Bernard Keane (Crikey 22 May 2020 “What Lies Beneath Must Be Resurfaced – or the media is not doing its job to expose power and corruption”) gifted journalists the surface scum of partisan policy making from whence they could scoop it up. Corruption has been normalised when crafting policy is a thinly-veiled attempt to shore up vested interests. Sounding mono in a multi-channel world. Never asking anyone outside the neuro-infested cabal of the right. Fuelling the policy arena with the availability heuristic of welded ideology that has no answer to current sticky issues.
Judging by the sports rorts affair, this government appears not to know when it has wronged its citizenry. No voice of conscience is evident. Journalists do not need to turn over a sod to expose corruption, it’s there in plain sight. What an easy life it must be for investigative journalists. Popular analogies like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank come to mind in the pursuit of gas industry self-interest. So too oiling machinery and greasing palms; this government is unconscionably corrupt.
Intended or not, I do appreciate Keane’s double entendre of both lies (stratum and falsehoods) and re-surfaced (elevation and re-sealing the road out). Could journalists stimulate a conversation about why we tolerate obvious corruption? Could they probe the polly-wants-a-cracker response of narrow zealots who give utterly predictable non-responses to any question: think Cormann, Abetz, Business Council of Australia, untroubled by new ideas. We now have a plethora of naked emperors on the world stage.
Keane observes the “woeful level of transparency around influence-peddling” rendering our political system corrupt. The Australian media could better hold to account mendacious policy making by providing a suitable analogy for the preferential treatment of banks. If you tell an organisation found guilty of malfeasance (let’s call it theft) in dealing with its customers that it could continue to plunder while out on bail and we’ll just sort it out after the pandemic, would you extend that to other criminal activity? Not every lawbreaker gets a six month moratorium. Justice delayed is justice denied we are often reminded. The media seems to have missed this justice anomaly. Come on journos, call it out!
Awesomely Astute 