ABC strangely silent on Gladys Berejiklian’s shot at history

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Picture: Dylan Robinson

Perhaps the national broadcaster has finally decided to junk its obsession with identity politics or perhaps its partisan bias has been exposed — you be the judge — but on two key factors in the NSW state election the ABC has been strangely muted.

Let’s start with Gladys Berejiklian, the hard hat-wearing former banker who wants to be known as the Infrastructure Premier. She is on the cusp of being the first woman elected to lead the largest state in the nation.

There have been only seven female premiers in the history of our federation and only two of them — the Queenslanders Anna Bligh and Annastacia Palaszczuk — have led their party to victory at a poll.

The short history of female premiers has tended to be of women handed a poisoned chalice then leading their governments to defeat — think Carmen Lawrence, Joan Kirner, Lara Giddings and Kristina Keneally.

Carmen Lawrence.

Joan Kirner.

At a time of unprecedented focus on the #MeToo movement and the need for women in political leadership, Berejiklian is on the cusp of gender-based history. Ordinarily we might expect the ABC to make much of this potential but there has barely been a reference.

Women on the right-of-centre don’t seem to matter as much to the ideologues in the political/media class. If a Labor woman had a similar opportunity I expect more would be made of it, in a positive way. Still, this is mere conjecture.

Berejiklian, to her credit and consistent with her political ethic, has not played the gender card. She just wants to get on with the job.

The third Liberal premier in eight years, she is more of a technocrat than a political prosecutor and has often lacked cut-through. Yet her performance in the past week has been sharp, winning the Sky News People’s Forum hands down and also landing heavy blows on Labor Leader Michael Daley as he has had a horror final week of the campaign.

When video emerged of Daley telling supporters last September that he worried about young Sydney people losing their job and housing options to Asians, the easy hit would have been for the Premier to highlight the xenophobic hypocrisy of the alternative premier. Instead she left that for voters to ponder and focused on how it displayed a propensity to tell different audiences different things depending on what he thought they wanted to hear.

Michael Daley answers questions at the Sky News People’s Forum. Picture: Jonathan Ng

That was a deft and laser-like political hit that also kept Berejiklian out of the fray. But it is the way the ABC dealt with that issue that has been the other surprise on the identity politics front.

Can we try to imagine how much overblown, indignant and morally superior coverage might have come from Aunty if Berejiklian had been caught out with similar xenophobic comments? There is little doubt that claims of racism and divisiveness would have dominated debate for days and enormous damage would have been inflicted.

But in Daley’s case the ABC has gone very soft, not inflaming the story, allowing weak explanations and concentrating on Labor efforts to mitigate the damage. “Michael Daley clarifies remarks about foreigners,” was one key headline. On Radio National Breakfast this morning the only focus on this issue was how Labor had placed advertisements in Chinese media to try to repair any damage.

Daley has been leader for only five months and has done well consolidating the underrated but effective work of Luke Foley, who bravely and wisely opposed the Coalition’s greyhound industry overreach and made strong inroads on infrastructure priorities, especially around stadiums.

And while Daley’s last week has been terrible, he will at least be relieved that the ABC has suddenly lost interest in identity politics. It could have been much worse for him.