Day 1- Forward Motion

At 10:30 we’re tuned in to the ABC, not lining Adelaide Avenue as many Canberrafolk are. Why are they there? For the same reason we watch- not for confirmation of the election being called; the leaks and announcements, the tweets and not-very off the record senior Gov sources have already had that in the bag since early yesterday. We watch, live, from several angles including a hilariously overblown helicopter, for the breaking news moment, the electricity garnered from something ‘big’ happening ‘right now’. It’s the suspension of the conditioned televisual time-continuum. Breaking news provides a satisfying alteration to the daily schedule. We’re well versed in this now, and as soon as we see the ticker across the bottom of the screen announcing something fresh and big enough to upset regular programming (for such interruptions cost money, and put people in television broadcast centres through hell, so they’ve gotta be worth it) we prick up our eyes. Sad then, that since 9/11 most breaking news comes as a bit of a letdown. And the sight of a white commodore with a flag on the bonnet driving through a gate, providing maybe 12 seconds of raw footage, doesn’t really do the job.


Still, we’re away, as is the core team of ABC 24, the new all hours news service that launches on the 22nd. Annabel Crabb is a welcome studio host, though her cross back to the grizzled but I guess trustworthy Chris Uhlmann is beginner abrupt. Uhlmann will helm this 24 service and is probably as good an option as the ABC have, but is there a smile in him? Will we get any colour to balance that indignation that seems to bubble beneath the skin? And more to the point, will there be enough news to stretch to a full 24 hours? Will this campaign compel?

Gillard then addresses the nation from outside office looking part Joan of Arc, part weekend manager at a Klein’s outlet (can I suggest these cuff links shaped as both a yin and yang?), and I don’t remember much aside from the two word mantra for which she’ll rightly be pilloried. Moving forward is clever enough politically, but a slogan needs to be used judiciously. This, and the countering great big new whatever we’ll be hearing from that stilted staccato of the Abbott does no favours for process. But it is as it is, the way things get done.


The most interesting narrative was Peter Hartchers I think- he calls the election timing an act of opportunism, just as her rolling of Rudd indicated a canny opportunism, having little to do with anything outside political ambition and the getting, then retention of power. Gillard seems to have a good response to such a charge- that it is the Australian people’s ‘birthright’ to elect their prime minister, and calling an election so swiftly (in the job 24 days remember) is honouring said birthright. And yet, when coupled with this already inane mantra of forward-movement, snags emerge. Rudd was rolled because ‘a good government had gone bad’. And yet 24 days, surely, is too short a time to right those wrongs. And so the call of opportunism. There's something in it


Of course, we don’t elect leaders, regardless of the presidential politics we’ve had in the nation for a long time. But the seeming subtlety of an argument detailing that Rudd was installed by ‘back-room assassins’ in 2006, just as Gillard was in 2010, gets lost in campaign excitement, and rolling a PM bites harder than rolling an opposition leader. A PM is ‘ours’- an opposition leader is a loser by definition, and is owned by a party and its base, until that party and base decides they’ve a better shot with someone else. So, right or wrong, Gillard will be hit by this and one wonders if her ready defence is enough.


Disappointment 1 of the campaign on the Labour side was news that the writs will be issued for Monday, not Wednesday as previously tipped. Better than the sameday horseshit peddled by Howard, but still not good enough, and strange, considering that it’s the young, who by popular understanding tend to head incumbent or veer left, whose votes get missed. An oversight? Or a lack of vision?



Image via News Ltd.