Show business for ugly people? No thanks

Politicians should be under scrutiny for any abuses of power or misuse of public money, not their private lives.

If you’re like me, you’re sick to death of the Barnaby Joyce story already and it has only been out there for little more than a day.

And oh, how the Op-Eds rolled out, like a torrent spewed out by the terabyte.

What we might kindly call the new media babbled on about conspiracies between the press gallery and the parliament. Democracy denied was the collective shriek, as if the readers of these inner-city websites were exclusively the denizens of New England.

Joyce won New England with a 7 per cent swing and if an election was held in his seat tomorrow my best guess is he would win by a similar margin.

Even during the campaign Twitter knew. I knew and I didn’t care. Indeed, during the New England by-election campaign, mainstream media reported Joyce was no longer living at the family home. Any journalist worth his or her salt could have chased the story down.

There are no conspiracies and no rules etched in stone but the media does practise a reluctance in focusing on the personal foibles and the private crises of our politicians in a way that is never adequately explained.

Many years ago I wrote a feature for a magazine about backbenchers. I selected a few at random across the political divide and interviewed them, trying to get a sense of what life was like for the relatively unknown politician who had taken the first leap and grasped onto the slippery pole of a political career.

I recall little of the article itself other than I beat a metaphor half to death, likening parliament to a form of prison. I do remember the final paragraph read, “Welcome to the Big House. The first three years are the hardest.”

One of the interview subjects was Greg Wilton, the then Labor member for Isaacs in Melbourne’s south.

The Barnaby Joyce family drama has thrown the private lives of federal politicians under the spotlight. Picture: Kym Smith

When I called to interview him, Greg was sceptical but he remained accessible and friendly throughout, even though he probably knew I was going to write a yarn along the lines of “what sort of human dreck would actively seek a life like this?”

Less than a year later, Wilton committed suicide. I only know the facts as were reported. He went into a deep funk and the experience of disconnection from his children, that most awful aspect of family breakdown, he could endure no longer.

Several days later, the federal parliament took a 24-hour recess not just to honour Wilton but to reflect on the sort of pressures all MPs encounter in their lives.

It was parliament at its finest. The speeches rolled out and tears flowed, amid calls for a kinder, gentler polity. Every MP who spoke understood the pressures Wilton had encountered. They live them every day.

In the end the call for a peace and understanding lasted less than 24 hours before it was back to bear-pit brawling. Well, you get what you pay for in Canberra.

Some years ago, I was a recipient of what is politely known as a “shit sheet”. It contained all manner of salacious and titillating innuendo about the private life of a particular MP. It transpired the pseudonymous allegations had been, if not written, then surreptitiously approved for release by one of the MP’s colleagues. That is, it had come from another MP who sat, presumably some distance away but still within the confines of the target’s own partyroom.

Politics at the murky end is just that repulsive, and one wonders why anyone would want to get into it.

No one in the mainstream media picked up the story. Even if it was largely true, it didn’t matter in the slightest. These days shit sheets of this kind are fruit for the sideboard for angry bankrupts banging out blogs while living in circumstances so impoverished, there would be little or no point in suing them for the outrageous claims they publish. From there it is a short step to the cesspit of social media and into the minds of the terminally deluded as hard fact.

We all know why it happens. There is always someone in a crowd who feels the need to claim they are connected while others are not, that they have information that others don’t. All it would take is no more than three questions from someone inquisitive enough to expose them as peddling fifth-hand hearsay in a lamentable game of Chinese whispers, purple monkey dishwasher. The practitioners are by nature self-aggrandising and I dare say in many cases, it forms part of a larger personality disorder.

Labor MP Greg Wilton committed suicide.

Virtually not a week goes by when I am not offered some raffish form of gossip about the comings and goings in Canberra. I invariably roll my eyes and express no interest. This tattle is never published in the media, not because it would breach some non-existent Chatham House Canberra rule, but because it is garbage and belongs in the bin.

Here’s what I can tell you about our federal parliamentarians: their private lives are really not all that interesting. Rather, en masse they are immensely sad. It is not a life that one would choose if you wanted to have a family, stable relationships, mates and a social life that extends beyond mandatory appearances at garden parties and school fetes.

Choose empathy. It will take you to a better understanding, not just of the political process but how humans behave in a confined environment.

Journalism is at its best when it exposes abuses of power, the misuse of public money, misconduct in office and there’s plenty of that going on without having to rifle through an MP’s undie drawer.

But if you insist on media coverage that focuses on the deeply personal and sometimes vulgar elements of an MP’s life, and God knows there is a huge appetite for this stuff, then understand we are headed down the American path where our politics really does become show business for ugly people.