How do I begin…I have a confession to make…a transgression. Last week I rang a journalist I know and asked her to take “special care” of a friend of mine.
I suggested in an email that this friend deserved special attention when she was considering what she might cover in one of the social pages. Why? well because he was a pal.
OK the benefits to my friend would not technically be monetary but he would be advantaged by this cosy little request …he’d get some local prestige.
Technically I was pulling strings, asking for preferential treatment.
Now I don’t really want to get into comparisons with the complex unfoldings that have been coined “Ute-gate” by our ever-derivative Australian media, or to excuse any sweetheart arrangements that our government may or may not have made to support a particular car-dealer friend of our dear KRudd – but heck isn’t there anything more eventful in happening in Australian politics than this?
Never mind delays on important legislation on carbon emissions, or the fact that rebates on solar energy systems have been retracted nationwide but also, surprisingly, to beyond-the-black-stump communities that have to buy expensive diesel and still live without regular lighting and refrigeration.
Never mind the debates we could be having over taxes on sickly alcoholic drinks that are marketed squarely at 14-year old girls and have them paralytic in a jiffy, because they taste just like just like butterscotch but sting like a bee.
No, instead we have had saturation coverage over an email purported to be a request from our Prime Minister to take special care to hear the needs of a struggling car dealer who was, along with countless others, on the brink of disaster because of the collapse of the car market. As it turns out, so far it seems the PM’s mate was heard, but given no special treatment.
But the debate is moving quickly as this saga is pared back by the media and played out in Parliament keeping an army of minders penning the next part of the script as we go.
The PM is playing favorites and should resign says the Leader of the Opposition …move one …pawn taken…scribble scribble scribble….counter attack…No the Leader of the Opposition is lying and impugning the PM so he should resign…scribble scribble scribble…and so it goes.
I wish someone would just tell them they are boring…really boring.
It plays on every news bulletin…here comes another one.
At the centre of the “investigation” is an unlikely public servant. Two days ago he was a respected treasury official - then his home was raided by the Federal police. The email at the heart of the controversy has been declared fraudulent, and the hapless servant of the people is flapping out there in the tabloids and the evening news as someone who has been interviewed by police for several hours.
Here’s the latest, like the proverbial rusty bucket… he has been leaking information to the opposition for years (dating back to when they were the Government)…or so says the news. An eccentric fellow by all accounts, he has a habit, common now to everyone who wants to protect their back, he copies people in to just about all of his emails.
It is the ferocity of these frenzies that always, despite years on the edges of media and PR, shocks me. Like schools of White Pointers in some gruesome nightmare, the media swim around in circles nudging and nibbling here and there before they home in for the kill.
As I write this we are still not sure who will be ripped to pieces, but our public servant with the unfortunate name of Godwin Grech must be pretty nervous.
And tonight there will be folk out in the bush a thousands of miles from the 24/7 bright lights and bling of our coastal cities, sorting out if they can really afford the $A80,000 it will take to install solar electricity or if they have to put up with the intermittent hum of their faithful old diesel generators.
Either way these remote Australians must realise no one else seems to be particularly interested – or maybe they just don’t have enough power to have been tuning into this saga about an email that stopped the nation.
