Paul Keating was fond of quoting the old Arab proverb: “The dogs bark and the caravan moves on.”
For him the dogs were various media commentators. The caravan was whatever big-picture item of his was under fire: closer relations with Asia, competition policy, bank deregulation or whatever.
But the Arab proverb does not always suit Australian conditions, certainly not for constitutional change. The Australian version would be something like: “The sheep dogs bark and flock is rounded up.” Probably for a good drenching.
This week the Association of Former Members of the Australian Parliament met in Canberra and among other things looked at the recommendations of the governance group at the 2020 ideas summit and “new federalism”.
The governance group’s recommendation included constitutional change and an Australian republic.
This column is based on a short talk I gave the association.
Journalists and politicians live in a symbiotic relationship – mutually beneficial, but sometimes too reliant. Often we have misunderstandings.
Sometimes journalists do not understand what they are doing or how and why the media distorts things.
It is not intentional. Journalists do not set out to mislead. By and large they honestly pursue the news. And there’s the rub. News is news and must not be confused with information. The distinction has rendered the cause of constitutional reform almost impossible.
In an ideal world the populace would be presented with enough information to make a sensible choice about constitutional change. But it is not an ideal world because the bulk of the information comes through the media and that causes distortion.
Journalists and media executives and owners do not present information with the aim of helping voters make an informed choice. Rather they present news in order to make a living or a profit because that is what media consumers want.
News values give material weighting according to: impact, prominence, currency, novelty, human interest (humour and tragedy), timeliness and proximity.
Some of these values occasionally coincide with the imparting of important information, including that of constitutional reform. But others do not.
The coverage of the republic is a good example. Take Day One. A republic has major impact in that it would affect everyone in Australia. The announcement of the referendum was made by a prominent person: the Prime Minister. The issue is a long running one. It will be new. There is some human element, but not much. The announcement was made today and it was made in Australia or Canberra, close to readers. So it is big news. So is the nature of the model proposed and its merits and drawbacks.
But after that it is olds, not news – even if many Australians have not absorbed it all.
Then as the time for the referendum approaches when the need for information is greatest, the media do not give the basic information much of a prominent run because it is not news. Instead, news values override impartial information giving.
Novelty gets prominence. Mad arguments get a good (but richly undeserved) run — arguments like the Queen is the only thing between us and dictatorship; that a republic means we will be expelled from the Commonwealth; or we will need to replace the coinage.
If a reasonably prominent person propounds them it is even more newsworthy. Some sport star or entertainer’s whacky view gets greater coverage than a well-reasoned view because the latter is old hat and the former is news.
Each individual story is accurate, but the totality of coverage gives a distorted view: that there are dire, evil and unforeseen consequences in changing so much as a word of our Constitution.
Similarly, looking at the Australian media one would be forgiven for thinking that more people die of shark attacks than being run over.
Unfortunately, we have to live with this. Media organisations will not change because if they did they would go broke. People will not pay or stay tuned to be bored. Also, you would not want it otherwise. People want to know about the unusual, even if the weight given to those stories causes long-term distortion.
Any attempt at constitutional change has to deal with this.
One way is to avoid referendums as far as possible, by legislation and practice. Legislate that the Prime Minister cannot nominate a person to the Queen for the Governor-Generalship without gaining consent of, say, two thirds of the Parliament and without the person being an Australian.
If you want fixed terms, as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd does, announce it now by saying the next election will be on the third Saturday in November 2010 and if Labor wins the following election will be on the third Saturday in November 2013 and dare the Opposition to follow suit.
The other possibility to remove the slogan “Don’t know, vote No”, by making voting at referendums voluntary. Those who do not know and do not care can stay at home rather than exercising a veto of fear, apathy and ignorance.
Professor George Williams, of the University of NSW, pointed to the huge cost of the duplication, buck passing and blame game associated with Australia’s broken federalism.
Professor Greg Craven, the vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, pointed to the erosion of democratic principles that has come with growing centralism. He thought it important that decisions be made at the level where people are most affected.
They pointed to the potential for great gains economically and in more local empowerment with some constitutional repair.
Both, I must point out, disagreed with voluntary voting as a means of making that more possible.
It is now 31 years since a referendum was successfully passed – the longest time in Australia’s history. In the past 20 years we have had only two referendums (both unsuccessful), the lowest number by far of any 20-year period since federation. Before that you could expect at least four in 20 years.
I think the greater emphasis in the media of news values over information is at least partially responsible for that anti-democratic trend. In the face of it, it seems politicians have given up trying – and even the last referendum was not so much an attempt by the nation’s leader to effect reform, rather to defeat it.
I think there is going to be a lot more barking before the caravan moves on, if it moves at all.