Some of us - well, an awful lot of us - are well and truly over the political storms beaten up by the Mainstream Media (MSM). Some of us want to hear strong and civil political debate and discourse. Some of us are not into bigotry and political inanity. Some of us don't respond like puppets at the end of a MSM string, ready to be jerked into movement and predictability. Some of us are sentient beings who use our sensory faculties to come to our own decisions based on reasoning and the ambitions we have for ourselves and our nation. Some of us are never polled about anything, Some of us can be the big surprise on election day.
That paragraph is a response that, to-day - Saturday 22 June 2013 - The Editor of The Age, the Fairfax daily in Melbourne, Australia has decided to tell us, the Australian body politic, how to vote in the forthcoming election.
The less senior journalists of the MSM have been baying breathlessly on the Prime Ministerial leadership and associated political polling for months now. Well, it has probably been years - ever since the hung Parliament came into being in 2010 in the Year of Our Lord. Not the first hung parliament in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia - but you could be forgiven for thinking so because of the five-minute memories and lack of research skills held by most of the current crop of journalists. Fact checking and penetrating questioning seem to have been consigned to a by-gone era.
Our political discourse has become highly uncivil and filled with bigotry, gender bias, and hatred. Perhaps a poll or some form of research that could attempt to co-relate physical violence in the wider community with the violent and hate-filled language spewing forth from the anti-Gillard camp might prove insightful.
It seems that a large proportion of our journalists have become "inept stenographers" producing "tainted journalism".
It seems to me that one could look at The Age and its political interference to-day as a last ditch attempt to influence the electorate. Perhaps the powers-that-be at Fairfax (Roger Corbett, Gina Rinehart and their allies) feel that enough has not been done by their journalists (and remember there are few of the good ones left at Fairfax these days) to influence the electorate to rid itself of Julia Gillard, to insist on the overturn of Australia's first female Prime Minister.
I would suggest to the Fairfax mob baying at the barricades to look around them; look at the company they are keeping. The Fairfax language might be polite and civil but are they lining themselves up with the following: Alan Jones; Howard Sattler, Barnaby Joyce, plus a whole tribe of hate-filled men and the women who are their acolytes?
The Fairfax language may be polite. The newspaper might have a liberal tradition. All this counts for nought because one thing is clear, clear as crystal. Fairfax have aligned themselves with the forces who want, who seek the downfall of Australia's first female Prime Minister. They cannot wait for a September election to allow the Australian electorate to decide. No - this is a gender biassed storming of the Bastille. And there is one thing more that is not being considered. If an Abbott Government trounces Labor so convincingly that it is all but invisible; if Abbott takes control of both Houses of Parliament with a huge majority, it will merely prove two things:
- Australians will have the government for which they have voted
- Australia will have the government it deserves
While the Labor Government is going to this election with a raft of good policies and a history of sound management in the hung Parliament period, there have been dastardly deeds done. The continuation of the Northern Territory Intervention; the continuation of taxpayer funding to some of Australia's wealthiest schools while poorer state schools continue to suffer are two that spring readily to mind.
You see, naive as it may seem, I am a great believer in natural justice; that we reap what we sow. All parties (and I do include The Greens, to a lesser extent, in what I am saying) have sown their own crops of weeds which are yet to be harvested. The harvest cannot be avoided. It may be circumvented for a time, it may be postponed, but there will be a harvest from which our political parties and the Australian voters cannot run.
See also
Victoria Rollison in The Australian Independent Media Network
Kieran Fitzgerald gives it to the Editor of The Age in the same fashion that The Age has given it Julia
The Conscience Vote - For the sake of the nation, the media should do its job - and please take the time to read the comments to this article. Some good discussion going on there.
See also
Victoria Rollison in The Australian Independent Media Network
Kieran Fitzgerald gives it to the Editor of The Age in the same fashion that The Age has given it Julia
The Conscience Vote - For the sake of the nation, the media should do its job - and please take the time to read the comments to this article. Some good discussion going on there.
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