It is a question of perception.
Chief Minister Kate Carnell has been quite cross recently with our Assembly reporter Kirsten Lawson. Carnell feels that her message is not going through; that Lawson is biased and is beating up the Bruce Stadium issue; that Lawson is not presenting the Government’s case fairly.
The following day, former Carnell Liberal Minister and now Canberra United MLA Trevor Kaine chimed in.
He wrote, “”Kirsten Lawson in her article Bruce funding is the main game (CT, May 22, p.C3) refers to the revelations this week that it was Cabinet which approved the spending on Bruce, back in December 1997 while Kaine himself was still in Cabinet.
“”This is yet another case of the media picking up on the spin from Mrs Carnell’s office and repeating it as gospel and in some way relevant to the matter of unauthorised spending on Bruce Stadium.”
Delightful stuff. At once, Lawson is both the curse of the Chief Minister’s office and its mouthpiece for uncritically regurgitating its spin.
Carnell is cross because the stadium-funding issue is not going away. Kaine is cross because a chance to do down Carnell might be lost. Remember, he will never forgive Carnell for taking the Liberal leadership from him and wants a chance to do her down without any blood on his hands.
If, as Lawson points out, Kaine was part of the Cabinet that approved the stadium, the public might think it a bit odd that a bloke who approves the stadium later votes no-confidence in the same Government over the spending on that very spending, even if the reality is different.
Kaine may well have voted in Cabinet for any number of propositions. But all of those propositions would be based on the presumption that the execution of them would be done according to law and appropriation would be obtained in the ordinary way beforehand.
Kaine is arguing this very strongly. His argument is that the Cabinet might well have made a policy decision, but it was the Chief Minister alone who must attend to the monetary propriety. If his argument holds he should be able to hold his head high while voting with Labor and part of the cross-bench for a no-confidence motion in Carnell and a moment later vote for a new Liberal Chief Minister. The best of both worlds for Kaine – a natural conservative.
So he is upset with Lawson because the public does not see things with such subtlety and cannot see the consistency in such an approach.
Carnell faces exactly the same difficulty – public perception.
She would like the public perception to be as follows: Bold Chief Minister sees clapped out stadium with the Raiders and Brumbies threatening to go elsewhere. She steps in rounds up some dough from the private sector, fixes the stadium and keeps the local teams at minimal cost and risk to the local taxpayers.
But the public perception might be different if enough is reported about those who question the deal. Many members of the public have little idea about the detail or time to find out. They only feel that something is wrong.
Typically, that perception will arise, not from substance, but from imagery and words. And that is precisely what has happened. Opposition Leader Jon Stanhope said that the explanatory diagram put by the Government looked like a map of the Cayman Islands. He talked about Christopher Skase and Alan Bond. That brings to mind complex financial arrangements that bring unjustified wealth to the rich and diddle the ordinary punter.
However, the arrangement is probably of little moment. It is done to minimise the Commonwealth Bank’s tax. Of itself, it has no impact on the ACT taxpayers’ liability. Nor is the non-appropriation of money used for the construction of huge moment. It may amount to a technical breach of the Financial Management Act. But these are the matters of public perception that will determine how much strife the Government gets into.
The underlying matter of substance will not get much of a guernsey. That matter is whether it the Government (that is, taxpayers) will get value for money from the stadium upgrade. Will we have paid too much? Will the initial promise of $12.3 million, plus financing fees, plus loan repayments plus the under-writing of a business plan based on hopelessly optimistic estimates of bums on seats be worth the retention of the Raiders and Brumbies and the use of a good stadium until the head lease with the Commonwealth runs out. That may not become obvious for some years. In the meantime there is an awkward perception out there that something is wrong. It is a perception underpinned by some uneasiness on the part of the auditor.
And a lot of that perception results from the reportage of just one Assembly reporter. That reporter is often followed by the electronics. And unlike the Big House where there are 200 journalists to bounce ideas and facts off, she is virtually on her own, and faces huge pressure from the political staffers of both sides and the cross-bench, who are all pursuing one thing – a favourable perception from the public.
It would be better if the Assembly press gallery were a little larger (Come on ABC TV news!). The one reporter would not have to carry the burden of being accused of being at once both biased against the Government and a mouthpiece for the Chief Minister’s office. The journalists could share the brickbats.