Day 1 and the media shows its true blue colours

Day one, and what an absolute crock of shit the public has been delivered by the mainstream media.

The ABC spent almost the entire Sunday morning showing footage of planes taking off from Sydney airport – “look, there’s goes the Prime Minister!” – and, of course, a plane that leaves one airport will, inevitable, land at another airport.

And – no surprises – it did! Canberra, which is the home of the Governor–General and the person the Prime Minister needs to meet with to announce the date of the federal election, was the destination. The rolling coverage continued, with Scott Morrison descending from the staircase of the arriving aircraft, saluting the military – which according to protocol, is reserved for the head of state, not for the head of government – and then onwards to Yarralumla, to ask David Hurley for permission to dissolve the 46th Parliament and hold an election on 21 May 2022.

Listen to the New Politics podcast!

Which was duly granted – but in the meantime, let’s not talk about the total breach of protocol and possible corruption involved with the Governor–General lobbying the federal government for the direct funding of the Australian Future Leaders Foundation Limited to the tune of $18 million in the recent federal Budget, because that might become a little bit too uncomfortable.

The wet-behind-the-ears political journalists then announced to the world that Scott Morrison had not waited until the last day available to him to hold the election – because it was literary the last day – but because he was clever enough to hold a 41-day election and maximise the scrutiny and pressure placed upon the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese. And in modern mainstream journalism in Australia, this is all that matters: it’s not about holding the powerful to account, that’s too difficult.

Scrutinising the pretenders to the throne makes their job much easier, and asking questions about the official cash rate or the official unemployment rate of Albanese provides for a better blood sport than asking the guy who has actually been in charge of those figures over the past three and a half years, and a part of a Liberal–National government over the past nine years.

That would require hard work, and this parliamentary press corps is not up to the job, far more happy to congratulate themselves on getting the ‘gotcha’ quote and headline for their ideologically-driven bosses, and put their feet up after a short day’s work, wine and dine with their equally deficient colleagues – and a few government ministers, if they’re lucky – and convince themselves they’re doing all of this important work in the public interest.

Albanese should know the Reserve Bank cash rate is 0.1%. He should know the unemployment rate is 4.0%, even though we all understand this is a sham figure, and other analysis suggests the real figure is closer to 8.0%. Under-employment is also a figure than needs careful scrutiny.

To campaign in a marginal seat – Bass – and on the first day of the election campaign, and not know these figures is not ideal, and there are going to be some really pissed off people in Labor Party headquarters. Former Prime Minister John Howard also made a similar error on the first day of the 2007 election campaign – suggesting interest rates were 6.25%, when they were actually 6.5%. Howard went on to lose that election campaign but in a long 41-day campaign, missteps on day one of the campaign will be forgotten by the time pre-polling commences on 9 May – not that Morrison will allow anyone to forget, because he has nothing left to offer, except for smears, lies, corruption, hostility and division. Best to divert from all of those problems by reminding the electorate his opponent can’t remember two numbers: 0.1 and 4.

Yet a very generous mainstream media throng wants to overlook all of Morrison’s many problems, treat their audiences like total fools and ask a Labor leader to respond to the questions they already know the answer to.

The stitch up. The ‘gotcha’.

Because catching out a political leader about a specific number or the price of a litre of milk is far more important than scrutinising a government that flushed $5.5 billion down the drain when it cancelled the French submarines contract. Or asking why only 0.1% of the $4 billion allocated to the victims of bushfire has been spent. Over the past two years. These are the ‘0.1’ and ‘4’ numbers the media should focus upon.

Or asking why a $500,000 ‘shut-up-and-go-away’ payment was made to a Liberal Party staffer who was sexually abused and sexually harassed by a federal minister – who, apparently, is still ‘technically’ a minister, even though he stood down several months ago.

The public does deserve better, even if the public isn’t too interested in wanting to deserve better government or a better media that serves their interests, and not the interests of elite vested groups they’re supposedly meant to hold to account. It’s a bad reflection on them, as a group of professionals within the political class, that they don’t seem to have the intellect, the courage, or the analytic skills to perform and behave in a far better way or in a way that serves the public interest.