It’s been a gruelling few months for Nicola Roxon: hundreds of interviews, hospital ward photo-ops, meetings with bureacrats, talkfests with premiers. So who could blame her if, for just an instant, the discipline of polli-talk fell away — as it did last night, in a Lateline interview with Leigh Sales:
LEIGH SALES: …has the federal government spent more than it wanted to to get the states on board?
NICOLA ROXON: No. This was part of a planned negotiation process…
So that’s what it was. A “planned negotiation process” that started and ended with posturing by premiers who needed to appear macho to their constituencies — especially in Victoria which is seven months away from an election — and posturing by a prime minister, also months away from an election, who needed to to secure the sweetest victory of all on the sweetest issue of all, health.
A “planned negotiation process” aided and abetted by a compliant media who played along almost as participants in a process that, at every stage, delivered confected conflict designed for audiences and voters and pollsters and pundits.
Now for the next “planned negotiation process”…
Strange how they planned to spend all this money on Health Reform “before” it was offered but still can’t tell us how they plan to fund it. Time the media asked questions about the funding and also make Kevin Rudd talk about and answer questions on other issues in this country. He can not be allowed to hide behind his Health Reform for ever. Although this is obviously his intention in the lead up to the election and the media let him get away with it.
Bernard, when are we going to see you on Insiders? Others who are demonstrably more lightweight than you (Karen Middleton, Fran Kelly, Brian Toohey etc etc) are on so why not you?
Shyness can’t be the reason (you have the scars to prove it) so it must be the lack of an invitation.
Is Barry Cassidy too wedded to old media to where the best talent lies?
Well then let’s revert to the dictatorship of Kevin Rudd.
Planned negiation sounds so sinister doesn’t it?
It only means that they always planned to negotiate instead of imposing rule.
Good grief you get your little knickers in a twist sometimes Bernard.
Oi Shepherd!
Don’t you dare desecrate Our Sophie’s good name …. or undies
No, Marilyn, it means that there was a scheme, a reasonable scheme, to allow the states to have small supposed victories in order to obtain the overall objective. Most , if not all, of what was ‘given away’ the government always intended to do anyway. It does not need a slip-up from Nicola Roxon to see that this was the plan all along.
Yesterday I described the negotiations as a political pantomime and the theatrics were both real and phony at the same time.