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May 28, 2012
I've been away in Queenstown, Tasmania on a photoshoot and in coming back to Adelaide I find that the Craig Thompson affair still dominating the agenda of the Canberra media gallery and the 24/7 news cycle.
It is pretty clear that Thomson is a pawn on a political chess board within the hothouse atmospherics of minority government. Tony Abbott has pushed the politics of this too far. Though Thomson is facing serious non-judicial findings after an extensive investigation by Fair Work Australia and is the subject of police investigation, he is entitled to the assumption of innocence in a representative democracy based on the rule of law. Until proven guilty he is entitled to a fair hearing, however implausible his claims.
David Pope
What has shifted in the week that I have been away is that the media are now in the spotlight for the way they have handled the affair. They have been part of the campaign to push Thomson out of parliament before he has been charged with any offence, let alone convicted of one that satisfies the Constitution for his disqualification.Though there is no basis or precedent for Thomson to resign, and though Abbott has made no convincing argument for such a resignation, the media have acted to judge the guilt or innocence of Thomson.
Though the Thomson affair is unlikely to deliver Abbott the election he wants now that will deliver him the power he needs to roll back the reforms the affair indicates just how deeply we have entered into world of bitterly adversarial politics. It is a media world where politics, like sport, is now part of the entertainment industry,
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One narrative in the News Ltd media is that all the problems faced by the Gillard Government have been caused by minority government.
The solution? Majority government. Decoded this means regime change. That is what the News Ltd media are campaigning for.