Mood:
caffeinatedTopic: indigenous
Picture: Protesters at Premier Morris Iemma's election launch in early 2007, concerned about a state govt overdevelopment in the sensitive seat of ...Bennelong. Meanwhile Howard swears to stand by Bennelong
Author’s general introductory note (skip this if you know this regular weekly column):
This is not a well packaged story. It’s a contemporaneous traverse of the Sunday television free to air political talkies indicating the agenda of Establishment interests: Better to know ones rivals and allies in Big Politics and Big Media.
Indeed it’s the tv version monitoring task similar to what Nelson Mandela refers to here in his book Long Walk to Freedom (1994, Abacus) written in Robben Island prison (where he was meant to die like other African resister chiefs of history in the 19C), at page 208
“..newspapers are only a shadow of reality; their information is important to a freedom fighter not because it reveals the truth, but because it discloses the biases and perceptions of both those who produce the paper and those who read it.”
Just substitute ‘Sunday tv political talkie shows’ for "newspapers" in the quote above.
For actual transcripts go to web sites quoted below except with Riley Diary on 7. And note transcripts don’t really give you the image content value.
Media backgrounder
- We noticed on the vision last night Rudd, and the night before, with no NSW State Premier within cooee, perhaps to avoid protesters like those pictured above. Or here below at the ALP National Conference. Pesky protesters about real stuff. Don't they know they didn't pay for the best democracy money can buy:
- On reflection it looks like Ruddy (Rudd's bold challenge)
is trying to spook the Coalition about the proximity of the election, they being on tenderhooks if and when Newspoll dumps on PM Howard next Tuesday 18th Sept and his backbench really stares at the political abyss for real. More here via The Curmudgeon (we do love)
- Fallout for the Iemma/Howard law and order tub thump after APEC continued to dribble in the suburban freebies via front pager sympathetic to the protesters in the Earlwood/Canterbury Valley Times Sept 13 07, and News Ltd owned The Glebe at page 7 13 Sept picture story re Daniel Jones prominent in SBS Dateline coverage pre big rally, and an impressive young bloke too.
- Which calls up the NSW Police Media Unit prize for Talking Turkeys in the The Media supplement, inhouse media industry bible:
- Speaking of jelly backs, we notice Jeff Angel director of Total Environment Centre oft in the news seems to have found his voice regarding cosy secretive govt committee processes (eg renewable energy), and seems indeed to be singing like a bird about Part 3A repeal of planning and environmental protections (a prominent lead letter in the SMH a week or two back: See Rule rides roughshod over community voices in decision-making ... signing for some 50 groups as distinct from say the 120 member groups of the Nature Conservation Council and non aligned groups like Greenpeace and this writer's small network). Angel is often on abc radio and Stateline last Friday here in NSW (By Any Other Name ) again attacking the ALP State govt. But it all looks too little too late and face saving to this writer as regards Angel's past collaboration.
It seems too much of a coincidence such new found back bone coming after SAM here writing a withering, and we think accurate piece about Angel's 10 year history of giving comfort to the Carr led ALP in NSW (he famously wrote in the SMH in 2002 that Carr was the greenest premier in the history of Australia). Yet Angel's complaints now source from Carr's governance (including Carr's Part 3A) and Angel helping achieve such a disastrous majority for Carr in 1999 and 2003:
don't ask
This process no doubt self aggrandised Angel's status and role, but at the immeasurable expense of the NSW and Australian environment in terms of land clearing (about 2M ha in NSW alone), woodchipping (at least 10M tonnes natural forest onging in NSW, 80M nationally) especially in East Gippsland but exported out of Eden, cyanide mines at Timbarra and Lake Cowal, failure to really deliver a 'green' Olympics, and any number of other depredations. And that's not counting corrupted governance of the NSW ngo green sector itself. Just ask Noel Plumb ex CEO of National Parks Assocation and a swathe of mid rank green campaigners. Angel till now has been the Howard of the NSW green movement. Ruthless. Which is why the Green Party is an essential contrast.
- Surprisingly turgid article by James Woodford, Jeff Angel protege and NSW ALP groupie about how to write fiction - for 10 year olds? p53, August 26 2007 Sun Herald. Woodford has been absent Fairfax media for quite a few months now.
- Naomi Klein has a very tightly written piece in the Good Weekend presently, updating what JK Galbraith called the "military industrial complex" which bleeds the social services budget of the USA dry to promote it's "disaster economy" as Klein denotes it. How true. Some stats - in 2001 there were 2 security oriented lobby firms in the USA and in mid 2006 there were 543 linking legislators to venture capital. Another - as of December 2006 there were 205 of 245 that could be tracked out of a total of 360 released from Gitmo had been totally cleared by their home countries of any terrorism. She laments the commercialisation of security for lacking real democratic rigour, but methinks JK Galbraith sadly has been here before too.
- Same Good Weekend has a funny piece on Shrek, err IR Minister Joe Hockey who prefers to "observe pain" not live pain, hence the hard days work on the back of a quad bike looking at the view? Quite obviously a spoiled youngest child and cowardly about his real wet liberal values under the Howard regime. Sad really.
- Amusing to notice the Daily Telegaph acknowledging Howard's "hubris" in the Saturday editorial after the PM has put a daisy cutter through the Liberal Party organisation such that he owns all good news and thus still a 49% personal approval rating. All it signifies is he will be last to drown, such that Warren's cartoon has Howard as a toss up "can't win with/without him" on a coin. Truth to tell Howard is a tosser.
- Not that Rudd is less so if Mike Steketee in his book review "The Steel in Rudd" Australian Literary Review July 4 2007 p10 is to be believed" "determined ....innate conservatism ... humility ... didn't come naturally ....accepts where power lies ....never challenged anything [as a student] ... pragmatic". A perfect PM for a convict/survivor society?
- AAP story in Resources within Career section of the Australian every week p10 sept 15 re Robert Purves's Environment Business Australia re binding targets on climate change.
Meet the Press
Hockey IR minister with compere Paul Bongiorno. Displays his Howard loyalty despite Sunday Age story Speculation won't peter out about Costello ascension still quite possible this Tuesday re next Newspoll.
Avuncular Joe but mostly waffle.
First adbreak IR advert by unions against Howard extreme system, they say.
Jennifer Hewitt now with The Australian, and Mark someone Adeliade Advertiser both News Ltd folks.
Good question re Joe happy to be fall guy on IR? He really does look like Shrek. Amusing but is it ministerial? Not really.
Hewitt drives in the nails on Costello/Howard oscilliations as per disturbing vivisection cartoon by Moir yesterday.
Next guest is John Conner who in fact is aspiring ALP politician like Peter Garrett by the judge of the funding sources, Carr involvement in same Climate Institute, just as Carr used forest protection to drive a wedge on Liberal National Party in NSW then trashed them like this at Badja 2007, which Conner helped to facilitate when CEO of NSW Nature Conservation Council, hand in glove with ... Jeff Angel.
Footage of Garrett claiming hypocrisy. Ironic given his own failure on Tas pulp mill.
Conner sings a slick song re Kyoto, like a lawyer looks at the questioner?, not the camera so all we are seeing is a profile. Now to front with panel. Strong grasp of his subject, and progressive setting. Handles Hewitt bouncer easily. Very fluid talker, even a little haughty (before a fall?). Looks and sounds like ALP pollie material after this interview. After the wedge has worked, with not one less coal mine. Camera out take has chatting going strong because climate change really is the wedge despite piss weak ALP, and inevitable post election sleaze - like the Tas pulp mill (subject of a Sydney) conference Balmain Town Hall yesterday.
Transcript in due course www.ten.com.au/meetthepress
7 Weekend Sunrise, 8.35-40 am Riley Diary -
Howard leadership, Python allusion we used earlier this week, very gross and bloody re only a flesh wound, blood spirting from stump(s). "Your a looney". 'Team work' with cartoon music.
Savage satire. Frightening politics.
Again Don Bradman allusion we also have sledged, team won but he got a duck and footage of Howard lousy bowling style.
Q & A Howard stay on backbench is incredulous.
http://www.seven.com.au/sunrise/weekend
Insiders 2
Julia Gillard as Deputy Opposition leader is talent. Trawls Coalition leadership travails notes uncertainty point as the real crux of the problem for Howard, Costello and Coalition generally.
Claims Costello in lock step with Howard, worse on IR, lack policy like ALP as per question time in Parliament last week. Vote for Rudd is really a vote for him. Declines Carr triumphalism.
Panel Fran Kelly (abc radio national), Glen Milne (News Ltd) both very acute. Misha Schubert Age also clever.
The 'Howard/Costello leadership' - co joined - "Coward leadership" is the Glen Milne line, ouch.
Misha also reckons Costello is more problematic for the ALP with Howard’s measure.
Similar to 9 slow mo deconstruction of the power transfer, as the big power cogs turn from Howard to Costello in the minds of hundreds of thousands of viewers in a mind meld with the show’s script, and not pushed but holding hands, like Oakes and Costello on 9 at roughly the same time similarly taking hundreds of thousands of viewers.
Very interesting, not seen such a consensus in footage in real time before.
Milne says PM is being airbrushed out of local MP campaigns according to his advice. Fran Kelly says Coalitino morale down. Tips housing affordability policy emergence. Misha schubert quietly says policy emergence on early childhood. And Milne says Textor Cosby will meet on when to call election (? not sure I got that).
Home page is http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/
Sunday 9
Costello with Laurie Oakes. Diumvirate? Costello leaves open he can be drafted, words show he won’t challenge if newspoll is bad on Tuesday. Won’t break his word to Howard to run with him as his deputy. But if Howard loses his job, he has to reconsider obviously. He will be released from that word as his bond.
Costello sings the govt (ie his own) virtues on economic credentials.
LO teases out the confusing situation of who has finality on policy settings.
LO coauthor policies? Costello labours responses around Treasurer costing as usual and team work. Mouths all the words but sounds very problematic.
LO, supporters worry PC will be tainted if lose the election. PC says that’s the way it works in Cabinet system.
It’s a slow pace scary dangerous interview you can hear the rusty cogs of changeover from Howard to Costello turn against age and time and grime for lack of use. But turn they do.
Costello livens up what he stands for, strong economy, education, enfranchising people etc etc. Fluid, positive lively animated.
LO uses co-prime minister tag, Costello doesn’t blink and answers accepting the tag. The slow big cog turns another half wheel.
Costello goes on with his economic soliloquy re future funding etc.
LO delicately asks what he would do as prime minister. Costello again answers accepting the tag, as ostensible prime minister. The big cog turns another half wheel. Like backing a giant truck into a narrow drive. They both look at eachother knowingly at the transfer of power symbolism on the screen.
Last week poll had 59% surprisingly vote Howard should stand down as PM.
Feature story on alcohol drugs.
http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/default.asp
