It's been mega, but a new life calls

George Megalogenis and Julia Gillard

FIRST impressions of power can be amusing.

I was formally introduced to Bob Hawke in the winter of the 17 per cent mortgage rate, 1989. Still new to the parliamentary press gallery, and only three years old as a journalist, I didn't have too many scoops to my name to warrant prime ministerial attention. But the PM's press secretary, Barrie Cassidy, said his boss was keen to meet me because I was sitting six games clear on top of the press gallery footy tipping competition.

My first interstate trip with John Howard earlier that year almost ended in blood for both of us. The setting was a Thursday evening address to the University of Queensland. A mob of 50 protesters chanting "Asians welcome, Howard not" rushed the opposition leader and his entourage as they approached the student union building. A smaller, but equally vocal, group of Liberal supporters there to greet Howard pushed back, and it was on for young and young. For one surreal moment I thought the mob would turn on me and The Australian's Paul Austin. We looked at one another and worried that we might have to defend ourselves. Howard returned to Canberra two days later and walked into another ambush. Andrew Peacock had secured the numbers for a leadership change.

My first federal election in 1990 was a junior reporter's dream. I was assigned to follow Paul Keating and John Hewson around the country. The tour began with a case of mistaken identity. As I took my seat on the small VIP jet, the treasurer apologised for not remembering who I worked for. He said he thought I was one of the AFP officers assigned to protect him.

Later that week, Keating offered to delay the return trip from Tasmania so I could dictate a feature article on his opponent, the shadow treasurer, to a frazzled colleague at the Melbourne Sun who couldn't type that quickly. The copy-taker who normally handled the calls from journalists on the road was not available because she was keying in a column from ex-footballer Sam Newman.

That campaign yielded the most bizarre front page story I would ever write - Keating's election-eve conversion to the Collingwood Magpies. The picture we cooked up had Keating and Collingwood legend Lou Richards wrestling for possession of a black and white striped footy jumper.

"Move over Lou Richards, the Mighty Magpies have found a new head-kicker," was my cheesy opening paragraph.

The informality of Australian politics can seem to an outsider's eye as clubby, if not corrupting. Leaders socialising with journalists, sharing third-hand assessments of what real people are supposed to be thinking.

I'm biased, of course, but I believe it is one of the redeeming features of our democracy. I'd take our system over the US's, where celebrities and billionaire donors are the preferred conduits for leaders.

But the informality can jar when leaders try to get too close to the imagined gurus of the media. One of the most distressing changes I have observed in national affairs is the willingness of politicians to follow my industry down market. When I joined the press gallery in October 1988, talkback radio was a noisy forum for treasurers to explain the current account deficit. When I left it at the end of 1999, Peter Costello had already done the Macarena on midday television.

The trivialisation of political debate began with Howard and his well-intentioned, but ultimately self-defeating, attempt to reach ordinary Australians through the Alan Jones program. The problem wasn't Jones so much as the idea that politicians should defer to the abuse of his listeners. Hawke and Keating would never have been quite so obliging.

The precedent of excess accessibility, once set, can lead to the unintended consequences of Kevin Rudd. Howard was beaten at his own game by a younger version of himself, who could go to studios where the older man wouldn't dare. Rudd was your pal on morning television, the butt of gentle ribbing on FM radio through the day and fielding questions on who he would turn gay for on evening television.

Rudd was also a great leader after Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, just as Howard had been in the wake of Port Arthur in 1996 and the Bali bombings in 2002. But on most days Rudd was PM, he went looking for new ways to diminish the office through over-exposure.

In 1988, manufacturing was still the nation's No 1 employer, with 15.3 per cent of jobs, while the media was ranked 14th out of 19th, with 2.3 per cent.

Today, we are 16th with 2.1 per cent of jobs, because our growth has not kept up with the rest of the economy. Note the word "growth". The revolution in the media is unsettling, but we shouldn't confuse the loss of the free ride of advertising revenue, and the switch from print to digital, with a big economic restructure. Only two sectors have shed jobs in absolute terms over the past 24 years - agriculture has lost almost one in four workers; manufacturing one in six.

Manufacturing has dropped from first to fourth place in that time, and now has just 8.2 per cent of all jobs. Agriculture was the sixth-largest employer in 1988; today it is 14th, just ahead of mining and the media. We aren't doing that badly.

The challenge for the media isn't the absolute size of the workforce, but its dispersal. Technology has cursed print journalists with continuous deadlines to meet and smaller newsrooms with which to share the burden. But it has gifted us with readers as instant editors.

I know politicians today don't appreciate my nagging about their lack of policy focus. They feel they are no less reform-minded than Hawke, Keating and Howard Mark I. I don't doubt that, but my critique has been informed by countless off-the-record conversations. Today, a politician is more likely to begin a chat with the question "How do you think we are going?".

Hawke, Keating and Howard Mark I would always start by telling you where they were going. Reporting with respect was easier back in their day because they were prepared to share the simplest of confidences - their vision for the nation.

The present generation of politicians fears the media, when the media is losing influence. They are mesmerised by polls, when the polls are less meaningful than they might once have been. And they seek to place greater controls on information, when information is more freely available than ever before. If I could tweak the relationship to restore respect on both sides, I would reverse these trends. Trust us to treat you with more dignity by giving us the benefit of the facts.

There was no secret to the Hawke-Keating-Howard reform miracle. Back then leaders included everyone in the debate. Ministers ran their portfolios, bureaucrats were allowed to brief the media on government policy and vested interests understood give and take. Advice was released for discussion, not filtered through the PM's press office and dumped on the public as a non-negotiable offer. Journalists didn't have to endorse a party; they explained the policy on release and went back to the field after its delivery to see how it was working.

Today, the incentives are all wrong. We are in a race to be first to stop thinking. If we find fault with a policy, we know we will render it inoperable because the politician will retreat at the first shot from our keyboards or microphones.

After 21 years at The Australian, and almost 27 years in newspapers for News Limited, I'm giving up the day job to become a full-time author. I will miss the colleagues, the contacts and readers' feedback. It's been a privilege to report on and analyse a system, that despite its flaws, remains the envy of the world.