If you have been reading the pages of News Corp newspapers over the past month or so, you would probably get the impression that Australia is under siege from evil forces who are seeking to undermine the country. The really strange thing about this kind of reportage is that if we accept this narrative as 100% reliable then we find that even according to News Corp newspapers, these evil forces are playing an unfair game by speaking louder than anyone else with their strange and disruptive propaganda. "It's just not fair," says the private corporation with the largest voice in terms of readership in the country.
How is a multi-national and multi-billion dollar corporation like News Corp, with its network of 70% off all the newspapers sold in the country and a national television news network like Sky News Australia, possibly expected to compete against people who operate out of single Post Office Boxes, maybe single offices, have a staff of single digits, and a shoestring budget? It's an outrage!
This election like never before, the played out assumption by News Corp's newspapers and Sky News Australia is that the people of Australia are so unbelievably stupid that they have no idea of what happened yesterday, much less what happened over the past three years. I'd like to say that thus is a new phenomenon but sadly it is not.
http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/1945/1945-labour-manifesto.shtml
In the years that followed, the "hard-faced men" and their political friends kept control of the Government. They controlled the banks, the mines, the big industries, largely the press and the cinema. They controlled the means by which the people got their living. They controlled the ways by which most of the people learned about the world outside. This happened in all the big industrialised countries.
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Similar forces are at work today.
- 1945 British Labour Party Manifesto
Admittedly this is from the 1945 British Labour Party Manifesto; which was written for another country in another time but the problem is that this could have been written yesterday and in Sydney. The written word very often outlives those people who wrote it and owing to the fact that human nature never changes, what was true 70 years ago, 700 years ago or 7000 years ago, is also very likely to have been true 7 days ago.
I would like to say that in the 76 years which followed the Second World War that we've somehow escaped the mentality which was responsible for the destruction of a hundred million people in two world wars, or the apathy which caused billions of people to die in the 1918-20 flu pandemic, or wipe out trillions of dollars and millions of jobs in the Great Depression but sadly, we have not.
The people who control the banks, the press, the mines, the means by which the people get their living and the ways by which most of people learn about the world outside, look absolutely identical. In a lot of cases, they are the same families.
The plan therefore, is to kick back against anyone who even as much as speaks out against what is done. Even when we have actual cases of rape and sexual harassment going on within the parliament building itself (which shouldn't even need to be stated and restated as crimes against the person), this is painted as nothing more than hysteria that would have been at home in the 1820s. Do you see the problem yet?
It is telling that the only candidates which News Corp has chosen to attack in this manner have all been women. Now I don't know if this is a deliberate policy of misogyny by News Corp but given their history of attacking people on the basis of race, gender and religion in the past, I can only assume that it is. This all the more strange when you consider that the political editor for News Corp Australia is Samantha Maiden. I do not know what kind of political control she has over News Corp and their newspapers but if you know what institutional misogyny looks like in modern Australia, then you only need to read a News Corp paper. The attacks have been relentless. One time might be ignorable. Twice is suspicious. Day after day for months, looks like editorial policy.
I also wonder what kind of journalism and basic research training is going on at News Corp. If you look at the "How To Vote" cards for Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo), Dr Sophie Scamps (Mackellar), Helen Haines (Indi), Kylea Tink (North Sydney), Allegra Spender (Wentworth), Zoe Daniel (Goldstein), Zali Steggall (Warringah), and Dr Monique Ryan (Kooyong), then in all eight cases the candidate asks you to put a 1 in the box next to their name and then asks the voter to number the rest of the boxes according to their own preference. If I can do that simple level of research, then how come none of the interns at News Corp have been able to? If they have been able to, then why hasn't the newspaper group ever published this?
Asking the voters to fill in their own preferences? What a truly revolutionary idea. Who would have thought of daring asking the voters for their opinions? That's dangerous; we can't have that! If we asked the voters what they thought and then made decisions and enacted policy on what the voters wanted, then we face the very real prospect of democracy breaking out. That's unheard of.
I suspect that in the eyes of News Corp, then giving women both an education and the vote was a mistake. The problem with giving people an education is that sooner or later they'll understand what is being done to them and won't stand for it any longer. The problem with giving people the vote is that they have some means, however limited, of changing the law so that it doesn't happen any more.
The unwritten truth that News Corp is afraid of (and which they dare not print because even uttering it is poison), is that an Independent candidate, can not in principle say who they would form government because that means having to game out a scenario which doesn't even yet exist.
If the Independents wanted to truly reflect the opinion of their constituents in the even of a hung parliament, then the best thing to do would be to wait until after the election to find out how the preferences flowed. If the voters happened to vote for someone else, then those votes reflect who they want to govern the country. That information doesn't become available until after the election has happened and the votes counted.
By nominating who the Independents would form government with now, undermines any bargaining power they they might have with both sides in the event of a hung parliament. If I was an independent candidate, I would challenge the journalists from the baying media pack and ask them what they would offer in support for my endorsement of their government and then I'd accuse them dictating policy to the parties who are obviously their puppets.
If there is one thing that is more obvious in this election than in any other that we do not have an independent media any more and that News Corp has just decided that they will determine what people think.
The only reason that political parties even exist because the franchise was extended to normal people. 200 years ago, when only a few select landowners had the vote, formal political parties didn't need to exist. There have always been factions all jostling for popularity and power since the beginning of time.
What is relatively new is that the machinery which is needed to convince people to vote for what those factions want, including when this means that people vote against their own interests. A formal system for delivering the relevant propaganda, only needed to exist after normal people pushed their way into and fought for the right to be heard.
In some parts of Australia, women have had the vote for 127 years. We didn't get a woman as a Minister until after the Second World War and a woman didn't occupy the position of Prime Minister until just 12 years ago. I am not in any way saying that women are a giant uniform voting bloc, rather that their existence is being treated as one by News Corp. News Corp would like to control the ways by which most of the people learn about the world outside and as far as they are concern, Australia is under siege from evil forces who are seeking to undermine the country.
The "hard-faced men" and their political friends want to retain control of the Government. This is not 1895, 1915, or 1945. Similar forces are at work today.
Aside:
The term 'hung parliament' refers to an undecided parliament in the same way that a 'hung jury' refers to one which has not made its final decision. That it no way means that the parliament nor the electorate has failed but rather that there isn't an obvious majority on the floor of the House of Representatives who can control confidence and supply.
If we game this out and are left with two sides of 72, then Bob Katter will side with the Liberal/National Coalition and this leaves the balance of power in the hands of 6 Independents.
If such a scenario were to occur, the News Corp newspapers who have all the tact of a sledgehammer hitting an egg, will likely try to infantilise the women who would be Independents. There will absolutely be a "good girl" narrative played out in the News Corp newspapers and across Sky News Australia. A 'good girl" will be seen as someone who joins the Liberal/National Coalition on matters of confidence and supply and any demands that they might have, including asking for the postion of a Cabinet Minister will be laughed off. I find it sickening.
Colt 3017.1: Yellow And Not Teal
In all honesty, I understand the rhetoric that the United Australia Party is running because they are hoping to pick up the disaffected members of the electorate who have been dropped off by the hard-economic right of the Liberal Party but are still to xenophobic and racist to vote for the Labor Party. These are the people who would have been picked up by a Trump in Australia had we had one and who ultimately would have also been disappointed when he turned out also to ignore them. News Corp's scrutiny of the United Australia Party doesn't exist for the simple reason that they are unlikely to pick up even a single seat in the House of Representatives and therefore, aren't actually a political obstacle. The answer is that these people will probably vote Liberal 2 or 3 and be counted on preferences if it ever goes that far.
If you look through the list of preferences per the How To Vote cards of the other parties, then the UAP is the most common No.2 pick. We can basically assume that Liberal/National Party preferences will never be distributed as they will get their first choice pick of a Liberal or National Party member. If the UAP gets down ballot preferences from One Nation, Informed Medical, and Lib Dem Voters, then there might be a UAP Senator elected but if there is not, then UAP How To Vote cards send preferences towards parties which may have already had exhausted ballots. As much as 5% of this wildly differing authoritarian to libertarian rightist collection of minor party votes, is likely to end nowhere and inadvertently open up seats for candidates on the progressive and libertarian left. I do not think there are any authoritarian leftist political parties in Australia.
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