Chris Kenny's opinion piece in today's Weekend Australian (Inquirer p.22) can be summed up as, "I don't want a Labor government, I want a Liberal one". Ok Chris, good to know.
Of course, to say that in about 1,000 words you have to either go on a rant or just talk meaningless rubbish. He appears to have opted for some of each.
The headline is, "Early Poll is Labor's Best Chance of Saving the Brand". Gosh, like all shock jockery every line is pregnant with assumptions stated as given truth. It might be convenient for Chris Kenny to talk about political parties as brands, but this is a bad idea and contributes to the disembodiment of the body politic. It's funny though, I have never heard of the Liberal party being referred to as a brand. Is it Mr Kenny's assumption that the Liberal party is an unquestioned superior presence, born to rule, not to be reduced to a brand? It now occurs to me that the real target here is not so much the body politic as the Labor Party. Chris Kenny seeks to reduce that great party to a brand, to belittle it.
But now that he has it as a mere brand he can talk in corporatist terms and discuss its success, like Bega cheese. Next, the assumption is that the "brand" needs saving, so implicit in the headline is an assumed truth that there is something wrong with Labor. We are still on the headline and we have a completely biased piece of work. Nothing wrong with being a conservative writer, even a polemicist, but we deserve intelligent political economic arguments, not cant and spin. But what can we expect when he raises the corporatist language of "brand" but an advertising agents subtle persuasions.
The problem here is that by reducing important institutions to a "brand" he loses his own credibility, he hurts his own "brand". He already works for a company, News Ltd, whose actual brand has nosedived into the dirt. Now he sullies his own "brand" as a political journalist. Consequently, I don't reach for the paper to read Chris Kenny's intelligent commentary. I know, like MacDonald's, that I will get the same burger every time.
The sub-heading on his piece is "The only losers in an election would be those MP's grimly hanging on". In view of the fact that later in the article he says that he expects the Coalition to win, the MP's "grimly" hanging on would obviously be Labor MP's. So Labor members of parliament "grimly" hang on to their seats? They aren't respected members of parliament elected to represent their constituents, they are reduced to desperado's who grimly hang on. I suppose they grimly wake up in the morning, and grimly have breakfast, kissing their wives and husbands grimly goodbye too? This type of dialogue is such execrable nonsense, actually meaningless, and doesn't deserve to be printed in a national broadsheet.
Mr Kenny's desire for an early election is simply him wanting a Coalition government. He is simply saying that he wants an election. He writes an article full of hollow arguments why he thinks that it would be great. Good for him. But it is not for him to argue that our political system should be rearranged to make him happy. The next election is in 2013. We already think that a three year political term maybe too short. And now Kenny wants a two year term, because he is unhappy with the last democratic vote. How is that the subject of a newspaper article, unless it is ruse to attack the Gillard Government. And what follows confirms exactly that.
Paragraph 5: "A pre-budget poll might...capture what sense of momentum Labor has been able to muster". Why would this not be written as follows: "A pre-budget poll might be an option now that the Labor party has risen in the polls". I find again and again in the Australian that not a sentence is left without a negative slant on it, either subtle or blatant. I have detailed hundreds of instances in this blog alone. It is without doubt a heavily biased newspaper, a newspaper whose staff and editors obviously work hard to skew the message against Labour at nearly every turn. It is difficult for the casual critic to demonstrate this as many instances, on their own, seem needless to complain about. But when you document the thousands of instances of the slanting and skewing, across sentences, headlines, subheadings, paragraphs, and whole articles, the bias is patently obvious. So a resurgence in the polls becomes "able to muster". And this in the context where there is a disapproval vote for Tony Abbott of a massive 60%. He is barely "able to muster" a citizen who likes him. But, of course, in News Ltd articles it is Labor who has to muster, Uggghh, to muster, to struggle. They are good at this finding the right words for the subliminal bias. Very good at it, like they have special classes and a lot of practice. Then this: "Polls suggest the ALP primary vote has been lifted from the carpet". Why is this not: "Polls have put the ALP in a position where they could begin to think about winning the next election". Or, "Polls have the ALP back in contention". Or, "Polls have shown that the ALP is now closing on the Coalition in support".
It's like he wants to have the ALP literally on the carpet. He misses them being on the carpet. He will not let a sentence pass that doesn't have a negative slant, a phrase or word associated with Labor that suggests negativity. So their poll numbers don't rise (positive, which is the fact being mentioned), they lift "from the carpet" (bloodied?, tattered? in bad shape?). The subliminal messages are piled on, one after the other until the reader feels the disgust rising in them towards Labor. A discussion for another place but it has been well proven that there is a substantial proportion of the population who are heavily influenced by the press they read. This stuff works, which is why Rupert Murdoch continues to own these unprofitable papers. They don't earn him money, they earn him power, which he then uses to influence policy to support his profit making businesses. This is not conspiracy, it is the business model talked about by many media commentators.
This disgust built up by the Murdoch press then gives licence to the Coalition to talk, incredibly, about an "illegitimate government" which is, in a democratic system, a contradiction in terms, and a very irresponsible thing to say. In fact, you would actually have to be a fascist to say that, but say it they do. When you call a democratically elected government illegitimate you are holding the electorate in contempt.