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Another great week for bread and circuses. First the government releases the details of the most retrograde industrial relations legislation to be tabled in our parliament. Two days later, and with very little debate of substance, Schapelle replaces the rest of the world on centre stage. That took three days of reporting. As soon as we got over that we find that at least one SAS soldier looked to his conscience and resigned in disgust over his commander’s response to the murder of innocent Afghani villagers. Topping off the week that was, a ‘biological’ agent was sent to the Indonesian embassy in Canberra. Oh, and lets not forget the so called ‘revolt’ by a few backbenchers over their party’s attitude to asylum seekers. Whew. I’m buggered just trying to remember the whole week in the news.
On the industrial relations front, the esteemed grand Pooh-Bah of the Labor party revealed that he is quite distressed by the proposed industrial relations shake-up the Howard Liberal party is hoping to introduce. On the ABC’s PM program he said, “This is about the fulfilment of a lifelong ambition to attack and control the industrial relations system in this country, and that's been exposed here today.” Seems like Bomber Beasley may be coming down with amnesia. Wasn’t it his party that controlled and reshaped industrial relations during the 1980’s with the Hawke and Keating ‘Accords’? Dressed up as a new era for workers, employers and the ‘economy’ the Accord saw unions decimated, proactive government reduced to reactivism and beholden to the BCA and other employer groups and the sell out of low waged workers. Any ‘boom’ in the economy, lets not forget, was due to speculation on the money markets and the puffery of the PR hacks selling the ‘greed is good’ rhetoric that most politicians were prepared to embrace. If we remember that little bit of history, Howard’s plans are nothing more than the continuation of the policies that are still held close to the hearts of many in the Federal Labor party.
Just as this little bit of history was being shoved down the memory hole of the corporate media, a little known lady from Queensland was making headlines again. Schapelle Corby, convicted drug smuggler – whether we agree or not – managed to push just about any rational discussion of anything off the front and middle pages of the newspapers (no one touches the sport pages OK!). With big money riding on securing the book, film, TV and merchandising rights, all the media scrum managed to achieve was to put those bidding on her suffering on the back foot. Now a big ticket item, Schapelle Inc. grinds away. Any PR hack worth their salt will tell you that if the ground work is done well, when the campaign is launched, it will gain a life of its own. That is exactly what Corby Inc. hoped for and have achieved. National wall to wall coverage in the print and electronic press. A success. Now comes the delicate matter of ensuring that their product doesn’t waste away in some jail cell. The cash that could be generated from the talk show circuit, the book sales and the mini-series or movie is phenomenal and you can bet your bottom dollar that there are multiple versions of the first scripts being churned out as you read this. Schapelle’s innocence or guilt is not what is stake here.
No sooner had the gunja in the boogie board bag story run its current cycle that the Australian Special Air Service came under scrutiny for their behaviour – or more accurately the behaviour of some of their troops – in Afghanistan in 2002. Quoting John Howard, these troops were sent “in our name” to kill “terrorists” and we should not forget, to quote Robert Hill, that , “I don't think there's any issue about their right to protect themselves.” On the surface I can agree with Hill – putting aside any argument about what the hell they’re doing there in the first place. Surely the real story is in the admission that ‘disciplinary action’ was taken against some of the soldiers? Chief Commander of Killing, Major General Peter Cosgrove admitted that there is a need for a further investigation into the killing of civilians but no one asked him to explain why one officer resigned in disgust at the lack of action against those he fingered as looting the dead. Why is it that the real soldier, the man of conscience who it can be guaranteed lost all his friends and comrades when he exposed their deplorable actions, is not being lauded as a hero for exposing one of the realities of war. That is, the troops acting “in our name” are really no different than those they kill. After all, isn’t that what we pay them to do – to kill in our name?
Which leads me back to home soil and the ‘backbench revolt’ over the treatment of asylum seekers. The first question that springs to mind is why this didn’t get a run in the lead up to the ’04 election? I’m sure Petro didn’t just wake up one morning last week and have some sort of epiphany that forced him onto the phone. I suggest that the strategy of giving this story some air is part of the carefully orchestrated plan to allow a ‘hot button’ issue to dominate the media while a crisis – and we know there is a real crisis within the Department at present – is attended to. Again, using well tried and practiced PR strategies, you let a side issue gain some ‘traction’ while the real issue is massaged under the cover afforded by the distraction. Funny how the coverage has shifted from the debacle over the Cornelia Rau and baby’s in detention issues and onto a fascination with internal Liberal party politicking. All the while the babies languish, the detainees remain behind bars and the Rau family agonises over their sister’s treatment. But, in good media form, how can we compare the suffering of someone with a mental illness who, if we believe Minister Vanstone’s rantings, brought it all on herself, with the suffering of a poor, innocent but reasonably attractive inmate in a Bali jail?
It would seem that someone thought it might even be worthwhile taking out a few “slope heads” in Canberra and so packaged some crushed up snail pellets or somesuch and post them to the Indonesian embassy. It would seem that we now join the ranks of terrorist nations where foreign nationals are likely to be targets for attack. The use of the word ‘bacillus’ by the PM and the Foreign Minister are deployed in that great tradition of obfuscation as they attempt to, on the one hand, play up the attack as being the work of some deranged mind, while on the other sending a strong message that they don’t take no shit from no one. Their rhetoric is about as helpful as saying that a your goldfish ate your homework. In my small mind when I heard “biological attack” I assumed a turd in a box but it seems it will turn out to be far less obnoxious than this. It’s here we return almost full circle to the start of the week and the way the corporate media speaks with almost a single voice on the issues of the day.
We live in an age where the news cycle dominates reporting. Sure, buried away in the back blocks of ABC Radio National or in a feature article in one of the broadsheets we might find some reference to the historical antecedents to events. We might even find some rational and reflective discussion on the real stories behind the headlines. But these articles and features are not part of the ‘main event’. That is dictated by the need to grab the ratings edge, the need to return dividends to the shareholders or, in the case of the ABC, to appease the managers who are now increasingly drawn from the corporate sector rather that coming up through the ranks and who possibly still retaining their grasp of the public service media philosophy.
No one seems to be prepared to link the various strands together. What are the potential links between all five stories we’ve just looked at? What threads that weave their way in and out of them and intersect, overlap and converge? While we remain content with the circuses offered to us by a compliant corporate media and the bread doled out to us by lame duck politicians, we should not be concerned at all about the loss of history.
Like the Roman Empire before us we should eat and enjoy while it lasts – or that’s what we’re told. Perhaps it is worth recalling the sentiments of the Roman historian Tacitus. He commented on the tactic employed by Nero who used the Christian sect as the scapegoat for his failing policies and the subsequent use of ‘bread and circuses’ by Augustus to quell potential riots by the citizens who were displaced, disenfranchised and disillusioned by the promises emanating from Rome. Maybe in a little less that 2,000 years we have not come far at all. Maybe all we have learned as a society in the intervening period is to tune in the VCR so we can avoid the ‘boring bits’ of the news and allow others to determine the history we could be creating.