have agreed to get rid of Rudd before the 2010 election. She should have let him contest the election and then challenge him after that if they'd lost. That whole business reflected really badly on the Labor Party as a whole, because it exposed how empty and power-hungry they were: they cared much more about winning than about the future of the country, or even of their party. Surely they could see it wasn't a very forward-thinking choice to make? Just about the only people who came out of that looking good were the two country Independents.

That business with the campaign ad for the Coalition is shocking, but the fact that it was on ninemsn doesn't surprise me at all. Channel Nine isn't exactly a bastion of left-leaning media.

As I was saying to catpuccino below, I'm not really following the Australian media at all, but I believe what you're saying. Again, I think this is happening for reasons I've outlined to catpuccino, mainly the fact that a lot of political journalists feel like they are part of the story, making things happen, rather than observers.

I think Australia can be tolerant, but only to a point. People may be in favour of same-sex marriage, but they (general 'they', not everyone, obviously) want their authority figures to be older, wealthy, straight, white men. I've always suspected that part of the reason why Rudd succeeded in coming to power in the first place was that he was (superficially) as close to being Howard as possible while still being in the Labor Party.

[ymarchoggwachul.livejournal.com]

Agreed on all points, basically. Please keep coming home for visits Ronni, but you’d find that *living* in a politically whacky Australia is even more depressing than reviewing your UK news feed.

Funnily enough, before ninemsn pointed out a nice soapbox for me to stand on, my original comment was going to simply observe that I would have *loved* to witness a conversation between a grumpy Paul Keating and a seven-year old Ronni. ;)

[catpuccino.livejournal.com]

I disagree that the spill will "hand Australia to Tony Abbott on a plate". As horrible as it is, I think that you're underestimating the hatred of Julia Gillard (which seems to be mostly based on her a. being a woman and b. not being very charismatic on TV) and I think the movement to a man in a blue tie, especially Rudd, who is for some bizarre reason, relatively popular with more of the electorate could at least perhaps help Labor lose by less. Everything JG did seemed to cause anger and hatred for her. Nothing really seemed to work for her. I said to someone about a year before JG got in that Australia was not ready for a female prime minister, and having just had one, I think Australia treated her appallingly.
And you know, it worked for Julia the first time around when they spilled Rudd.

And I was pretty angry with the media too. OK yes Rudd and his supporters have been trying to destabilise JG for her entire term as PM, but the media seemed to go along with it. The sickening Q&A episode where people in that stupid audience were all "we love you KRudd and Malcolm - why can't YOU be our leaders?". Ugh ugh (but OK, why can't the Coalition be led by ANYONE besides Abbott???). Why keep allowing Rudd to be relevant? Why keep running stupid articles about how Rudd was on the move again?

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think I'm missing a lot of the hatred of Gillard because I'm not in Australia, and tend to read the UK papers rather than the Australian ones. So the media attitude here is more 'huh?' (with a side dish of 'why are Australians so racist and sexist?', which is a favourite British point of discussion). And you'll recall that I left Australia in 2008, when Rudd was still in power and the perception was very much that Gillard was a competent, efficient deputy and was respected a lot because of how aggressively she called out the Coalition when she was in the Opposition. So you're probably right that I don't have an accurate understanding of how hated she was.

About five or six years ago, I was talking to my dad about how political journalism had changed in the years he'd been working in that field. He said to me, with a great deal of sadness, that what had changed in recent years was that most political journalists now saw themselves not as observers, but somehow as part of the story. (He wasn't claiming that any journalist could be truly impartial, even before these changes, but that impartiality was something they should have been striving towards and holding up as an ideal.) I think that's what's behind how the media have behaved in this whole debacle. They did the same thing back in the day with Howard and Costello, and they basically destroyed Costello's career. So when you ask

Why keep allowing Rudd to be relevant? Why keep running stupid articles about how Rudd was on the move again?

I think that you have your answer.