Are you satisfied with being Australian today?
While the new regime of restricted civil rights is being born, it's become very clear that media coverage of 'leadership' issues in the Federal government is being encouraged by the protagonists to distract attention from the appalling anti-democratic nature of their legislation being passed at the same time.
Note that on the very morning that Anti-terror and Workplace bills are passed a slew of media releases and stories focussing on Howard and Costello appear, starving contentious issues like Sedition of room in the press.
For example, in the current Breaking News section of News.com there are five stories dealing with leadership and one dealing with the economy, all failing to discuss the impact of their laws. The SMH's news queue is similar, but is running noticeably less government PR than News.com.
Backtracking through recent coverage at the times of contentious debate over legislation in the Federal parliament produces exactly the same pattern: debate is not only being stifled in the Senate, but in the public domain by the very simple means of politicians providing other 'big issues' (like leadership) that successfully push discussion that reflects badly (and accurately it may be argued) to the margins.
It seems Senator Joyce is also fond of his own form of distraction and profile building by threatening to 'cross the floor' at every opportunity, going through the motions of being independent-minded before ultimately delivering the vote the government desperately needs to seal its current ideological rampage.
This is polity without substance, democracy without representation, and media manipulation of the highest order.
Lost in the fog of reporting are extremely significant stories such as the impact of having 'one third of Australia's woodlands and 80 per cent of temperate woodland [...] cleared, with less than five per cent remaining in some parts of southern Australia'.
Are we satisfied today? It's now illegal not to be, apparently.
Item posted by AutoEditor at 12:51 pm ::
