Hunting In Packs: The Column

Against my principles of refusing to write for nothing, and against my better judgement, I've been persuaded to do a column for my local rag called Hunting In Packs, about the media. Of course the only thing that has been going on in NSW in the last month has been the state election, which all comes to a peak this Saturday. So here goes. Doubling up the blog and my other duties.

One day early in the recent NSW state election campaign Opposition leader Peter Debnam held a water taste test on the Corso at Manly. The object of the exercise was to prove to the general public that recycled water tasted just like tap water and the Liberals would save the state hundreds of millions by not opting for a desalination plant.

Rivetting stuff.

The event provided television with their shots of Debnam for the day but not much else; for the print journalists it just left them yet further exasperated.

On this occasion, trying to write something about an utterly un-newsworthy event, I asked Debnam whether they were launching anything, doing anything, announcing anything. No no no came the answers, we're just doing a taste test.

Nothing could have shown up the ineptness of the Liberal campaign better. Really, what were the journalists supposed to write? What were they to tell their news editors when they got back to the office?

You should learn from the Labor Party I said to his young and clearly inexperienced press sec come campaign manager, the very likeable Brad Burden.
Make ceaseless announcements about anything and everything. You could have put out a press release announcing that Debnam was lauinching a series of taste tests across Sydney's suburbs to familiarise the public with the complex issues of water management as they prepared to launch their vitally important new water policy. Along with this you could have announced the setting up of a string of community and expert consultative groups in a desperate attempt to avert the looming water crisis and rectify years of Labor inaction and incompetence.

No one falls for that crap, Burden said.
I looked at him, like, well have it your way. Because of course they do fall for that crap, all the time. Just put your name on the list for press announcements for Labor and you will be almost instantly flooded with transcripts, announcements releases, with committees being formed, strategies, developed, policies announced. Much of this means absolutely nothing on the ground and rarely evolves into anything solid. But it gives the journalists something to write about and makes the politicians look as if they're doing anything.

After his taste test in Manly Debnam caught the ferry back into town with his wife, lining up for a coffee at a take-away cafe like everybody else and then buying a ticket, like everybody else. It was, well, unimpressive. A weak man, I heard one of the old girls on the ferry say, and that may be unfair; but people don't want their politicians to be ordinary. They want them to be familiar with the running of high public office, able to meet visiting dignatories, impel the attention of the world. Debnam's infamous appearance in front of the press in board shorts, the so-called budgie snugglers, turned out to be one of the highlights of the campaign.

In a porn drenched universe the almost-sight of Debnam's manhood turned on absolutely no one.

Instead of being impressed, warming the cockles of the ordinary person's heart, it turnedoff the electorate in droves. It even made the newspapers in London, along the lines of only at the bottom of the world...

Iemma held an election launch which tried to gloss over the fact that Labor has been in power for the past 12 years, most of it under the increasingly unpopular Bob Carr. Bob was an autocratic, almost aristocratic, oddity for Labor, a book worm who would rather die than be seen with a cigarette and a beer in his hand, lightyears from the working class or the dispossessed that Labor used to represent. I remember going on a three day bush walk with him once, when he was Environment Minister, and I can't say I warmed to him any more at the end of it than at the beginning. But Bob had down pat the art of the press conference. He would sweep in, a busy and important man, make his announcement, pick the two dumbest hacks he could see in the pack and answer their questions in full, and then sweep out; off to another important meeting in his busy and important life. In truth he was probably just going back to his office for a sandwich, but like so many people stuck in offices, he had the art of looking busy down pat. Unfortunately when I'm not doing anything I look truly unemployed.

The latest Newspoll and AC Neilson poll both show that Debnam has gone backward during the campaign; and stands a snow flakes chance in hell of becoming Premier, with something like 58 per cent preferring Morris Iemma as Premier. Whatever Iemma's virtues or vices, the electorate is utterly fed up with Labor and the fact that nothing much actually works in this state and their billions of dollars in taxes have been squandered on pointless bureaucracy, not on trains that work and hospitals that deliver good service. But so resigned are they to this, and so unconvinced are they that Debnam can solve the state's problems, they're prepared to vote for the status quo. There have now been 25 state and federal elections since there was a change of government in Australia....

We detorioate into notes.

Our lives deteriorate into notes.

This is a picture of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on its 75th anniversary; when it was shut to traffic from about 4am to 11pm; the longest period in its history.

Only 48 hours before 4,000 motorists had been stuck on the bridge after yet another transport fiasco when a train broke down on the bridge.

Then in a carefully orchestrated feel good yarn choreographed by the state government; the bridge everyone could be proud of, this monument to steel as the state governor Marie Bashir declared, NSW Premier Morris Iemma walked across the bridge holding the hands of his children, pretending to be an ordinary person....

THE BIGGEST YARN:

Spinning around:

NSW Premier Mr Iemma dismissed as "not valid" a government-commissioned report which said Sydney had the worst train system in the world.
The report, prepared for the budget committee of cabinet, said trains on the CityRail network had far more delays and cost more to operate than networks in other cities around the world.
Mr Iemma said the government was determined to improve the rail system but the report had made unfair comparisons.
"The comparisons in the report are just not valid," he told reporters.
AAP