Oh, How Sweet It Is!

Is the Murdoch Media Empire in Decline? If so, how sweet it is. Murdoch and other very conservative media slammed Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party for 12 months prior to the Federal election. At the same time they massaged Peter Dutton and the LNP Opposition.

Result! A resounding victory for Albanese and the  Labor Party and a crushing defeat for the Liberal Party and its leader Peter Dutton, who lost his own seat in the debacle.                                                         Is it the beginning of the end of a crumbling Murdoch media empire?

Nicole Chvasta, writing online in The Politics, has taken a scalpel to the Murdoch Media and its major role in almost destroying the Liberal Party which was soundly thrashed by labor in the may 3rd Federal Election. 

Here is just one memorable quote from her forensic analysis of the toxic Murdoch media.

"Remarkably, after cheer leading the Liberals to disaster on May 3, The Australian national newspaper  leapt back up onto its feet to brush off its flesh wound and lecture the Coalition on “missing the warnings”

Nicole  quotes a paragraph from The Australian following Albanese's monumental election victory.           "Of all the mistakes that led to this result, one was fatal: the untested assumption that Labor was out of touch and unaligned with the mainstream values of Australians. There can be no other interpretation that that this is fundamentally wrong.”

Nicole then adds, "This from the paper that tells us pretty much every day that Labor is out of touch and unaligned with the mainstream values of Australians." Like Pontius Pilate, Murdoch's media is washing its hands of the huge LNP  defeat even though it never once during the campaign highlighted any of "the messages" Dutton was missing.

In Western Australia we had the same slanted message from our only daily newspaper, the Kerry Stokes owned West Australian. For the last 18 months, the West's editor, Christopher Dore, has been telling us that Australians think Albanese is on the nose, that Peter Dutton is  a strong leader with a nuclear vision for Australia's energy future. 

Could Saturday's thumping victory  for Labor be the start of the decline of Murdoch and Stokes' power to influence voters? Let us hope so. Murdoch and Stokes have dominated public opinion for many years with their  heavy bias towards the Liberal/National Party Coalition. Not just in their editorials. Many journalists are obviously instructed by their editors to praise the Right and bag the Left. Their Letters to the Editor pages are always filled with Anti Labor messages from a coterie of regular conservative correspondents.

Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating was not expected to win the 1993 federal election. He did so quite comfortably. Late in the evening on Polling Day, Keating mounted the stage at Labor Party headquarters, looked straight at the camera and said,  "This is the sweetest victory of all."The crowd went wild. As you do when you enjoy an unexpected win. Perhaps  Mr Albanese, after the unexpected and  massive landslide victory, could copy a line from Jackie Gleason who kept telling us all "How sweet it is!"

On May 3rd, opinions were divided as to the result.. The Murdoch/Stokes media were constantly telling us Anthony Albanese was a weak leader and on the nose with voters. .Peter Dutton, the right wing media told us, was a strong leader of the Liberal/National coalition  and had all the answers to inflation, cost of living pressures and an energy programme to combat fossil fuel emissions with his nuclear energy plan. Albeit, that nuclear energy plan was not going to come on stream for about twenty years.

Albanese and Dutton had four TV debates. In each of these Peter Dutton ridiculed Albanese for being weak, a liar and unfit to be Prime Minister. Albanese, taking a leaf out of arch conservative, Margaret Thatcher's debating tips, refused to engage in personal vilification. He told Dutton that resorting to personal insults was not what the voters wanted to hear. They wanted information on policies and what the future was going to look like. That was very good advice which Dutton ignored. Albanese also gave us one of the few memorable quotes of the campaign, "Kindness is not a weakness." No, sir. Sometimes, it takes real courage to show kindness.

According to the earlier polls, Dutton would have won a federal election held 12 months ago. However, as the election loomed ever closer, the polls began to say that Albanese and Labor were now more likely to win. Most people said Labor would win the most seats but not enough to govern  in its own right. It would be a Hung Parliament and labor would have to negotiate with minor parties on the crossbench in order to govern.

It is fair to say everyone thought the May 3rd poll would be close. Listening  to ABC Radio of the morning of the election, the radio presenter introduced Karen Middleton as a senior journalist who had covered many elections.The presenter asked Karen how she thought the voting would go. Well Karen is an experienced journalist but like almost everybody, including the two party leaders, she did not have clue. She told the ABC presenter and the listening audience, that it was possible that Labor could win the most seats but in a hung parliament. Then she added that Labor may win  a majority of seats and be able to form a government in its own right.  Just to cover all the options, Karen then said that it was also possible that Peter Dutton could win a majority of seats in a hung parliament. I was waiting for her to say 'And the cow could jump over the Moon". but the presenter thanked her and switched to another topic.

Well, as we now know, the result was an absolute triumph for Labor. Despite Murdoch and Stokes' media's  low  opinions of Anthony Albanese, he was not on the nose with Australian voters. Quite the reverse . 

It is usual for a party going for its second election to to lose a few seats. Albanese's Labor party s won more than double the seats of its main opposition. An unprecedented electoral victory in which the main Labor opponents, Peter Dutton (Liberal leader) and Adam Bant (Greens leader) both lost their seats.

Given the Murdoch/Stokes media's wholehearted support for Peter Dutton and their  pointed barbs directed at Labor and Albanese, perhaps we can at last say that the Murdoch/Stokes Media monopoly is no longer a powerful force in forming voters' opinions.

As I watched the count and saw Labor winning more and more seats I thought of my late cousins, Raymond and Maurie Carr, and my great friend, the late Sean Walsh. In earlier Labor triumphs in years gone by, I had been on the phone to them or at their houses, luxuriating in a political rarity in Australia, a Labor Party electoral victory.

I also thought fondly of Gough Whitlam, the reforming. progressive Prime Minister, who in three short years gave us so many of things we enjoy in Australia today. From 1972, Whitlam had to battle  an LNP conytrolled senate that had been elected three years or more before. These conservative senators thought reform and modernisation was tantamount to treason. They also believed that the Liberal National Party Coalition had a God given right to govern and were Born to Rule."                                                          They blocked Whitlam's election agenda. After eighteen months, Whitlam called a Double Dissolution of both houses. He won the election and as allowed by the Constitution, held  a joint sitting of both houses to pass bills like Universal Health Care, Equal Pay for Equal Work, One Vote-One Value, No fee Universities. No Fault Divorce, Cheaper Daycare. He got those and other bills passed but the Senate still refused to pass his newer legislation. It made no difference to the  LNP  senate that Whitlam had just won a second election that endorsed his policies.The LNP Senate dominace by the way came about because in defiance of all parliamentary conventions since Federation, state LNP governments replaced retiring Labor Senators with non Labor people.

At the same time The  Governor General, John Kerr, who was constitutionally required to take advice only from the Prime Minister, started taking advice from  two justices of the High Court, from  Michael Heseltine,  the Queen's Private Secretary and even from  a malevelent Malcolm Fraser, who was now leading the LNP opposition on an all out war to get rid of Whitlam and his government.

To make matters worse, News media mogul Rupert Murdoch turned against Whitlam. Murdoch had supported Whitlam in 1972. However, when Whitlam refused to appoint Murdoch as Australia's High Commissioner to Great Britain, Murdoch was furious. He instructed his various editors to "Kill Whitlam", Murdoch's media spread vicious, sensational and untrue stories about various ministers in the Whitlam govermnent.                                                                                                                                                                     When the Senate blocked Supply Whitlam went to the Governor General's residence and asked him to dissolve the parliament and call a half senate election. Instead, on the advice of his many Liberal Party  advisers, Kerr sacked Whitlam. He then  made Malcom Fraser  the caretaker Prime Minister, even though he did not have a majority in the House of Representatives. Another precedent. Whitlam had been stabbed in the back by a derelict and egotistical Governor General and a tough as nails opposition leader who had not the slightest trouble breaking all sorts of Parliamentary conventions in order to gain political power, which he did in the subsequent election.                                                                                                                                                                                           I am certain that wherever he is today, Gough Whitlam gleefully watched Labor's annihilation of the Liberal Party and the impotence of the Murdoch/Stokes media to influence voter's opinions.                    No doubt Gough  proclaimed in imperious tones,"Men and Women of Australia! How sweet it is".             Oh, yes indeed!