What a shame the great debate went out on CNN so the whole world (or at least the 0.0001 per cent of it that watches CNN) could see one of the worst examples of public-affairs television in Australia’s recent history.
Ray Martin should never have been allowed to chair the debate. He is a pleasant, good-looking entertainer; not a current-affairs journalist. Midday and 60-Minutes shows are precisely that … shows. They entertain people for ratings and advertising.
On Sunday night, Martin put on a 60-Minutes performance, but without the slick editing. Like 60-Minutes, much of it was stolen from America.
Martin got away with it the first time because it was early in the campaign. Later in the campaign running such a debate required some detailed knowledge of the issues. If you are spending most of your life interviewing pop figures to titillate stay-at-home mums at midday, you have less time to follow the major political issues. Further, your focus is likely to be different … for the wrong reasons.
It should not matter whether the leader of a political party knows the price of milk or bread, other than knowledge of them indicates a mind occupied with the petty. The price of milk and bread, however, matter a great deal to Martin’s usual audience. In any event, the question was stolen from the US Republican primary race where it was used to humiliate the flat-earth, flat-tax multi-millionaires who are vying for the presidency.
Martin’s questions on guns, abortion and the sale of condoms in schools were irrelevant. They are all largely state issues.
These, too, were American derivatives. Abortion and crime have dominated US presidential campaigns because of the Christian right. But at least they have some relevance to the national election in the US because the President at least chooses Supreme Court judges who have some influence over abortion and because the federal law pervades the criminal-justice system in a way it does not in Australia.
Martin dished out the twaddle of people being unsafe in their homes in the same way as US candidates have been attacked for being soft on crime. But it was of no moment for an Australian federal election. Nor was the question about condoms in schools.
What was Martin doing asking the question about rugby league, other that being a populist? It is of no moment to people outside NSW and Queensland and of little moment to most people in NSW and Queensland. And it was completely irrelevant to the federal election campaign. Like the cutsy questions about kids in sandpits, it was pandering to Martin’s usual audience.
I’ll leave aside Martin’s failure to prevent the candidates talking over each other. Perhaps he had run out of sensible questions and pertinent issues.
Overall, there is a lesson here. Something should be done well before the next election. (That could be a double dissolution in a year’s time after Howard’s industrial-relations law is blocked, if he gets in. And, incidentally, Ray didn’t ask about that.)
In this instance we can fruitfully borrow from the US. A privately funded independent commission runs the presidential debates in the US. No candidate has objected to its format. It selects a skilled moderator and several questioners. Most, but not all, are serious journalists as distinct from skilled entertainers. The Americans suffer even more than Australia from the eight-second grab, yet they have managed to retain several sensible debates.
I am doing my best not to be snobbish here. It is just that everything else in the campaign is trivialised, simplified to meaninglessness, cut, clipped, made glib or projected to the dumbest level. The debate is the only time in the campaign we see the leaders at any length. Must this, too, be surrendered to the level of day-time television?
And while we are at it, let’s stop so much of the debate being taken up with costings and revenue. We need an independent panel from the finance department give us the bottom line at the beginning of the campaign and cost each promise and assess each revenue measure on the way through so voters and media questioners have an undisputed upon which to assess candidates.