Comments on: Once upon a time … Rudd needs a narrative

By: Tom McLoughlin

Tom McLoughlin — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

What is that narrative whispering in our hearts …..ecological sustainability in the 21C. The antidote to defeatist irresponsible denialist Rapture of organised religion. The joy of subtle endlessly complex nature and our place in that balance. The challenge of the century. A force greater than nuclear power if slower acting (we hope). That’s why the LIb Lab’s have frozen out the greens/Greens for a good 15 years now only to be beaten around the ankles, badly bruised too, every few years. The Narrative is coming and they know it too but it’s just not theirs. They can’t stop it. It gathers momentum as theirs (any work is good work, any money is good money) loses puff - a plasma tv in every home - for God sake they aim so low, they project such small ambitions for their society and world. It’s real turtle and hare stuff and the hare is looking like the drop out in the energiser advert. Acting big going nowhere. We shall see …..in the long run.

By: Venise Alstergren

Venise Alstergren — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Patricia, the Howard government’s narrative was to endeavour to be a hero to the “Little Aussie Battler”. As Bernard says it always stressed it’s economic wizardry, which was bul*shit, but large segments of the voters bought this line. Then it became sickening anti-terrorist aka Xenophobia, and ‘Your Government Will Take Care of You, and Screw Your Enemies, sort of deal.

I am speaking as the proverbial ‘dyed-in-the-wool labour voter. A voter however, who is determined not to let the Rudd government ‘pull the wool over my eyes’. To begin with the Rudd government claimed it’s narrative to be ‘the environment’, and by voting Labour YOU, the voter will be assured that WE the government will reverse the Howard Government’s sickening lack of interest in the environment. 10 months later the hapless voter has had to watch Peter Garrett, who entered parliament with the desire to do something positive for the environment, who, once in government, reneged on every dream he purported to hold dear. And Penny Wong, who was virtually sold to the electorate as being a ‘thinker’ who cared for the environment; who went on to show that being ‘gay’ and being a woman was no impediment to being yet another bureaucratic Canberra pen-pusher.
Finally we beheld Ms Wong’s writing off of the Murray Darling catastrophe as being inevitable, and there was nothing the government could do about it. That’s two clunkers who have helped to destroy the Rudd government’s narrative. Now comes the biggest clunker of all. Kevin Rudd, the bible waving little bureaucrat from Australia’s deep north, the State of Queensland. The voters, desperately searching for ‘a hero’ to deliver them from the endemic corruption and shonky mindedness of John Howard and his merry band of gut-garbagers turned to Kevin Rudd to deliver us from evil. What did we get in our desperation? A superficial and extreme QLD ordinariness of a man. Whose ability to see filth in photographs of prepubescent girls is breath-taking. A man who solemnly believes the orgasmic ravenings, trundled out by the media, that the Beijing Olympics are more important than the death of the Murray Darling River.

The only hero in my understanding of the word, is Wayne Swan. But the narrative has gone with the Murray-Darling.

By: Bernard Keane

Bernard Keane — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

If the media is left to its own devices, Patricia, it will develop a narrative at once counter-productive to good policy and hostile to the government. Governments have to offer narratives or significantly influence them - that was my point. Because I didn’t have 1600 words, I skipped the bit about how the Howard Government narrative was briefly about economic reform but eventually became about national security and xenophobia, and highly successful it was too.

By: Patricia Weston

Patricia Weston — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

So what are you trying to say here, Bernard? What’s your story, your narrative? If you’re suggesting that Rudd doesn’t spin a good yarn you’re probably right. He can’t win, can he? Another complaint from the both opposition and much much of the media is that he’s all spin and no substance. So are these much criticised committees of enquiry and their subsequent reports produced by reportedly overworked bureaucrats evidence of spin or simply the groundwork required by a new government with a reformist agenda after a decade of reform inertia by the Coalition? What was John Howard’s “narrative” about children overboard, the wheat export scandal and weapons of mass destruction to name but a few of the stories swallowed whole by much of the media and for too long the electorate. If all you can write about is Rudd’s lack of narrative about all the constructive things he and his government have done or are taking measured steps to introduce then you should find another job. You’re the reporter. You write the story.
Let Rudd and his ministers get on with their job of running the government: establishing enquiries, reviewing reports before executing new policy and producing appropriate green and white papers for public debate before introducing new legislation. That’s government. Narrative is the job of journalists.