Eric Beecher - The Best Australian Political Writing 2009

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Eric Beecher started his career in newspapers as a journalist on The Age newspaper in Melbourne. He later worked at The Sunday Times and The Observer in London and The Washington Post in the US. In 1984, at age thirty-three, he became the youngest-ever editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, and in 1987 was appointed editor-in-chief of the Herald and Weekly Times newspaper group. In 1990 he became a founder, CEO and major shareholder in The Text Media Group, a public company that produced newspapers, magazines and books, which was acquired by Fairfax Media in 2003. He is publisher of Crikey and a founding shareholder and Chairman of online media ventures: SmartCompany.com.au, EurekaReport.com.au and BusinessSpectator.com. He is Chair of the Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas in Victoria and in 2007 was awarded the Walkley Award for Journalistic Leadership.

The Best Australian Political Writing 2009

Edited by

Eric Beecher

Contents

Eric Beecher

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

Christine Jackman

Nicholas Gruen

Margaret Simons

Michael Costello

John Hewson

George Megalogenis

Lenore Taylor

Imre Salusinszky

Robert Manne

2 After the Apology

Noel Pearson

Phillip Adams

Raimond Gaita

Paul Toohey

Marcia Langton

Nicolas Rothwell

Don Watson

Paul Kelly

Paul Sheehan

Peter Hartcher

Jennifer Hewett

Tom Dusevic

Annabel Crabb

Tim Flannery

Paul Kelly

Lethal emissions

Shaun Carney

Lenore Taylor

Michael Duffy

Clive Hamilton

Mark Latham

Alan Ramsey

Geoff Gallop

Gerard Henderson

Janet Albrechtsen

Mark Latham

Waleed Aly

Mungo MacCallum

Brendan Gleeson

Don Watson

Clive Hamilton

Moonlight reflections

Chris Masters

Brian Toohey

Peter Hartcher

George Megalogenis

Laura Tingle

Mark Latham

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

Bernard Keane

Dennis Shanahan

Michelle Grattan

Craig Sherborne

Guy Rundle

Noel Pearson

Introduction

To state the obvious, 2008 was a stellar year for politics and its stablemate, economics. A once-in-a-lifetime year. A year when Americans made a watershed presidential choice; when the global economic system almost collapsed; when an aspiring new Australian government, still basking in the warm inner-glow of its apology to Aborigines, watched aghast as the economy tanked and turned the entire business of government into a singular focus on managing and compromising in terrible times.

It was a year made for great political writing. The kind of news year journalists and writers and editors can only dream about. And, yes, there was enough good Australian political writing to fill a book. But only one book.

For despite the output generated by hundreds of professional practitionersthe journalists, columnists, academics, ex-politicians, activists and hangers-on who spend much or all of their working lives as paid political observersthe business of producing fine political writing is a problematical thing.

There is, of course, a profound difference between productivity and quality. Tens (perhaps hundreds) of millions of words of political writing are produced in Australia each year. Yet most of them are meat-and-potatoes journalism, slopped up from a public relations/lobbying/propaganda commercial kitchen that is probably ten times larger than the journalism caf it feeds.

This increasingly sophisticated spin industry operates from within the offices of federal and state politicians, government departments, public instrumentalities, industry organisations, NGOs, corporations and most other public and private institutions of any scale. Its a machine that spews out news and backgrounders and sound bites and photo ops on such a grand scale that it has effectively become the main source of the oil that greases the wheels of most modern journalism (also now known as churnalism). And as editorial resources are being slashed by the imploding economics of the media industry, large dollops of the words and ideas produced by PR and corporate affairs operatives inside the offices of politicians and governmentsincluding a sizeable number of former journalists-turned-gatekeepersfind their way to the public almost unfiltered or unchecked by journalistic hand.

Mind you, its not only political functionaries who devote their working lives to spinning and weaving and planting stories. The politicians do it too, federal, state, Labor, Liberal, all the time, at every opportunity. And no one does it more often or more adeptly, because they are so practised in it, than high-ranking politicians, whose seniority and perceived gravitas gives them far greater access to the media than their more junior colleagues.

To a visitor from outer space, it would be hard to distinguish the job description of prime minister today from that of a talk show or game show host. The prime minister is a regular fixture on radio and television, where no topic is too small for him to discuss. He offers cash prizes to listeners and he sweats on the weekly ratings.

The lines between celebrity and politics blurred some time ago. Our leaders are more needy because their handlers have convinced them that if they miss a single news bulletin the public will soon forget them. But voters can just as easily project wisdom on to politicians who are silent as those who blather sweet platitudes about Australian values and the noble struggle for the working family.

George Megalogenis on Kevin Rudds spin

Of course, in politics, no one ever agrees. One writers black is another writers white.

The Opposition would have us believe Kevin Rudd is all spin and no substance. I think his problem is exactly the reverse.

Far from being devoid of content, I reckon the Rudd Government is running a real risk of having too much substance, too much policy fibre for the electorate to digest in just one electoral term

What this government needs is more so-called spin of a substantive kind. More consistent explanation about the big stuff. The really important things. The things we put them there to do. The things that, in many cases, they are doing behind the scenes.

Lenore Taylor on Kevin Rudds spin

So was the prime minister spinning when he stood at the dispatch box in the House of Representatives in February and made one of the most moving and important speeches ever delivered in that place? His new governments apology to the Stolen Generations specifically, and to Indigenous Australians generally, was a narrative that had almost nothing in common with journalism, yet was possibly the best piece of Australian political writing of 2008.

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