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June 05, 2005
I appreciate that Lara Tingle in the Australian Financial Review reckoned that the Howard Government is all at sea, and that recent events indicate that things are getting bad for the Coalition:
Matt Golding.
What Tingle said was this:
The Howard Government doesn't make public policy, a close if slightly jaded observer noted recently, it does issue management.
She then listed a number of crisis management issues ---Schapelle Corby, drought relief, slowing economy, infrastructure, mandatory detention--that indicate "the signs of a bad administration being caught out."
I'm not convinced apart, from the fraying around mandatory detention, since most of the other stuff is newspaper headlines.
Let me respond:
The Howard Government continues to make public policy, a close if slightly wearied observer noted recently, even as it is caught up in issue management.
We have Costello's Intergenerational Report work on the economic impacts of aging (a fiscal blowout), the National Water Initiative, industrial relations, the CoAG agreements on health reform, the various Free Trade agreements etc etc.
Me thinks our senior journalists do not read, nor are they interested in, public policy. Their conception of politics is media headlines. What they observe is the media observing Canberra.
Tis a world of distorting mirrors.
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