THE resignation of Ian George as Anglican Archbishop of Adelaide has been as messy as it has been necessary.
The allegations against Dr George are significantly more serious than those levelled against Peter Hollingworth that forced his resignation as Governor General a year ago.
Yet Peter Hollingworth has in many ways paid the higher price – his term as Governor General still had three years to run whereas Dr George was due to retire as Archbishop in a matter of weeks.
Notwithstanding all Ian George’s achievements in his long career he has departed the scene largely unwept, unhonoured and unsung. And the worst may still be ahead of him, for one of the allegations – that concerning the disgraceful Chaplain of St Peter’s College being “encouraged” to flee Australia after serious criminal claims were made against him – will no doubt be examined further by the authorities.
I am afraid I am unable to have much sympathy with Dr George. The report he commissioned has found a systemic pattern of appalling abuse of boys and girls by clergy, lay workers and others over a long period.
On the basis of the Report, Dr George in his 13 year tenure as Archbishop handled some of the matters that were drawn to his attention with gross inadequacy and neglect.
The one which appalled me most of all was not the infamous St Peter’s College incident.
Shortly after Dr George took up office as Archbishop, one of his Priests was arrested on serious charges of gross indecency towards two boys. If the mother of the boys has been truthful, then his statement to her that (the Priest) was “just trying to be one of the boys” is absolutely disgraceful.
What is not in dispute is that Dr George allowed the Priest to remain on duty in his parish while the charges were being heard, and told the parish church wardens to support the Priest at his court appearances. Absolutely inexcusable.
But Dr George did not resign of his own volition. He only did so after the Acting Premier of South Australia called on him to do so, and after he was effectively told to go by his Diocesan Council (the Diocese’s Cabinet or Board of Directors).
Even then he did so without the dignity Peter Hollingworth mustered when he resigned as Governor General. A written statement handed out by a spokesperson is just not good enough.
Even worse, his comment to the waiting media at church yesterday (Sunday) “no comment, no comment, no comment, no comment. Just go away” is not good enough. In his career, Dr George was something of a church “media tart” – how times change?
So the name of the Church has been badly sullied once again. The Diocese of Adelaide has let down its people, and its most vulnerable in particular.
But there is one group in the Adelaide Diocese, and other Dioceses, and other Churches, that continues to evade any responsibility whatsoever. It is high time this group was brought to public account as well.
I refer to the insurance companies – the companies that insure churches, and other entities, with respect to claims for damages, compensation etc.
This is one area where what happened in the Diocese of Brisbane, and the Diocese of Adelaide, is worryingly similar.
It is apparent that the leadership of both Dioceses – including Dr Hollingworth and Dr George – was under some very firm “riding instructions” instructions by their respective insurers.
It was the instructions the Diocese of Brisbane’s insurers gave in regard to claims arising from the abominable behaviour of a teacher at a church girls school in Toowoomba that really brought the whole issue of how the church handles abuse claims to prominence.
It is apparent that the instructions, which may broadly be described as being “admit nothing, deny everything”, given to the Diocese of Adelaide were the same.
Even though the Judge in the Toowoomba compensation cases rightly attacked the approach of the Church, there ought to have been greater prominence given to the attitude of the church’s insurers.
In Brisbane, Adelaide, and almost certainly elsewhere, church hierarchy and that of church schools, were warned that if they did not follow the instructions of insurers, then they risked voiding their policies – exposing the churches to possible financial ruin.
That does not justify or excuse in any way the gross mishandling of abuse claims, over a long period, by the Anglican Church, or other Churches.
But the blame needs to be shared fairly – and so far the media has allowed insurance companies to escape any blame or responsibility whatsoever.
To his considerable credit, one of the first actions of the current Archbishop of Brisbane, Dr Phillip Aspinall, was to put in place the Diocese’s own litigation advisory committee to determine how abuse claims etc are handled – and it is a committee that has already “restored the balance” in doing so.
The interests of genuine victims are now paramount, not the interests of the church’s finances, or its insurers.
Dr George had to go, and there is more pain ahead for the Diocese of Adelaide.
But isn’t it about time the insurers, and lawyers, owned up for their manifest failures as well?

Oh to be an actor. You get to play make-believe every day. Or a rock star, even a social campaigning one. Seems that lyrics are no more than the words that come out of your mouth, not the beliefs that you hold in your heart. Having a social conscience is a way of connecting with your audience and making a living, but it doesn’t go to the core of who or what you are. Being anti-commercial is just another commercial hook. There some of the conclusions I draw from the extraordinary back-flip by Midnight Oil’s lead singer Peter Garrett.
Now he’s found another game to play, and he’s happy to change the script, as long as he makes a connection with his new audience. What about closing Pine Gap? “No, not on your life, I’ve grown up. The war on terror is now the most important thing in life.” Well, what would you do to protect old growth forests? “Got to protect jobs first”. A rough paraphrase of his ABC interview from last night, but you can read the original here and see if I’m unjustly putting words into his mouth.
This makes it clearer now what the ALP thinks it is getting from Garrett. He’s not their environment policy, he’s just another spruiker. If you’re selling telephones, you get your agent to get in touch with John Laws or Allan Jones and sign them up to the team. It doesn’t matter what they say or recommend, people will buy it, because they have credibility.
Same deal here. The ALP is betting that Garrett’s celebrity will change voters’ policy shopping habits. Peter Garrett thinks we should keep Pine Gap and jobs in the forest industries? If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for us. Carn the ALP. Not cash for comment, but presumably cabinet for comment.
If this is what they are buying, I think they are going to be sorely disappointed. It’s more likely that Garrett will become a figure of pity to most of us. The man that could have made a difference but gave it away in a Faustian bargain.
Garrett of course has his justifications. Politics is an “imperfect game”, but you can achieve more inside the tent than outside. Well, Pete, I’ve got news for you. I was inside the tent for 20 years (and I still keep my season’s pass in the form of a Liberal party membership, so you could actually call it 27), but that doesn’t give you much influence. I’ve spent years chairing policy committees, moving motions and even winning elections only to see some of my most cherished beliefs trashed by the people I’ve fed and got into government. Talk to any party member, even the most senior, and you will find similar stories. Most of them don’t have options. They draw their strength from the institutions of their chosen party, but you do have options. You are (or at least were before this) an institution in your own right.
If you think that you’re going to have more influence as a member of caucus than you do now, you are going to find you are mistaken. If you think that it’s a fair trade so long as you get power, you are also going to be mistaken. In a government the only people with the sort of power that counts are the Prime Minister or Premier and the most senior members of his or her staff. Oh, and the public servants, who can thwart you at every step.
But then, maybe having made a mark in show business Garrett thinks it is only a matter of time until he does become Prime Minister. Or perhaps he thinks that Mark Latham knows all his lyrics and is such a great fan that he will be permanently camped outside the door of the Prime Ministerial office just so Australia’s newest Labor PM can tap into his insight on every issue.
So far Garrett has had an easy ride, but the Prime Minister is due back from overseas soon, and things will be likely to change. The government attack has concentrated on whether Garrett voted in the last few elections. Well, despite what Garrett says, I don’t believe that he did, but I don’t think the public will care about this for itself. They will care if it makes him look like just another politician.
(Why don’t I believe him? Well even if you are on the “silent” roll, your name is still on the roll, they just suppress your contact details, and you either have to be crossed off the roll when you vote or claim a section vote saying you have been wrongly excluded. This doesn’t square with any of the recollections that he has of his voting. Apparently being Peter Garrett means that polling officers just unquestioningly hand a ballot paper across, even at the Australian embassy! Pull the other one.)
Of course, failure in this sphere of life will be no problem for Garrett. When he gets bored of it he will be able to move on. There are plenty of other commercial concerns who will no doubt arrange for him to swig down energy drinks, drape watches all over his body or put superannuation prospectuses in his hand at the same time paying him huge sums of money and photographing him because they, like Labor, think that other people will buy them because of Garrett’s endorsement.
It’s so 21st Century really. Garrett is important not because of his convictions but because of his celebrity. We’re supposed to buy him not because of what he stands for, but just because he is who he is. The symbol becomes the substance. What if this is the way that the world ends, not with a nuclear bang, but a slow, undifferentiated, a-principled whimper? Something tells me that even if they’re not our beds ought to be burning.

THE endorsement of Peter Garrett as Labor Candidate for Kingsford Smith is now a foregone conclusion. If his proponents had looked over the record of “celebrity” candidates in Australian politics they might have had second thoughts.
Choosing celebrity candidates is not new in state or federal politics. Both major parties do it…….and so do the minor parties.
I have been thinking about a few I know or know of. They have not, overall, been spectacular political successes.
One of the first truly celebrity candidates was Hubert Opperman, then the world’s leading cyclist. The Liberals endorsed him to contest the 1949 election in the federal seat of Corio against the Labor Government’s Minister for Post War reconstruction, J J Dedman.
He won the seat and held it until 1967 when Harold Holt shunted him off to the exhaulted perk of High Commissioner to Malta. He was Minister for Immigration in the Menzies Government, a role he served in with less than average distinction.
The by-election caused by his departure was won by the Labor candidate, Gordon Scholes.
The Labor Party later chose another sports star, Rick Charlesworth, who represented Australia in hockey and later coached the Hockeyroos with great success, to contest Perth. He won the seat, never made the Ministry, and ended up cutting short his political career to return to coaching hockey fulltime.
There have been many more celebrity candidates in state politics – again with mixed success.
Sir Henry Bolte seemed to like them. The VFL star, Brian Dixon, won the seat of St Kilda for the Liberal Party, and went on to be a Minister – but he ended up losing the seat. The great test cricketer, Sam Loxton, represented Prahran for many years – but never made it to Cabinet.
Perhaps the biggest star ever to enter politics was also a Bolte appointee. I can still recall the headline coverage when the Liberal Party endorsed the Seekers band member, Athol Guy, for the seat of Gisborne. I had the privilege of getting to know Athol as a result and brought him to Brisbane for a couple of fundraisers.
But Athol never made it to Cabinet either – and ended up cutting short his political career, a result, I suspect, of finding politics frustrating. That shows how bad a judge I am, as I believed Athol was Premiership material!
The Labor Party in SA ran the test wicketkeeper, Gil Langley, in the marginal seat of Unley – he won and went on to become a very popular Speaker of the SA Parliament.
The most recent recruit is the AFL great, Justin Madden, who is Sports Minister in the Victorian Labor Government. Time will tell whether he goes any further.
The international experience is mixed as well. There have been a few successes and some spectacular duds.
Perhaps the biggest dud of all has been Sebastian Coe, the Olympic Gold Medallist, who was chosen by the Tories for a marginal seat. He won, but lost it in a landslide when Tony Blair was elected to Government. Then he became Chief of Staff to the hapless Tory Leader, William Hague.
More recently he has been elevated to the House of Lords. In that role he has become a media “star” for all the wrong reasons – the London tabloids are having a field day exposing his “gold medal winning” extra-marital activities!
Form students might suggest that even though Peter Garrett will get into Federal Parliament, it might not be wise to place a bet that he will be there for a long time, or make much of a difference no matter how long that time is.

IT is hardly surprising that some commentators have sought to highlight only Ronald Reagan’s failings, and ignore totally his not insignificant achievements.
One or two have been quite unbalanced in their commentaries. That is their right, but I am reminded of the saying “if you can’t say something about some one on their death, say nothing.”
I thought I would draw Ambit Gambit reader’s attention to a couple of Reagan anecdotes I have picked up in recent days, and to a statement from a US politician who is hardly a Reagan apologist.
One of the first three of four telephone calls to Nancy Reagan after President Reagan’s death was made by Senator Edward M Kennedy.
In his official statement Senator Kennedy had this to say:
“I’m saddened by President Reagan’s death. We often disagreed on issues of the day, but I had immense respect for his leadership and his extraordinary ability to inspire the nation to live up to its high ideals.
The warmth of his personality always showed through, and his infectious optimism gave us all a feeling that it really was ‘morning in America.’
On foreign policy he will be honoured as the President who won the cold war, and his “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall” will be linked for ever with President Kennedy’s ‘Ich bin en Berliner’.”
Now to the anecdotes.
The best was retold last night by one of his Presidential staff. The President arrived late for a morning Cabinet briefing. Apologising, he made reference to a story on breakfast television concerning a young man in, I think Chicago, who saved the life of a person who had fallen in the path of a train on a railway station.
When he saw the item, the President told his staff to track down the young many so he could congratulate him. They did so and the young man told him he would be late for an interview for a new job as a result of his good deed.
The President asked him if he would give him the name and number of the prospective employer so he could ring him to ask for a favour – to give the young man the job. He did so, and the young guy got the job! (He might have got it in any event…………but a Presidential reference no doubt helped).
I wonder how many political leaders, current or past, in Australia would have taken the time to do that?
The second was also told by another staff member. The US President receives thousands of letters each week. There is a general, and probably accurate view, that he sees few of them.
Well, each weekend Ronald Reagan had his staff pick out between 30 and 50 letters from average citizens which he took to Camp David, or wherever he was going, read them, and replied in hand to most of them.
Neither of the above two stories were highlighted during the Reagan Presidency………….perhaps his popularity was so high that he did not need the good PR.
But they help tell us something about the man.
As one who despairs at the quality of national and international leadership today, I wonder if Australia, or the World, will ever again see the likes of Ronald Reagan, or Harry S Truman, who not only made a difference, but did so with a genuineness of character that set them apart from their contemporaries, and won them respect from supporters and opponents alike.
Reagan was not perfect……but he achieved more than most, and did it will real class and style. Don’t take my words for it – read over the simple, but direct, message from Senator Edward M Kenendy.

Appointing front man of apocalyptic rock group Midnight Oil as the new member for the safe Labor seat of Kingsford Smith is Mark Latham’s biggest mistake to date. It reinforces perceptions that Latham represents style over substance; reeks with the smell of un-democratic “fixing” that characterizes NSW Labor politics; suggests Latham is arrogant and just another “whatever it takes” politician; won’t improve Labor’s share of the Green vote; and will be a continuing, “off-message” distraction from the business of winning the next election.
Critics of Latham claim that instead of having an education policy, he has a “reading to kids” policy. That instead of having an unemployment strategy, he has a “learning or earning” slogan. Once they find their range on this issue, they will surely say, and with justification, that instead of having an environmental policy he has Peter Garrett. But while Garrett will be iconic the real policy is unlikely to change and won’t be much different from the Coalition’s. As a result the substance of the symbolic will be the shambolic (and in this instance the root of the word can be either “sham” or “shambles” – take your pick).
Critics of the NSW Labor Party see it as grubby and undemocratic. Laurie Brereton, the current member for the seat, was part of the inner Sussex Street group, but fell out with them. Some are suggesting that his inopportune retirement and the insertion of Garrett into the seat over the heads of Sussex Street’s favoured local candidate(s) is revenge for the disendorsement of his sister Dierdre Grusovin from the seat of Heffron. Maybe it is, but voters across the country won’t care who is being done over, they will just see it as part of the general malaise infecting NSW Labor. That is why voters turned against them in their manipulation of the Sydney City Council electoral boundaries and handed control of the city to Clover Moore. A recent lesson that Labor seems to have forgotten.
The continuing hubbub from rank and file members in the seat, reinforced by long standing members of the party like “Johnno” Johnson and now Barry Cohen undercut the folksy, man of the people image that Latham has been cultivating. Branch members in this seat are the people of middle Australia that he has been courting in townhall meetings across the country. They now see some of their own being “dudded” for a multi-millionaire rock star. Latham, the servant of the people is in danger of transmogrifying into a Graham Richardson clone, prepared to walk over whoever he needs to so as to gain an advantage.
Latham would undoubtedly say he is trying to recruit star quality candidates to the party. Perhaps. If a candidate really is star quality and has what it takes as a politician, rather than whatever it is that they do in their day job, then they will get in and do what is required to win the preselection. Malcolm Turnbull is an example of a star candidate who knew what he had to do, and did it. Cheryl Kernot should have taught Labor that giving stars the inside running doesn’t necessarily help the party’s vote. At least with Kernot, and to her very public disgust, they forced her to run for a marginal seat. In this case they’ve sent the limousine around for Garrett.
And just as Richardson’s much praised green preference strategy probably did nothing to increase Labor’s share of the vote (see Barry Cohen on this issue here), neither will this one. Greens voters in the lower house will overwhelming preference Labor before Liberal, they always have and always will. So, in the lower house Latham is paying a high price for nothing. In the upper house it may well be a different story. Bob Brown should be able to use Peter Garrett as a reference point for just how far short of Greens voters’ expectations Labor’s environmental policy falls. That may actually decrease the Labor vote in the Senate in favour of the Greens.
Which points to the other major error which this decision contains. Election campaigns are an extended debate between leaders. The less there is of other front-bench spokesmen the better, because the more people speak on a topic, the greater the chances of an inadvertent disagreement that can be exploited by your opponents. In this election campaign Labor should have only one star – Latham. But that is not how the media will play it. When it comes to environmental issues (and probably also issues of foreign affairs) they will want to know what Garrett thinks. At the moment Garrett is avoiding any media problems by staying silent, but there is a trap in playing the trappist – his silence will become the issue. This has echoes of the Hanson effect in the 1998 Queensland election where celebrity hijacked the election campaign and Labor surfed ahead of the Government who were caught in the dirty air that Hanson created.
Latham has done well to date with his policy of “triangulation”, but in this case he appears to have fallen on one of the apexes of his triangle. Doing things outside the square and confusing your opponents is one thing, but confounding yourself is an entirely different thing.

MY friend Sir James Killen occasionally reminds me of some very sound advice Sir Arthur Fadden gave him when he entered Federal Parliament – there are more Members who talk their way out of Parliament than who talk their way into it!
The Federal Liberal Members for Blair and Ryan run the real risk of having their less than promising political careers cut short for exactly this reason.
The Federal Government’s announcement yesterday that around $400 million will be spent building a bypass around the Ipswich Motorway not only represents pork barrelling at its most appalling it confirms the political ineptitude of the Members for Blair, and now Ryan.
It also confirms that politicians, on both sides, all too often ignore the lessons of history, even recent history.
The Labor opponent of the Member for Blair (Cameron Thompson) will be able to campaign in the city of Ipswich, much of which is now included in the Blair electorate, that Mr Thompson almost single-handedly blocked the widening of the Ipswich Motorway while his own proposal was “evaluated”.
That evaluation must have been conducted in record time, because the Thompson proposal is being funded as part of the roads/rail program announced yesterday – at a cost to the taxpayer/motorist of around $400 million.
If Mr Thompson believes his political hide will be saved as a result, then he should ask David Jull if Dream World could be excised out of Fadden and put into Blair!
I am not an authority on roads, but I have been listening to the open line callers complaining about not only the bottle necks on the current four lane motorway, but also the fact that it is a dangerous road to travel on. One accident – and there seems to be at least one a day – can cause motorist to be delayed for hours.
The “whiz kid” from Blair’s proposal is for a bypass to the north of the existing motorway, crossing the Brisbane River twice, and then linking up with the Logan Motorway.
That proposition presumes that many of the long suffering residents of Ipswich, and suburbs between Brisbane and Ipswich, are headed for the Gold Coast, or the Gateway Arterial.
This is nonsense, of course. Anyone doubting that should have a look at the peak hour traffic on the Centenary Highway, Ipswich Road etc all heading for where most people head for when driving towards Brisbane……Brisbane!
The bypass will take them away from Brisbane. Unless?
Unless it is linked up to the long talked about Western Bypass that will free up traffic on Milton Road, Coronation drive etc.
If that happens, then residents on acreage, and in leafy suburbs, of the seat of Ryan are about to have a major motorway/highway visited on their community.
Last week, the Member for Ryan, Michael Johnson, supported the Ipswich bypass proposal. He has now given his political opponents, and his voters, ammunition to make the infamous Western Bypass an issue in the forthcoming Federal Election.
The $400 million Ipswich Motorway bypass does not make sense UNLESS it is linked to a ring road that would get traffic into the CBD, or to the north of Brisbane, much more quickly than the Motorway can, or even could with a widening to six lanes.
The newly-elected State Liberal MP for Moggill, Dr Bruce Flegg, had the political savvy to oppose this piece of political nonsense from the outset.
He can see the inevitable – a bypass running through the western part of his electorate INEVITABLY means a western bypass or ring road. It does not make sense otherwise.
The piece of history the Members for Blair and Ryan are ignoring?
In the mid-1990’s the Goss State Government reacted to clogging up of the Gold Coast Highway by proposing a bypass or an entirely different route. The Borbidge Opposition campaigned in 1995 on a promise of upgrading the existing highway and not building the new road.
The Goss Government ended up incurring the wrath of the electorate and was ejected from office. The new Borbidge Government upgraded the existing road to a motorway that is today widely regarded as one of the best in Australia.
Substitute “Howard” for “Goss” and “Latham” for “Borbidge”.
Some politicians never learn, and as Artie Fadden would have said, some talk themselves out of Parliament!
Blair, and perhaps even Ryan, might be surprise packets on election night.

This is a slightly edited version of a piece I wrote some time ago for Heretical, the University of Queensland’s Women’s Area publication. I thought I would drag it out since Cheryl Kernot has been mentioned again as a warning about Peter Garrett’s potential new career as a Labor parliamentarian. The inference of this discussion is that problems associated with Ms Kernot’s stint with the ALP were all about her and her status as a celebrity recruit. It’s worth remembering that there were many factors at work during Kernot’s political fall, including the woman herself, the insularity of some ALP members and the media’s relationship with her, which played out like a love affair gone badly. I suspect that since Garrett is a bloke he’ll probably be in for an easier ride, where the press are concerned at least.
In 1997, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC’s) The Media Report wondered whether Cheryl Kernot was doomed to suffer the same fate as other high-profile female politicians including Canada’s scandal-ridden former Prime Minister, Kim Campbell.
When the radio program revisited Kernot in 2002 it was apparent the program had answered its own question. Kernot’s political career was over and her memoirs had been greeted with derision and sexual innuendo.
The demise of a political career can be complex but the media has been accused of “symbolic annihilation” by the way it represents female politicians.
Former Senator Rosemary Crowley’s statement that “if you are a woman, quote, you are either a bimbo or a drone, a sex object or a drudge” neatly encapsulated discussion at the Keating Government’s National Forum into the Portrayal of Women in the Media.
If the Forum had been specifically examining the representation of female politicians, Crowley could have added harridan, emasculator and androgyne to her list. The blokes at The Bulletin explicitly used such images to oppose women’s suffrage and early political activism.
After cataclysms of the first half of the 20th century quietened feminism for a while, the male-dominated media wanted to make sure it was not re-ignited by photographing the few female elected politicians in conventionally ‘feminine’ poses. Witness, for example, a 1944 magazine cover of Labor’s first female federal Senator, Dorothy Tangney, dutifully pouring a cup of tea.
Second-wave feminists received a similar reaction to their first-wave sisters. Minister for Education in the Hawke Government, Susan Ryan, recalls the media responding to her single-motherhood by representing her “as a potential reportee to child-welfare”, while fellow Laborite, erstwhile Victorian Premier Joan Kirner became a “Mother Hubbard” figure who was devoid of sartorial elegance.
Feminist commentator Rosamund Else-Mitchell argues that it is attributes traditionally regarded as masculine that are seen as eminently suitable for the political realm. It should be conceded, however, that an increasingly jaded electorate does not necessarily view any of the qualities of our political elites highly.
In such a climate, political parties find female candidates electorally useful because voters and the media do not instinctively associate ‘femininity’ with politics. A photograph on page seven of the 4 April 1998 edition of The Australian shows a beaming John Brumby, the then Victorian ALP leader, surrounded by a bevy of preselected female candidates who had replaced male factional deadwood.
Although in that instance, a group of women were presented as restorative, more often individual women are supposed to revamp a discredited party.
Mitchell labels the interplay between parties and the media to elevate the perfect women politician to prominence as the “golden girl syndrome”. The problem for “golden girls” is that when the media catches a whiff of ‘weakness’ she gets unceremoniously pushed off her “pedestal”.
Cheryl Kernot is not the only female politician to have the media turn against her but perhaps no other has been so sanctified and then crucified in Australia. Kernot moved from Democrat anti-politician (a positive) and saviour of a floundering Labor Party to “Demo-Rat” (Laurie Oakes coined that one), red-dressed political harlot, seducer of a former student, princess, whinger, sore loser, adulteress and heaven knows what else.
Initial media reaction to Kernot’s defection from the Australian Democrats to Labor ranged from very positive to antagonistic. Informed by The Media Report’s description of predecessors like Campbell, it should have been apparent that hagiographic representations of Kernot paradoxically presaged her political doom.
Cartoonist for The Australian, Bill Leak, drew Kernot as a bare-breasted Marianne brandishing an ALP flag, while John Howard and Peter Reith lay vanquished at her feet. No flesh and blood woman could live up to such symbolism. Indeed, the 1998 National ALP Conference marked the beginning of the end for Kernot.
With tradition dictating that only certain displays, such as stoicism, are acceptable in the supposedly rational world of politics, Kernot was accused of having fluctuating emotions after she let fly at a journalist. According to Elizabeth Van Acker, author of Different Voices: Gender and Politics, Kernot received “negative coverage” after this incident.
Besides defences from a dwindling band of supporters, Kernot’s relationship with the media continued to deteriorate until it reached perhaps its lowest point with a Hollywood-like car chase after her affair with Gareth Evans was revealed.
Representations of women who are notorious, hated or in traditionally masculine occupations tell us a lot about society’s attitudes to women. While conceding politics and media lend themselves to meaningless stereotypes, surely in the 21st century newspapers and television can do better than typecasting women, as one contributor to The Media Report said, as “the saint virgin…the whore…and the mother character” and other such narrow representations”.

Mark Latham’s cancellation of his plans to travel to the USA later this year was smart, judging from the electoral problems John Howard’s trip is generating him.
I am not in the school which says that George W Bush is stupid. He may not be the intellectually sharpest tool in the shed, but since when has IQ been the only intelligence that counts? But he is culturally insensitive. This is a characteristic he shares with many of his fellow Americans and is possibly one reason that Iraq is proving a bigger challenge than many of them imagined.
His cultural insensitivity was on show two days ago when he launched his attack on Mark Latham’s Iraq policy.
The Australian reported the exchange thus:
“Asked directly about Mr Latham’s plan, Mr Bush said: ‘I think that would be disastrous.
‘It would be a disastrous decision for the leader of a great country like Australia to say that we’re pulling out.
‘It would dispirit those who love freedom in Iraq.
‘It would say that the Australian Government doesn’t see the hope of a free, democratic society (in Iraq).
‘It would embolden the enemy to believe that they could shake our will.
‘They want to kill innocent life because they think that the Western world and the free world is weak.’”
John Howard must have been extraordinarily embarrassed, and so he should have been. US Ambassador to Australia, Tom Scheiffer cut the template of the ugly American diplomat with his forays into Australian domestic politics beginning while Simon Crean was Opposition Leader. As a result, Howard should have anticipated that there was some prospect that George would also talk out of turn and warned him off. The question was completely predictable.
Bush could have palmed it off, perhaps by saying that it was a matter that he was sure that Australians could work out for themselves. He could have deflected it to John Howard and let him answer. If he’d wanted to deliver the message that he did, he could have done it by explaining why the American people would be staying the distance and allowing Australians to make their own connections. He did none of these things.
Bush has sent a number of messages. One is that he is in charge and that Howard is just a supernumerary – more the spear carrier than the deputy sheriff. Another is that he thinks that he can tell Australians what to do and they will fall into line. Yet another is that he does not appreciate the boundaries between nations and sees the rest of the world as an extension of the US.
The reaction across the board in Australia will be adverse. Anti-Americanism has been a feature of Australian political debate for decades. We do not regard ourselves as the 52nd state of the Union, and don’t want to be taken for granted.
No-one appreciates being told what to do within their own family. Many of us disapprove of Latham’s stance as being impractical, immoral and crassly politically opportunistic, but some of us may just overlook that if the US decides to stand-over us. Latham may be wrong, but he is one of us.
But cultural insensitivity is only part of the story. If Howard is to have any chance of beating Latham he has to play on his weaknesses. One of these is that he is seen as being young and inexperienced. If Latham had gone to the US, the failure of major figures in the power establishment to take him seriously would have underlined those two perceptions.
Another weakness Latham has is that many voters, suspect that he is an opportunist and will prove to be a “closet Tory”. In this context it is in Howard’s interest not to be demonizing him as a representative of the pacifist left, but to suggest that he’s just another politician and will go back on his word once elected.
By slamming his policy position, George Bush has elevated Latham in seriousness and importance, suggesting that afterall Washington policy makers do take him seriously. It also makes it harder for Howard to run a domestic argument suggesting that Latham will change his mind after the election. It also cramps his argument that Latham’s promise is reckless (the charge that will stick rather than the one of dishonesty) because George Bush is the one that ran it. This devalues the argument in Australian eyes.
Liberal party strategists must be wondering what would have happened if Latham had gone overseas and Howard stayed home. Perhaps the Coalition of the Willing would be in better shape today along with Howard’s re-election chances.

HAVING written, speeches, statements and communications strategies for politicians here and in Papua New Guinea for over 30 years I perhaps have a greater appreciation than most of good communicators.
I am old enough to have heard Sir Robert Menzies speak at Brisbane City Hall, and listen in to his parliamentary addresses on radio, but as an effective communicator not even Menzies at his best surpassed Ronald Wilson Reagan who died at the weekend.
Others can debate the domestic and international policy successes and failures arising from the Reagan presidency but my interest has always been in his extraordinary communications skills – not only the prepared texts, but the Presidential debates, and the media interviews.
However, in assessing the life and times of Ronald Reagan, a couple of points need to be kept in mind. Firstly, he came to the world’s most demanding public office at the age of 69, leaving it aged 77.
Secondly, if Presidential popularity is measured by votes and states won, then Reagan has no peer. Not only did he trounce the incumbent President, Jimmy Carter, in 1980, four years later he defeated Walter Mondale by the largest majority in US history – winning every state but Mondale’s home state and the District of Columbia.
If part of the role of a national leader is to deliver the “feel good” factor to his or her community, then Reagan delivered in abundance. After the divisive Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, and a depressed economy, Reagan re-built the confidence of the American people in themselves, and their place in the World.
I have always thought that while this was achieved through a mix of policy and PR, the PR was the pivotal factor.
Perhaps his best-remembered speech was delivered in the shadow of the Berlin Wall – “Mr Gorbachov tear down this wall!!”
I though his best response was during one of the 1984 debates against Mondale. A panellist raised Reagan’s age (73) as a campaign issue.
The response was classic Reagan:
”I won’t make age an issue in this campaign. I won’t talk about my opponents youth and inexperience”. Mondale laughed as loud as anyone.
It is true that Reagan’s Hollywood years gave him communication skills most leaders could only dream of…………..but he honed his skills to suit the domestic and world political stages with remarkable skill.
Perhaps only John Fitzgerald Kennedy comes close as a communicator.
There is another point that needs to be remembered about the Reagan presidency – in the first year of his first term he survived the assassin’s bullet.
I suspect that history will judge Ronald Reagan more kindly than his contemporaries. The Iran-Contra scandal and his lack of attention to detail, and record deficits, will not really rate when compared with his communications skills, his capacity to deliver the “feel good factor” in spades, and his role in ending the Cold War and securing freedom and democracy in Eastern Europe.
Neither this country, nor the wider world, has seen many genuinely high class communicators in the last fifty years or so. We are poorer for that – but richer that we lived in the era of one of the greatest of all.

I recently invested some time investigating a government press release merely to find it was one of the worst beat-ups I have ever seen. Rather than waste my time, I’ve decided to write about the experience.
The release came to me courtesy of another, perhaps more gullible, Liberal Party friend. I received an email with the subject line “Labor’s secret $3 petrol plan”. The text read “You may like to read the attached press release about Labor’s petrol tax!!!!!! One would like to know why it has not been mentioned in our news bulletins, I have not seen or heard of it. Have you?”
Having read the release I now know why it has not been mentioned in any news bulletins. You too can read the release by clicking here (pdf 61.1 KB). The major points are:

It is on the letterhead of Ian MacFarlane, Minister for Industry, Tourism and Racing, and was presumably prepared by Kirsty Boazman, the media contact nominated by the release. I’ve rung Kirsty for her comments on the release, but to date, no reply. No wonder.
Here are the facts. Carmen Lawrence did launch a policy called Oil:Living with Less. It is not an ALP policy but belongs to the Sustainable Transport Coalition of Western Australia. She launched it in March, not May. The policy does advocate increasing the excise to European levels. I can’t find any evidence of Carmen endorsing it, let alone Mark Latham. Complete beat-up.
But even as beat-ups go it is incompetent. I actually started looking for the ALP policy because the release itself was inconsistent. You might have noticed that it claims that petrol will reach $3 per litre because that is what Europeans pay. It also says the policy is to increase the rate of excise to European levels. So, are all other things equal between Australian and European petrol? Apparently not. The release told me: “Of that A$3 European price, about A$1.30 is tax, more than three times the Australian excise rate of 38.1 cents per litre.”
Wait a bit, the price of Australian fuel is only nudging about $1 per litre and the difference between what we pay in excise and what the Europeans pay is 91.9 cents. Doesn’t that mean that the maximum price for fuel would only be $1.92 a litre, not $3? Indeed. But wait, there’s more.
The tank of a Commodore holds 75 litres. That means that if the price of fuel really was $3 a litre, then it would cost $225 to fill a tank, not the $210 that Kirsty claims. Not only are her external facts wrong, but none of her internal mathematics adds up either.
The government has enough credibility problems at the moment. Why would a Minister be trying to get away with this sort of guff? To make matters worse, the release is also up on the official Liberal Party website. In every election since 1996, even if the elected members and their staff have been prepared to act like complete geese, the Federal Secretariat has generally kept its cool and its focus. Propagating this release rather than shredding it suggests that all is not well in the Death Star either. Hope they’re not running on empty.