This made me laugh. I’ve been mostly disintrested in the whole British election thing. Who cares who runs the ninth most important country in the world. I thought about posting about Gordon Brown’s press “gaffe” the other day. I thought the media beat up was pretty nasty – given that he was smashed by the press for giving them full access to his campaigning. They crucified him. It wasn’t nice. Anyway…
From here.
Via David Ould.
Have you heard of the Tea Party Movement? If you’re into American politics (probably thanks to the West Wing) you probably have some idea what’s going on over there. I haven’t blogged much about politics for a while, and don’t really intend to now. There’s no election on. But there’s this odd moving of the deck chairs in American politics because the so called “religious right” is such a strong voting bloc. The Tea Party Movement doesn’t really seem to know what it is yet – or what it will do come election time – but they’ve been cosying up to the likes of Focus on the Family in order to lock up God’s vote. Because apparently God cares if you like health care or not…
Anyway, atheists understanably don’t like this, and if there’s one thing they’re good at, it’s pointing out hypocrisy in the lives of believers.
So, I give you, Tea Party Jesus – a site that brings quotes from Tea Party Members (usually prominent) together with pictures of Jesus to remind us why it’s a bad idea not to bring Jesus into the political realm as though he’s endorsing your position… Here’s a quote from right wing pundit Ann Coulter.
And one from Glenn Beck…
And Bill O’Reilly…
And lest you think I’m just picking out right wing shock jocks – here’s one from James Dobson (I kind of see where he’s going with this one, I just think he takes it a step too far).
If you’re going to claim to speak for Jesus you want to make sure that what you’re saying is consistent with what he said and how he lived. There are plenty of things that many of us, as Christians, say that would look equally preposterous – but we’re not there asking you to vote for me, or with me, on the basis that God would.
This is something all those of a political persuasion should learn. (I’m looking at you Tony Abbott – seriously, who could argue that Jesus would not show compassion and love to desperate boat people on the basis that he drove money lenders from the temple).
“Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it’s not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia.”
There are myriad ways that this statement does not work. What about the biblical injunctions to care for the poor? The widows? The orphans? Andrew has a good post about a better response to asylum seekers here.
Here’s a better statement.
“Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it’s not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia.”
For those playing at home – here’s how Jesus spells out how we’re to care for those crying out for help in Matthew 25…
31“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’
41“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45“He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
During the campaign of the last federal election, the top issue of the day was the environment, specifically climate change. My friends and I used to bicker about the usefulness of having so much campaign time dedicated to the issue of the environment. They were of the belief that finally politicians were focused on something that mattered. I was of the opinion that the hysteria building around the campaign about the environment was leading to mostly empty, reactive bantering, and no matter how much focus was put on the topic, the additional impact on Australia’s environmental policy was going to be minimal.
I don’t think it has been the governing domain where any perceived failures in environmental activism have occured. I think, prior to becoming a media staple, the environment received adequate consideration by government. I would even go as far to say that the government was the platform where much environmental awareness was raised, discussed and launched.
Then came along the GFC, which took some of the momentum out of the environment’s pillar of current issue drive.
A lot of people have been quick to say that climate change is such an important issue, other issues should be given very low consideration in saving the environment.
One idea raised was that Australia should stop exporting coal.
During the GFC and its aftermath, job retention became a key issue. I still believe that Anna Bligh won an election by stirring peoples fears of lowering job security. In 2008-09, coal represented well over half of Queensland international merchandise exports (PDF).
I still think a lot of people need a reality check when it comes to the impacts of some of the policies being flouted. Proposed energy trading schemes, taxes, quotas, etc etc is going to have a real impact on the costs of basic provisions. Queensland is already suffering from heightened costs associated with basic infrastructure (transport, water). Queensland’s future is looking increasingly precarious. It’s strong population growth, inadequate and increasingly expensive infrastructure will need to be repaired over the coming decades, and Queensland needs to ensure that it can cope with a changing landscape of the resource sector.
Apparently political leadership is all about unity. Unity is much easier when there’s a common cause involved – particularly a cause of value, or one that people can unite to believe in.
Tony Abbott doesn’t really get it. In a manifesto on his political leadership he suggests being in opposition successfully is about being in opposition.
Mr Abbott said he would work to bring the party together because it’s easier to manage a party when they oppose rather than negotiate with the government.
“The best way to unite a political party is to really go after your opponents, which is what I intend to do,” he told the Nine Network today.”
I disagree. I think the electorate does too.
Successful “opposition” doesn’t depend on disagreeing with everything the Government puts forward.
K-Rudd started getting traction with the electorate when he positioned himself as the “alternative Prime Minister” and his party as the “alternative government”… I got so sick of hearing those words before the last Federal election was announced – but mostly because I didn’t like K-Rudd and I could see a correlation between those words and his boost in the polls.
Real leadership means offering policies and informed, decisive alternatives. Not just saying “they’re wrong” as loud as you can.
Peter Costello has a column in today’s SMH detailing his problems with Turnbull’s approach to leadership.
He acknowledged some strengths of his methodology. But diagnosed the problem with Turnbull’s leadership as an inability to cultivate much needed unity.
“To promote unity, Turnbull needed to give all the shades of party opinion a say in proceedings, and to promote colleagues on merit regardless of whether they voted for or against him.”
“A political leader cannot take his base for granted. He must give voice and confidence to the party membership. Australian politics is detribalising. Rusted-on supporters are fewer than ever. To keep those supporters, a party must nourish and respect them.”
Costello seems to think Turnbull was unable to cultivate unity because he was a grasping power monger climbing above his station. He’s particularly scathing on Turnbull’s public statements about Liberal Party colleagues.
I have never seen a Liberal leader attack senior colleagues in the way Turnbull did on the weekend. Turnbull’s attacks have been sharper and inflicted more damage on his colleagues than Kevin Rudd ever did.
If I was running the Labor Party’s campaign in the seemingly inevitable double dissolution election I would be rubbing my hands at the prospect of ads just featuring quotes from Liberal Party members about other Liberal Party members.
It looks like climate change is going to scupper one man’s ambition to be the next leader of our country. While Malcolm Turnbull considers this inconvenient truth, some might be thinking “at last, climate change has done something good”…
Some are looking forward to the day that climate change does away with our particular stretch of the Great Barrier Reef so that North Queensland can have waves.
And those who sell air conditioning are rubbing their hands together and counting their pools of money ala Scrooge McDuck.
This whole climate change phenomena has me thinking…
Many of my friends are skeptics. Some of my friends are believers. Most of the skeptics believe that the climate is changing (as it always has) though not because of human intervention. I oscillate between the two positions. I do think it’s funny that we’re worried about how much carbon dioxide is in the world when I always thought the net mass of chemicals everywhere was a constant… anyone who remembers photosynthesis lessons in high school science knows we just need to plant more trees…anyway. I’m not a climate scientist and do not intend to talk about what I don’t know in this post…
I have a theory that there are links there are between a few different philosophical outlooks on life.
I’m wondering about what correlation there is between the following beliefs and climate change.
Biblical Christianity suggests that God intervenes in the workings of his creation, that it is under his control (particularly the Psalms) and that sin has tainted the planet as well as its people. There is an obvious link between humanity and any problems with the planet.
Because Atheism rejects the idea that anyone is in control – and must therefore assume that our finely balanced universe is always on the cusp of imploding under its own improbable existence* – atheists should be more concerned about climate change and therefore more ready to jump in and lend an environmental hand even if they’re not convinced by the science. Just in case.
My friends who believe in a young earth should find it heaps easier to believe that humans are partly responsible for what happens to the environment because we’re a more significant part of the planet’s history – and the change is occuring over a much faster period of time if the hockey stick graphs are to be believed. This has to be balanced against the fact that many of them are really good at ignoring scientists anyway.
Answers in Genesis has an article that pretty much sits on the fence, and one that suggests claims of our impending demise are greatly exaggerated…
My Christian friends who believe in an old earth probably fall into one of two categories – they’re either the most skeptical of all when it comes to climate change, or they’re died in the wool believers. For the skeptics, the assumption that God’s sovereignty extends to the planet, meets the assumption that humans haven’t been around for long enough to have had a remarkable impact on the planet’s health.
For the Christian “climate change disciple” the idea that humans have wrecked the planet is consistent with the Bible, and the idea that scientists can teach us about how everything works is consistent with the way they understand the world.
I don’t understand atheist climate change skeptics. Where does their justification come from?
Regardless of these philosophical positions the suggestion that Australia should introduce an emissions trading scheme before the rest of the world is just silly. It comes from some sort of cultural aggrandising that suggests that somehow whatever our relatively small nation does will have an impact on the global scene.
From what I understand of the issue – particularly with relation to energy production (a fair bit at that point) – there are two things we could do that would have a major impact.
I can’t see either of those happening any time soon.
*Not really what atheists think…
Nathan often uses Hitler in religious discussions.
From what I know Europe at the time was a generally disjointed, unhappy place, and everyone knew that war would eventually outbreak, it was just a matter of when. So I wasn’t exactly sure what he was getting at between Hitler’s religion and religion’s involvement in war.
So I got Nathan to explain his point:
“It’s not that wars are based on atheism – it’s that atheism doesn’t rule out wars.
Atheism is not a cause of war any more than Christianity is.
The fact that people are sinful – greedy, power hungry, angry, evil – is what causes wars.”
I would like to make some points:
1. I don’t think evil exists as a being, thing or intangible presence. Evil is a description of behaviour.
2. Hitler didn’t do the things he did because he was evil. Some of the things he did were abhorrent, terrible, disgusting and/or evil.
3. When people do bad things, its not because they are inherrently evil, or were overtaken by momentary evilness. They did it because they were human, and humans make bad decisions for whatever reasons, are prone to being inconsiderate, to certain extent, and have different utility functions, such that some believe risking other people being injured is outweighed by the benefit of robbing the bank.
4. Morals don’t need to come from an external source. People are perfectly good at developing them themselves.
From my understanding, the French/English civil revolutions weren’t uprisings against God, they were class wars, where the poor and oppressed wanted better. I think this could be said to an extent about communism and the disputes in the first half of the 20th century.
Most recently, the war on terrorism has been labeled as a war against evil. I don’t like terrorism, but I also don’t like the way it has been discussed at times. I have always wondered, without being particularly knowledgeable of the situation overseas, if by labeling terrorism as acts of pure evil results in more harm than good, as it fails to address the root causes of offshore grievances.
Further military action in the region is not going to help in the healing of decades-old wounds, which stem from military action of the West into these regions for the past century plus. Dare I say, I think many people within these regions would hold grievances against the West. Further, relying on non-western media, these nations would also have different perceptions of why the West was involved in these regions (I am not necessarily talking about purposeful distortions of history here either, historical accounts and perceptions would likely be different between those who lived through it and those who lived back in the invading country). We can’t expect to be able to interfere with any of these regions, and not step on a few toes.
The remnants of America’s war techniques in Korea and Vietnam still remain to impact the general populace. Many of these people no doubt hold some anger towards the techniques that were used during these disputes that have a continuing legacy.
So, in summary, it may not be best labelling terrorism as acts of evil, which seems a simplistic excuse. It may be that more effort should be made to recognise that the seeds for these peoples anger were sown a long time ago, and that the West played a larger role in creating this anger than we are willing to acknowledge. What we perceive as terrorism could be the remnants of a group of people fighting a decade-old war the only way they have available. They may be cowardly tactics, attacking easy targets of civilians. But they didn’t agree to any war conventions, nor have any large military budgets or technology.
Going forward, hopefully leaders will acknowledge these lessons, and realise that you can’t interfere with a country and expect it not to have repercussions in the future. The conflict doesn’t end with the end of the fighting. More needs to be done to rebuild international relations.
The Amazing Joel Hockey Movement is a Christian Comedy Folk band/singer. I thought he was funny when I was in high school – I confess I haven’t listened to him much since…
The Amazing Joe Hockey Movement is the series of responses around the blogosphere to Joe Hockey’s vaguely stupid defence of the notion of Christianity in a speech to the Sydney Institute that was published in extract form in the Sydney Morning Herald the other day. It’s received a fair bit of press coverage. With speculation that he was using this speech to round out his character in order to one day make a leadership push.
The backbone of this speech is the idea that somehow the best place to learn about God is not the church – who take things all too literally – but the vibe. It’s mabo. It’s the serenity. It’s stupid.
The notion that somehow Jesus would be unhappy with the idea of people taking the Bible seriously – which he seemed to do throughout his life – is preposterous. It comes from some sort of social superiority complex that for some reason believes that we’re much more enlightened than those who came before us, and that we can stand in judgment on thousands of years of backwards thinking.
I read an annoyingly superior piece along this vein in Sam De Brito’s new “Building a Better Bloke” group blog. Apparently the idea that Jesus “wasn’t a Christian” should be profound. Newsflash. Jesus was the archetypal “people of God” – Christianity is just the way that concept has been branded since we follow him. That’s a dumb proposition, and it just gets dumber.
Apparently Jesus was not about restoring our relationship with God – you know, the “repent, the kingdom of God is near” stuff… no, he was about:
“These are the real issues Jesus was interested in: POWER, PRESTIGE and POSSESSIONS. He hits them again and again.”
I bring this up mainly because a commenter calling himself “the thinker” made this interesting point in the comments…
“In the same way it is the philosophies we as a culture evolve” – I have to pull you up on this one and refer you to scientific anthropology. This is a common mistake which we humans who accept evolution make all the time. We erroneously assume that culture within human society evolves in a forward manner, the same way as genetic evolution did.
Anthropologically, the scientific evidence is that human culture rises and falls more like a flat sine wave. When American culture crashes it can fall to the same depth as Roman culture when it crashed (or even further). There is NO cultural ’safety net’ for a modern culture which will prevent it falling past a specific level cultural level attained in the past. Also, remember that on a genetic scale we are no smarter as humans than the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians, the Mongols, the Huns etc as evolution takes longer than 2,000 years to significantly improve human brain power.
I thought that was interesting.
Anyway, back to Hockey. While suggesting that Christianity should be all about style – without worrying about substance – he made this odd statement about politics.
“The trend I see in politics is one where personality is winning over the substance that should be at the heart of political life.”
Somewhat contradictory methinks.
For a more astute takedown of Hockey’s statement read this response from Phillip Jensen. Or the letters to the editor that came in in response, or Gordo’s response to those letters. Here’s a snapshot from Phillip Jensen…
But Mr Hockey’s expression of values, with or without belief in any particular god, scarcely defends faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus – the man who is God. Christianity, void of Jesus’ divinity or sin bearing crucifixion – is hardly Christianity. Such a statement is not extremist literalism. The cross, not the golden rule, is at the very centre of Christianity. All religions do not teach the same truth when the death of Jesus is central to Christianity and denied by the Koran.
He noticed that the Opera House is usually playing music inspired by faith. But his kind of faith did not and will not inspire such music. He noticed that members of religious organisations are nearly twice as likely to be community volunteers. But his faith has not and will not lead to more community volunteers. He noticed the decline in religious observance in Australia. But he fails to notice that it is those who take their scriptures seriously that are retaining adherents and growing.
This week is turning out to be very interesting.
First up, the Traveston Crossing Dam is no more. A rather belated move by Peter Garrett destroys his Labor counterparts plans. The Courier mail contains good coverage of the issue today, and highlights some very interesting points.
I don’t like Anna Bligh much. I didn’t like her much prior to her becoming Premier, but I decided to give her a chance and a clean slate. She has failed miserably in pretty much all respects.
However, she did have a tremendous task in front of her. She inherited a government that had spent up in the good times and left little for the bad, a SEQ grappling with water issues, a tarnished health sector, oncoming infrastructure problems (that many foresaw were approaching, but the past Labor government did little to avoid), and, it has to be said, a not overly sparkling bunch of MPs around her. So, it could be said, the previous Premier Peter Beattie bowed out just before his legacy took its crippling hold on the State.
It was nice though of Garrett to wait so long to enter the fold here. Good decisiveness by the Federal Government, who took the best part of two years to make a real stand against a project that has impacted so many people. Still, the move will probably win them further accolades as the saviours of the area. Maybe they were holding off so they didn’t impact Bligh’s chances, but then when they realised Bligh was too far gone, and there was no point trying to save a fellow party member if they are going to lose anyway, they may as well do something. It would be interesting to find out what happened behind the scenes there.
Still, Bligh has yet to display any real propensity for the job. She managed to introduce flouride, which was generally well received though controversial, and begin some water projects (all of which have so far had far more failings than successes). Many attacked her media profile, but I think this is a bit of a meh point. In today’s world of governance, public exposure is important. She used her leave for Master Chef, so while it was arguably a dumb move, it wasn’t exactly a decision deserving of major criticism.
Further into today’s Courier, the new Family (Surrogacy) Bill has gotten some coverage. Not content with the (very poorly written) article, I went and found the Bill. Indeed, section 9 (2) of the Bill provides eligible couples to only include married couples or mixed gender de factos. Springborg apparently has said the Bill is designed for hetrosexual couples only. So it might be a bit hopeful to suggest the language of the Bill almost sounds like it would be open in the future to providing surrogacy to all types of married couples (depending on who was defined as ‘married’). So, depending how you feel about surrogacy, this is at least a step forward. But, while making the step, there is also a bit of throwing the leg out and tripping some people over. It seems the LNP is adhering to its more conservative members on this one.
Which leads on to the next interesting happening. Senator Sarah Hanson-Young of the Greens has introduced a Bill to allow same-gender marriage. High fives all round Sarah Hanson-Young. So it seems there is one awesome Green. But then she goes on and says this:
“I’m calling for the prime minister to … grant his members a conscience vote so we can get a true reflection of how the Australian community is feeling.”
Pfft. A conscience vote has no chance of reflecting how the Australian community is feeling.
Some people might think that a veto, in itself, is an act of political aggression rather than passive aggression.
But when you embed a rude, coded, message in your letter to the legislative body you are turning down, it’s classic passive aggression.
It’s so rude I won’t post the picture. But if you’re not offended by the F-bomb – and want to see why the Governator is awesome (other than the fact he keeps his Conan sword in his office)… check it out.
Here’s a news story that shows it’s legit…
I made that little picture myself. I thought it would’ve been done to death, but I found no evidence of that online…
Did everyone catch Anna Bligh on celebrity Master Chef last night. What a laff. Queensland produce was centre stage… right up until the second ad break. When the Queensland LNP took out a sixty second (I think) ad calling the Labor Party a pack of liars – with a nice, intense close up of a nice, intense looking Anna Bligh.
Unfortunately they couldn’t really capitalise on their ad. The call to action was the LNP website – sadly it seems to have been hacked. If you google LNP google gives you all sorts of warnings about the site not being safe. And you eventually get to an LNP holding page announcing maintenance.
Here is the graphical evidence…
The latest Electoral Reform Green Paper, Strengthening Australia’s Democracy (available from http://www.pmc.gov.au/consultation/elect_reform/strengthening_democracy/index.cfm ), was recently released. While it covers an issue that has been jumped all over recently by mainstream media, that of lowering the voting age, which while somewhat interesting, it also covers issues which I think are far more discussion worthy.*
I love talking about electoral reform. It is one of my favourite topics. I could talk about this paper a lot.
For today, sections 5.42 to 5.62 discuss the voting system used in the house of representatives. Currently, the house of representatives uses a preferential voting system. In effect, this means you can choose to give each candidate a number, and if for some unknown reason you give your first preference to a Family First candidate, throwing your vote away, you get an automatic reprieve and your vote is reallocated to your second preference. This process of preference skipping is repeated until a preference for a sensible party (or occasionally the greens) is reached.
In all seriousness though, the preferential system is a mostly sound system. The main problem from most perspectives is preferential systems always favour majority groups. A candidate needs to be the first to reach 50% of votes, via an initial majority or through preferences. For example, in Queensland, in each electorate, the candidate who gets to 50% first will win. Thus, as one of the main parties will generally get to 50% on preferences first in each electorate, minority parties will generally fail. Thus, even if 10% of Queenslanders support the anti-environment party and everyone else puts them as last preference, if those who support are roughly distributed evenly across all electorates, they won’t win a thing. Thus, sizeable minorities that otherwise do not form the majority views in any electorate will have no representation in the lower house.
Alternatively, the Senate has a proportional system. A fantastic article on how our proportional voting system for the Senate works can be found here : http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2004/guide/senatevotingsystem.htm . Or if you are dull like me, go read (the incredibly wordy and complex) section 273 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. The way our proportional quota vote counting system works is very interesting, and I don’t think too many people in Australia have much idea how the Senate is actually elected.
So, back to the new green paper. One of the opportunities it outlines is for the House of Representatives to shift to a form of proportional representation, with divisions at the state or sub-state level. The green paper even discusses many of the arguments for and against the idea (it is quite the paper). This change has the potential to change the political landscape. It also raises some interesting issues for how the ballots will be developed (i.e. will the option remain of voting “above the line” for a single political party, thus accepting the party’s preference order for candidates).
I am still making my way through this paper (at 260 pages it is quite a study). And there have already been a few parts of it I have been disappointed with (the discussion of current proportional vote counting in the paper is poor). But this thing provides topic fodder for months.
*Utilising Nathan’s asterix technique, and noting my prior post, lowering the voting age is pulp news. Further, a 16 year old who wants to sail around the world is not news, and everytime the State Premier/Deputy Premier etc has a press interview, they should not be asked their opinion on said teenager sailing around the world, and their comment is not news.
I thought long and hard about what my next article was going to be. I have been working somewhat on a series of articles related to children, including should children be subsidised and are current custody laws in the Family Law Act adequate. However, these article take a fair amount of time to do.
However, for me, there were two events last week that really stood out. The first was the release of the latest Sensis Business Index.
On Wednesday the Sensis business index came out, and included one of the findings that, after 21 consecutive quarters of this prestige title, New South Wales was overtaken by Queensland as the least popular Government amongst Small and Medium Enterprises (in terms of their opinions of government policies impacting small business).
Anna Bligh is already struggling in the poles, and you think that this would be a fine source to use to ridicule her. Instead, the Queensland opposition seemed unblissfully unaware of this. Instead, from my limited media exposure, the main topic for journalistic reporting for the day was the Treasurer beating up the opposition over teddy-bears. Further, few media outlets even realised the Sensis report. Queensland Business Review picked it up rather early, but otherwise it mostly went missing.
This compares to earlier in the week, when the most recent Tourism data was released. The big story was Victoria overtook Queensland in Domestic Tourist Visitors. It led to quotes like this:
“The offer of big events, cultural events, retail, food and wine is considered more attractive than stuff like theme parks, Big Pineapples and gee-whizzy type of stuff,” Victorian Tourism Industry Council chief Anthony McIntosh said.
Apparently culture includes the absence of severe storms, floods, an oil spill and all the bad PR stemming from these. But this is beside the point.
Last week highlighted two things, the severe disadvantage the opposition is at due to its lack of human resources, and the absolutely woeful state of Queensland journalism.
I have always hated Today/Tonight. I think it more miseducates the public rather than provides a good consumer watchdog type service. While I think the media has become to an extent the method of exposing and crushing certain elements of society that seemingly fall through other safety nets (e.g. exposing dodgy dealings, etc), I am not sure Today/Tonight deserves much kudos in this regard. I tend to think Today/Tonight more highlights rather unimportant issues, directing attention away from issues that deserve focus and onto things that benefit less from continual oversight. It gives many issues that really don’t deserve much more than a passing comment a place in the limelight, determining the content of talkback radio switchboards the following day. And the ABC isn’t much better. I watched some Tony Jones interviews a while back that were absolutely terrible. He got various politicians on to discuss policy, and Tony Jones’ interviewing technique was all about aggressiveness and trying to get the interviewee to trip up. If a certain issue wasn’t working, he moved on to the next one. Providing an interview that provided information to the public and discussing the actual policy was non-existent. It was all about the spectable.
In a perfect world, the media would be on-top of issues, and be able to disseminate and present it to the public in understandable chunks. While it seems many journalists aspire to report the facts and avoid opinion, it seems that disection, inference and explanation also have disappeared. Instead, they go for the candy issues, the stuff that BTN would present to schoolchildren if all BTN’s employees were dead.
Analysis should be an integral part of journalism. Journalism has become a spoon-fed role. Journalists get given a prepared statement, and they put it through the journalism machine and out pops an article. I think the machine applies quotation marks and a snappy headline. Still, the commercial goals of the media are not in alignment with Australia’s democratic processed. With the media more concerned with the easy stories and the politician cheap-shots or trips-ups, politicians will be more focused on media and perception management rather than governance and providing policy related information.
Without the resources and personnel the government has available, opposition attacks seem to be limited to what they can derive from mainstream media. These days, Australian opposition parties are very limited in the extent of their government oversight roles, and winning an election is more a case of the government losing the support of the populace rather than the opposition winning it.
We have to begin to wonder, given the importance of the media in our political structure, does something need to be done?
The West Wing is the best television show ever made. Without question. The Godfather trilogy is the best movie trilogy ever made. Also without question. So when one references the other… you sit up and pay attention…
TOBY
So we’ve got to do it for him. We’ll keep it away from this office but we’ve got to get real
now. Leo, Ann Stark’s a war time consigliere. That’s why she was bumped up.LEO
I’m a wartime consigliere too, Toby. I was just hoping it’d be peace time a little longer.
I’ve posted a lot about the West Wing in the last couple of days. I’ve been watching a lot of it. It’s just as good third time round. We’re up to season 2 already.
The best news, is that the scripts from every episode are up online. Here.
I’ve been toying with some lengthier posts on the intersection of faith and politics in the West Wing – but I suspect that only really interests me. It really is the seminal political text of this generation.
My WebSalt article about the Greens is now up. You should go over there, read it, and argue it out with me in the comments… It’s much more balanced than my regular blogging fodder because it’s not polemic – it’s balanced… I hope.
“But there is much in their policy platform to celebrate – an Australian Christian Lobby media release issued prior to the 2008 election praised the Greens for their strong stance on climate change, refugees, overseas aid, work life balance and poverty. These are important issues – and should be serious concerns for biblical Christians.” “The criteria that determine an individual’s political preference will come down to personal convictions – that’s the fundamental freedom offered by a liberal democracy. So voters need to decide for themselves whether caring for the poor should be the government’s concern or the church’s? Or whether we should impose a Christian ethical framework on non-believers? Can we vote for a party that purposefully pursues an easing of restrictions in the circumstances surrounding the termination of the lives of unborn children? Just how much of a concern is the environment?”
I may have extended Corey Worthington’s 15 minutes of fame by referencing him in this letter I wrote to The Australian – but then he went and got booked for speeding and made the news by himself. My letter was a response to a stupid piece by Phillip Adams suggesting young people should get to vote because his 16 year old daughter is smarter than the average voter. My letter was edited slightly to fit in the space available so the second bit seems to be a bit of a non sequitur.
