Frothing Up

For three long years we dreaded this time. We hunkered down in cafés, savouring our artisan roast flat whites, knowing that the halcyon days of 'fair and just' ALP rule would soon be coming to end. We could all agree how awful it was going to be, how this.....man would undo all the good we had strived for since 2007. Still we bickered....over carbon taxes, asylum seekers, and the slow download speed of our illegal copies of Game of Thrones. 

For he who is called "The One Who Says 'No'" was unassailable, undefeatable, and unstoppable.

And that time did come to pass........and life went on, much as it had before. Everything seemed the SAME, like nothing had really changed. 

That's because nothing really had changed all that much. Coalition government or not, there are certain fundamentals to modern Australia. Members of both sides of the political spectrum are choosing to ignore this, obviously for their own partisan reasons. On the left, where I sit, the despair at the election of Abbott is palpable. 'Progressive' bloggers are beside themselves over this new government, one they see as taking us back to the deepest darkest years of the 'Great and Powerful' Howard.

Howard, seen here in 2007 saying goodbye to his electorate. 

An example of this comes from Ben Eltham, over at newmatilda.com. Here Eltham rails against what he see's as the partisan nature of the Australian media. I've been in this angry place before as well. Who hasn't spent an evening yelling at a T.V showing 7:30? However, I don't agree with Eltham, especially in relation to the current Australian media. Certain parts are partisan (I'm looking at you, Rupert!). But by and large the media just wants to sell a product, and they don't stray very far from their readers pre-conceptions. There's a certain cowardice to the Australian media, a cowardice that is seen whenever a social media storm takes off or a foreign news agency takes up an Australian story with a different angle to local agencies. Australian political journalists all seem very unsure of themselves.

But back to Eltham's opinion piece. In it he compares the media's reaction to the current travel rorts scandal with the previous 'scandals' that plagued the Gillard/Rudd governments. Eltham believes that THE Abbott government is being held to a different standard to the previous ALP one, and that this difference is proof of an inherent bias against the ALP within the Australian media. However, there is a very important difference between the current scandal, and those that preceded it and that is NEITHER of the major parties wants to have the issue of parliamentary expenses raked over. This issue is just as bad for the ALP as it is for the Liberals. This is why the opposition has been exceedingly careful with how it has framed its attacks. In fact, apart from Dreyfus's interjection (and look how well that turned out) I can't seem to recall any member of the ALP running an attack on MPs' expenses. I think the opposition's attitude goes to the heart of the lacklustre media response to this scandal. When there is no opposition fanning the flames, things just seem to fizzle out. What Eltham has missed is this is a scandal for the whole parliament, and has more to do with how much Australians hate ALL politicians than anything else. It just so happens that it is the Coalition copping the hate at the moment. In a few years it will be the ALP under fire, you heard it here first!

We hold them in such high regard, don't we?

Further, Eltham appears to not have noticed how strange politics has become in the last three years. While the fundamentals of the 'Australian Experience' are pretty much the same as they have been for the last generation or so,  the current post election period is unprecedented in Australian political history. We didn't have an opposition leader until a few weeks ago. We didn't know whether or not certain billionaires would win their seats until recently. We didn't know the complete make-up of the next senate until a few days ago....actually we still don't know that! Legal challenges to some results could take months to conclude. Everyone is waiting....waiting to see which way certain events will pan out. The politics of 'anti-politics' is loose in the land, and some bloggers are even of the belief that the two party system has broken down completely. This explains the curious results of a "land-slide" election that wasn't. The federal election just gone recorded the lowest vote take by the major parties ever.  Despite the bombastic mandate rhetoric emanating from some sections of conservative ranks, cooler heads have surely clocked this fact. The chance of a whole new senate election in W.A, or even something far out like a double dissolution trigger, would be keeping Brian Loughnane up at night. I don't think any new federal government has been so unsure of what its victory actually means. 

........waiting 

The Coalition is probably having a debate about whether they should even try to get legislation through this senate, or wait for the next one. For Abbott neither option is particularly attractive. The ALP and the Greens have signalled that they will use their control of the senate to rake over the policies of this government.  The coming senate is even more uncontrollable . Clive Palmer is a strange, beastly kind of Queensland conservative. He's unpredictable and destabilising, like Kevin Rudd was. He is pro marriage-equality (so he says), and he has an 'open door' stance on immigration (so he says). Even though he has said he is against carbon pricing, what does he mean by that? More importantly, what does he want for his vote(s)? Mercurial is putting it lightly. The last thing Abbott wants to do is negotiate anything with this man. It wont end well for this government, and Abbott knows it. 

I think we can all agree that the very first rule of politics is that you should NEVER ever negotiate with someone who has twerked on the 'Kyle and Jackie O Show'. Like, ever.

This political confusion is doubly confusing for the media. Ever so reliant on inside sources from the two major parties, all of a sudden (not really) there's all these WEIRDOS coming to Canberra, and they have no idea how to narrate it. Its bad enough that their "contacts" within the major parties have proven pretty useless of late (why didn't a single journalist suspect the knifing of Rudd?). They seem to have no way of incorporating these minor parties into their Australian political schema. Where on earth is Ricky Muir? Can you IMAGINE a major party parliamentarian  DISAPPEARING from public view? 

"If you have any information on the whereabouts of these two men........"

So all this is causing the media to wait. Maybe everything will become easier to narrate when the parliament begins to sit? Then they can start talking about double dissolutions, leadership speculation.....and gaffs! And everything will be all right again! Anyway, most of what the coalition has proposed is the dismantling of ALP policies. If that is the case then a "fair" judgement on this government may have to wait until we can see how it intends to go about repealing all these icky socialist travesties. 

Happier times.

I think many on the left make the mistake of assuming that governments are elected to do things. Eltham makes this mistake when harking back to the beefy legislative agenda of the Gillard years. I put it to you dear reader that successful federal governments (by the length of their time in office) don't actually do all that much when it comes to that scary word 'reform'. Governments talking about reform makes Australians nervous, sometimes for very good reasons. With respect to the Gillard years, did her legislative success do her any POLITICAL good? No, it did not. Eltham wishes this away by referring back to his bête noire: the supposed bias of the Australian media. I think it has more to do with the almost pathological attraction Australians have towards a "losers" story. Our media landscape is replete with them, and the media is highly adept at narrating such a story.

losers...losers everywhere.

If Abbott is clever, he won't do anything. Because when you do things you invariably piss people off, you create losers, and "the loser narrative" is all the Australian media has been encouraged to focus on by us, the punters.There is absolutely no popular appetite for 'reform' of ANY kind. Unfortunately for Abbott he has PROMISED to do things.  Here lays his major weakness. These are the halcyon days of the Abbott government. The Liberals are probably thinking all this will last for a decade, if they don't stuff it up. That appears to be a very doubtful proposition.

As an aside I imagine the Australian media, which is an industry under significant financial pain, won't be long for this current lull. After all, you have to sell a lot of newspapers to make a living, don't you?
And what sells the most newspapers?

Scandal!!