While Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese were put to the test as to who was tougher on asylum seekers, last night’s Sky News Leaders Debate glossed over many of the Morrison government’s gargantuan foreign policy failures.
It was typical of the failure of the media and the two-party system, of the triumph of image over substance, of xenophobia, of the focus on policy over politics, of real news over clickbait. The debate was a presentation of the News Corp propaganda machine, extending Rupert Murdoch’s toxic influence on Australian politics. The ABC, denied the telecast, did a blog on it. The rest dwelt on who a bunch of random Queenslanders thought got the upper hand.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Marise Payne has been too busy doing Liberal fundraisers to get to the Solomons, there is still no news on our actual, bizarre, foreign policy initiative to ship Aussie coal to Ukraine, and meanwhile the private equity vultures from KKR are ramping up their campaign in the media to siphon another 76 Australian hospitals offshore to a tax haven.
It’s an irredeemable mess. As one tweeted, “If only the LIbs cared as much about the Solomon Islands as the Cayman Islands.”
One of the less noticed aspects of the encounter was Morrison’s sly aside about Albanese’s handling of asylum seeker boats when he was deputy prime minister in 2013. Morrison told him: ‘’You were on the national security committee [of cabinet] for the first time.’’
The praise slash putdown is a tool of master debaters (don’t say that quickly) such as Morrison. The victim doesn’t notice it until it’s too late.
George Bush deployed the technique when he both praised and diminished the hurricane recovery efforts of Texas governor Ann Richards. Bush defeated Richards in the ensuing election.
Albanese may need at some stage to retire the log cabin story unless he is working on the adage that when everyone is sick of the message, it’s finally getting through.
Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.
Mark Sawyer is a journalist with extensive experience in print and digital media in Sydney, Melbourne and rural Australia.