How meaningful reform by Labor is killed by the mainstream media

As seen with negative gearing and carbon pricing, the mainstream media in Australia has the dangerous power to overturn elections through fear-mongering, Dr Victoria Fielding writes.

LIKE MOST developed nations, Australia suffers from systemic problems which require governments to be innovative, brave and to develop reforms that though sometimes unpopular in the short term, are good for the long-term health of the country.

We need to have grown-up conversations about problems like climate change, housing affordability, sustainable taxes and immigration to ensure we’re making the right decisions for a brighter future.

These conversations are impossible in Australia’s media environment where there are two types of media — News Corp and other conservative media who exist to campaign against Labor, and the rest who refuse to call out unconstructive scaremongering while also constantly criticising Labor for not doing enough to reform complex policies.

There is always more a Labor government could be doing to solve systemic complex problems and of course, criticism where warranted is an important function of watchdog journalism.

It is also the political reality in Australia that the public and the media expect the Labor Party to fix every problem while also balancing the Budget, whereas the Liberals are held to no such standard.

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But when Labor does propose bold, ambitious policies to address systemic problems, rather than facilitating constructive conversations, Australian media either deliberately or passively help the Liberal Party mount scare campaigns built on lies, hyperbole, division and often hatred — creating an environment where progressive change becomes electorally impossible.

Take, for example, negative gearing. At the 2019 Election, the Labor Opposition proposed that negative gearing should only apply to new homes, giving an incentive to investors to increase housing stock while freeing up more homes for owner-occupiers.

Predictably, this reform was met with a rabid scare campaign from the Liberal Government, which was amplified by its Murdoch media cheer squad and ultimately contributed to Labor's loss in that election.

Is it any wonder now that Labor MPs have zero interest in reforming negative gearing?

The public was never presented with a meaningful conversation about the positive impact of this policy because the media either promoted a scare campaign or failed to call out the misrepresentation of this policy and the vested interests behind it.

Apparently, watchdog journalism only counts if it’s calling Labor governments out, not calling out scare campaigns by the Liberals.

A great example of journalists ignoring the impact of scaremongering on policies like negative gearing is a recent ABC News piece by Peter Martin.

Martin argues that Dutton’s idea of barring immigrants from buying investment properties could be much more effective if it was implemented Australia-wide by reforming negative gearing. He says Labor did have such a policy but has no interest in one any longer.

What Martin doesn’t say is that the reason Labor does not have this policy anymore is that the media’s amplification of the then-Liberal Government’s fear-mongering about it – which included Dutton – has made it a policy Labor has learned never to go near again.

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Martin also doesn’t mention that this quite rational reason that Labor won’t touch negative gearing is because, despite not having a policy — The Australian has continued to scaremonger about it, threatening that Labor might have one.

This is another salvo in News Corp’s unending campaign against the Labor Government.

(Source: 'Labor is gearing up to go negative on housing investors' | theaustralian.com.au)

The same thing occurred with Labor’s proposed franking credit changes in 2019, which was misrepresented throughout Australian media as a "retirement tax".

After the recent Budget, Laura Tingle has criticised both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party for ignoring the problem of declining tax revenue.

Nowhere does she say that any Labor-proposed increase in taxation is met with a media-driven scare campaign. Remember the super profits mining tax? Or the Carbon Price, which wasn’t even a tax?

New taxes are political kryptonite for Labor governments thanks to the media’s ready amplification of Liberal scare campaigns.

These campaigns usually oversimplify or even misrepresent the outcomes of the policy:

(Source: 'Federal election 2019: Labor's proposed $56 billion retiree tax would affect retirees, new mothers' | dailytelegraph.com.au)

Every now and then, a journalist from outside of the campaigning media admits that the Liberals are engaged in a scare campaign or are misrepresenting Labor’s policies.

In this instance, Laura Tingle called Dutton’s anti-immigration Budget reply simple, dangerous politics, calling a spade a spade by saying Dutton is using this as a characteristically divisive way to turn Australians against immigrants.

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Yet, this type of quite accurate commentary is an outlier in the usual coverage, which either ignores the scare campaigning or legitimises it as fair and reasonable political debate.

Making matters worse, even when the ugliness of Dutton’s scaremongering is mentioned, it is usually both-sided, making it equally Labor’s fault. A typical example is the ABC’s Tom Crowley passively saying the migration debate was threatening to 'get ugly'.

He says Dutton is using migration as a political weapon but never criticises this strategy. In doing so, he implies it is entirely reasonable and justifiable for Dutton to divide and conquer by promoting hate against immigrants, passively reporting this toxic, polarising, cruel politics like it’s a normal, run-of-the-mill debate.

This media environment makes it so hard for Labor governments to meaningfully address systemic problems that it contributes to these problems getting continuously worse. It is not surprising that Labor governments want to stay in power to help solve societal problems, so they will avoid provoking scare campaigns at any cost.

When each policy is met with an opportunistic Liberal scare campaign and Australian media helps amplify these campaigns without pointing out that problems will never be solved in this political wedge environment, short-term political opportunism is rewarded and long-term meaningful reform is doomed.