Who's to Blame? Politicians or The Press Gallery?

So, Question Time this week has, depending on your point of view, either been rollickingly funny Canberran WWF, or a farcical shemozzle of childish political point scoring.

I’ll take a little from column A and a little from column B on this one.

Watching Julia Gillard rubbing the opposition’s noses in their own droppings was kinda funny, I giggled along with everyone else when it looked like Harry Jenkins (Speaker of the House) was going to get up and punch someone and Bernard Keane surely has to win best Question Time tweet ever with “Bronwyn shrieks, flaps her wings and looks for a cathedral to perch on.”

So, yes, fun, fun, fun, but the opposition’s whining about the mean unfairness of the government’s manipulation of Question Time, while lacking a certain credibility, does have some validity.

Question Time is supposed to be a forum for the government to show some accountability, where they have to provide answers about the implementation of policies and plans for the future. The Rudd government is absolutely not the first to use it to humiliate the opposition (hi to Paul Keating if you’re watching) and Howard, Abbot & Costello et al were equally guilty of this, but not only does it totally defeat the purpose of the thing, it also plays a large part in the public perception of politicians as petty and childish arsechokers (arsechoker: someone whose head is shoved firmly up their own arse and then chokes when the sphincter is unexpectedly tightened).

It’s easy to blame the politicians themselves for this, but Tony Windsor (independent MP for New England) made the point on Radio National Breakfast this morning that the media also needs to take some of the rap.

Governments take such delight in humiliating opposition members in parliament in a large part because it gets such good headlines, which detailed policy debate does not. Also, they know that time spent writing up Julia’s latest bon mot is not time spent digging about in the stimulus spending. They’re playing to an audience of around 200 in the press gallery, and as long as the applause (in the form of soundbites and column inches) keeps coming, they’ll keep putting on their show.

And from the media’s point of view it’s an easy ride. Journalists who don’t want to have to wade through policy papers and analysis can fill an easy couple of columns reporting on the latest Question Time shenanigans, file their copy and be the first one to the bar after work.

So who’s to blame? Well, I think there’s enough to go round, but the press gallery are the ones with the power. If, instead of gleeful giggling over Question Time performances, they started demanding genuine debate and real answers to questions, the politicians would have to knuckle down. The reverse is not necessarily true, if politicians started taking Question Time seriously there is no guarantee that the press would follow suit.

The media, and the Canberra Press Gallery in particular, has a responsibility to the public, they are there to watch and report on the doings of parliament. They should be decrying rather than encouraging politicians to treat the parliamentary process with contempt.

The Fourth Estate, if it wants to be take seriously by the public, needs to take seriously the responsibilities of it’s profession.

And we, as readers and consumers of media, need to ask more of them than we currently are.

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