Best Four Corners ever…
Well, maybe not ever ever, but as a Queenslander it’s hard not to think that tonight’s edition was important for revisiting a turning-point in our State’s history. Four premiers were interviewed, and there was some overdue credit for unlikely heroes like Mike Ahern, who realised the State needed to change, and made it happen at personal and political cost.
One of the big criticisms that the blogosphere (right across the political spectrum) makes of the mainstream media is that it’s abandoned its “Fourth Estate” role, and is too far integrated with the PR industry and the machinery of government.
This show was a nice reprise by Chris Masters of his own classic investigative work in programmes like “The Moonlight State”, which saw investigative journalism lead directly to bringing down a corrupt government. The economics of the contemporary commercial media make this kind of blockbusting investigative work more difficult to carry out, and for now the blogosphere is not really equipped to do it either, except perhaps on a hyperlocal level (have I plugged Cairnsblog and Strewth today?)
This is something that we need to address as a society - and I think that’s what we were trying to pick up on in our latest ABC column. Meanwhile, ask a Queenslander what happens when media, business and the machinery of government get too cosy.
Link to the video of the show here.
Speaking as someone who first became politically active against Joh in about 85 when I was a young thing, and vividly remembers the impact of Masters’ show in 87, I thought it was a bit of a damp squib. It seemed to lack much point except allowing supporters of Joh to put an exculpatory narrative out there. I’m really trying hard not to be partisan, but honestly, I thought Beattie had the honours when it came to saying anything remotely worthwhile.
Mark, I think that you’re right up to a point, but the strongest impression I took away, from friend and foe alike, was that towards the end, JBP was clinically crazy, and certainly had the means, motive and opportunity for corruption (OK maybe we knew that already, but this was a compelling presentation.)
There was something quite flat about it in the sense that it was suffused with a kind of nostalgia for investigative journalism - the good old days when giants walked the earth, hunted by proud, free tribes of journos etc. etc. Given that NSW and maybe Vic are crying out for a “moonlight state” of their own, it’s a bit sad to see someone like Masters focussing on past glories.
Having said that, I think it was worth doing as an exercise in history, though maybe it would have been better as a stand-alone, outside the Four Corners slot. I think it was worthwhile because it was interesting to hear these stories after all the heat had gone out of the situation, and most of those involved are retired or dead. It was interesting to me to hear reevaluations of people like Ahern, and it was brain-bending to realise how the State used to be governed, and how much things have changed. I think it was worth doing as a contextualising exercise for the Rudd era, if nothing else.
You’re right about Beattie - still whip-smart and in a mood to analyse now that he’s no longer an actor, he was good to watch and better to listen to. The slipping of the folksy mask actually showed you how much he took from Joh in the first place. The whole thing showed how that era was above all the making of a range of successful Labor politicians.
Oh and the Ruddster’s bowl-cut was itself worth the price of admission.
Yep, and the image of Russ crouched at Joh’s keyhole trying to lure him out of the bunker!
I think it was a bit lacking in purpose. No one (as far as I know) ever really thought Joh profited personally from the corruption, so to say he didn’t really is pointless - and the selection of people interviewed was very narrow - slanted heavily towards Joh apologists. It seemed to me the main purpose it served was to let them get their side of the story on the record.
There was a hell of a lot glossed over - the restrictions on civil liberties and dissent, the role of grassroots opposition, the role of the cops politically (particularly the Special Branch), how antideluvian Joh’s views on sex education, condoms etc were - and abortion. In a way the Joh era was an important transition from an older mode of religiously inspired governance to the expulsion of the religious right to a fringe and its reinvention as such.
Even in terms of the electoral/party story, the way Joh effectively split the Libs in 83 wasn’t mentioned, and viewers were left with the impression that they’d all been moderates and a moderating influence - which is false, basically. Or what Beattie et al were really up against in trying to turn around an appalling (and corrupt) ALP branch.
Do you reckon some of what you saw in it is read in from what you know already? I’m not sure how it would have come across to parts of the audience who had little or no prior knowledge of what went on.
The amazing thing about that was that people were arguing that because he ednded up poor - he was not corrupt! You can be a poor investor, and still be corrupt - in fact, I’d suggest that being corrupt encourages bad investing.