Grant us relief from hideous hypocrisy of the love media
The green-left embraces Anthony Albanese’s Labor but the government has set itself up for trouble.
Enjoy it while it lasts. We have experienced three years of hysterical toxicity and relentless character assassination from the green-left media, obsessed as they were with avenging their humiliation at the 2019 election. Since then, every disaster has had a political origin while every government decision has had an evil intent, every prime ministerial smile was malevolent, every Coalition retort malicious.
Now the love media has changed disposition from antagonism to co-operation. Unlike the Coalition regime, the Labor government and its Green and teal comrades are benevolent, there is a rainbow behind every cloud, altruism in every government aspiration.
Anthony Albanese was clever enough to set the tone the day after the election. “What I want it to be is a big moment for the country,” said the prime minister-elect, “I want to change the country, I want to change the way politics works in this country.”
So far, he sure has got it. Not since the palm fronds were laid before Kevin Rudd in late 2007 have we seen such a euphoric transformation of public debate. For Rudd it wore down only slightly during the global financial crisis but crashed when he abandoned his signature emissions trading scheme in 2010.
There is always something of a political honeymoon – and fair enough – because we need to give a new government time to find its feet and claim its mandate. Labor is not to blame for trying to reset; it is the transparent hypocrisy of the commentariat that is sickening.
To read Guardian Australia or watch the ABC these past three years has been to recoil at the brutish machismo of our national affairs and the malignant intent of our Coalition government. Now, not so much. From Capital Hill the journalists now see a clear dawn over the Molonglo Valley and butterflies among the flowers.
The mob at Quarterly Essay, a regular leftist booklet, have signed Guardian Australia’s Katharine Murphy for a spring edition entitled On Albanese and the New Politics. How about that? Albanese might have written the brief himself. It is promoted as “A portrait of a leader in the making, and a nation on the move”. Someone had better release the handbrake.
The day after the election ABC TV opinionista Laura Tingle described the incoming prime minister as a “good consensus builder” and bathed him in the glory of the Hawke consensus era, even though Albanese was a young Socialist Left factional player who opposed much on offer during the Hawke-Keating era. Tingle said Albanese would “restart a conversation” about important issues, was more “authentic” than Scott Morrison, and would lead a “deeper government” – deeper thinking or deeper in debt, she did not say.
The return to politics as usual will come more quickly for Albanese than it did for Rudd because his victory was not emphatic and the government faces immediate challenges. An energy crisis, soaring inflation, rising interest rates and reactivated people-smugglers – the ground will rush up to meet Albanese and his team as soon as they stumble.
Besides, so much of what Labor and their media allies have campaigned on in recent years is fictional. And reality has a habit of exposing fantasy. Given the energy crisis, for instance, how plausible do Labor’s pre-election promises appear? Just last month Albanese told us his Powering Australia plan would “end the climate wars”, deliver more than 600,000 jobs and cut power bills by $275 a year in his first term.
This week the government had to shut down the national electricity market to arrest price hikes and try to stabilise supplies. Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen is pretending we can bolster supplies and reduce costs by spending tens of billions of dollars more on transmission, renewables and storage, even though all those costs will have to be recouped from consumers and adequate electricity storage does not exist. Intermittency is the Achilles’ heel of renewable energy, scientifically, practically, and globally. If Bowen thinks he can solve the electricity storage problem, politics is not the place for him – take it to market and he could be richer than Elon Musk in a year.
In Germany, Austria and Britain, coal-fired generators that were supposed to be mothballed are being reopened, and The Netherlands has eased restrictions on coal to solve the electricity supply crisis exacerbated by cuts in Russian gas imports. France is building more nuclear power plants as are China, India, South Korea, and others. Other than a few places with plentiful hydro-electricity resources, no country has made the switch from fossil fuels to heavy reliance on renewables without running into the sort of crisis we face. Just because the ABC and Guardian Australia cover their eyes and refuse to air these realities does not change the real world.
Yet Albanese and Bowen want to accelerate down this path. Writing to the UN, they have increased Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction target to 43 per cent. More power, more reliability, more jobs, fewer emissions and lower prices. This is Magic Pudding energy policy; it is going to get very ugly.
The big difference between politics during the past three years and the three to come is that debate will switch from confected debates to grim reality. Morrison made his mistakes but he was torn down largely by concocted attacks about events beyond his control – bushfires, floods or even alleged sexual assaults.
Albanese and Labor will run headlong into real consequences stemming from the absurdity of their own commitments. Reliable, renewable, affordable power will prove elusive; green jobs, too. When we run out of power here and there, I expect the interruptions will not be known as blackouts, but green-outs. Presumably bushfires, droughts, floods and storms will still happen and Labor, in all fairness, will have to wear the blame. I guess it will also be tarnished with any alleged sexual misdemeanours in the political realm too.
Maybe not. We can confidently expect more rational analysis of events from most of the media, with hysterical blame-shifting and fanciful causative links banished for a while. If we see savage bushfires this summer, another drought, more floods or even cyclones in the tropical north, it is unlikely they will be blamed on the Prime Minister or other members of his government. Actually, given how the climate catastrophists blamed the Coalition for all manner of natural phenomena, somehow linking them to Australia’s inconsequential climate policies, perhaps we can expect lavish praise heaped on Labor for any bursts of spring sunshine or bumper crops. Either Australian policy makes a difference, or it does not.
Similarly, should there be any allegations of sexual harassment or assault in Parliament House, I expect the focus will now fall where it should, on the alleged offenders and any official investigations, rather than on some attempt to create a chain of blame all the way to the prime minister’s office. Perhaps we will return to the practices of a time gone by when the Canberra press gallery suppressed rather than revealed the extramarital affairs of consenting adults, as they did for Gareth Evans and Cheryl Kernot.
Maybe for the next little while, journalists will even put political agendas aside and respect important principles such as the rules of contempt. Already our new nirvana sees government ministers allowed to complete sentences in ABC interviews.
Journalists are no longer shouting about Covid-19 infections and deaths. Life comes and goes, without blame. What a relief it is for all of us – especially the government.
In Hobart this week the Prime Minister said we need a government “less interested in a glib headline” because it was “time that the indulgence of the 24-hour media and political cycle ended”. Hallelujah. Albanese said he would deliver a “different way of operating politics” that would not show “contempt” for democratic processes. Sign me up.
But no matter how well-intentioned Albanese is, and no matter how compliant the green-left media has become, he is headed for trouble. Apart from the implausible policy positions (an unworkable energy plan, extra spending while fighting inflation, strong border protection while scrapping temporary protection visas) running headlong into the brick wall of reality, he will be undermined by the excesses of his political allies.
Even a month before parliament sits, Adam Bandt, the leader of Albanese’s crucial Senate partners the Greens, has refused to be associated with the Australian flag. A Greens senator, Lidia Thorpe, has declared that to “infiltrate” our parliament she feigned allegiance to our “colonising queen” (I know Queen Elizabeth II has been around a while but I had no idea she oversaw the events of 1788).
The climate extremists are promising to superglue themselves to our roads next week, and the teal independents have convinced voters that Australian climate gestures can hold back the tides and quell our summer fires. The radicals and fruit loops that Labor deliberately unleashed and legitimised in recent years are about to demand their dues, and Albanese cannot disown them.
The unreasonable and unrepresentative green left could tear down a fragile Labor government in public debate, even as Albanese and others seek, sensibly, to move to the centre.
In this environment all Peter Dutton and the Coalition need to do is offer a rational, practical alternative, devoid of policy delusion or ideology (in other words, sit on the so-called moderates).
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This is the interregnum of milk and honey, of sweetness and light. This is when the abrasiveness of the love media dissipates, when the Canberra press pack embraces a kinder, gentler approach and the “climate wars” are over.