The first thing to say about ‘reality TV’ is that most of the time it could hardly be further from ‘reality’. If you stick a camera there, most people behave very differently (even on Jerry Springer!).
As I argue in my next OLO essay, I think western culture, let alone OZ culture, is in deep trouble, and so are we all because of it. RTV is just an extension of a very specific approach to culture, which is like a McCulture. Work out the lowest common denominator (to maximise audience) by minimising any content that requires concentration, and just play with the formula. Thus, when radio began in the US in the 1920s, this formula quickly emerged to maximise advertising impact. The same approach was then transferred to TV in the 1950s. Ever since the remnant quality has been giving way to simpler exploitation of audience hopes/fears. I mean, how many more serial killer shows can we watch?
In the UK another model of public entertainment through quality material was adopted under government authority, carried out by the BBC.
Like much else, Oz got something in between the two models.
The hard fact is, people will eat fast food everyday because it is made to respond to core hunger stimuli i.e. hot fat, salt, suger, etc. But a staple diet of fast food is bad for you. So people have to be educated to refine their tastes. This leads to healthy, well-rounded human beings. Fast food is OK now and then, but not all the time.

So Guy Sebastian is Australia’s Idol. Public opinion and quality can coincide. But am I the only one to have noted the irony that the man selected to be an “idol” is a practising Christian who thanked God in his victory outburst (I was going to say speech, but these guys aren’t paid to be articulate and generally aren’t)? Idols and God, at least for us monotheists, aren’t compatible, and from a Christian perspective, the worst sort of idolatory is to put a man on a pedestal – that’s the whole ironic tension of Jesus Christ, Superstar.
But then, maybe the secret of Sebastian’s success is that he seemed so little affected by the attention being heaped on him. I suspect it will be harder for him to keep his humility than it will be for him to keep his virginity until he is married (as he has apparently promised to do)!
My colleague Peter McMahon certainly shares this first opinion but also seems to believe that reality TV is a plot designed to hook people on consumer capitalism. This seems to me to be an example of cart-before-horseism. No-one forces people to watch this stuff. It is a successful way to make money because it works with human nature, not against it. It appeals to deeply entrenched drives– our semi-narcissistic curiosity about ourselves and our love of a competition – and combines this with a programme format which is very cheap to make. The result is compelling TV that is hugely profitable.
Reality TV is not a new format – the basic elements are there in quiz shows all the way back to Bob and Dolly Dyer’s Pick a Box, the show that first made a celebrity of Australian living national treasure, Barry Jones (and given his glorious career, who could cavill at that?). The innovation that shows like Big Brother and Australian Idol make is that they allow the public to decide who wins. It’s not up to Eddie Maguire or Tony Barber with their panel of anonymous experts, it’s up to us. You and me. Reality TV is a logical development of our attachment to democracy married to technological innovation. It does to quiz shows what talkback radio does to the interview.
It is also a good example of what a properly designed market can do. The format of the show dramatically cuts the cost of finding and recruiting good talent. How many gigs would “Dicko” have had to attend to find the range of talent that he has discovered off the back of an ad in the paper? And what would be the cost of going to all those pub and backyard concerts as he would normally have to? Then, if he found a likely act, how would he develop them into a worthwhile product? If they’re not there on their own, they will probably never be there, which is very wasteful of human capital when proper handling and coaching might be all they need to make it. Then, when he’s found the performer with potential his company has to spend a small fortune marketing them so that people will want to buy their records. All in all a lot of capital is spent up front for a very speculative return somewhere in the future.
The Idol format is brilliant in that by combining a TV show with the hard work of prospecting for talent it allows broadcaster and record company to share the advertising (and sms) revenues. This gives the record company a return up-front, handles the cost of initial marketing, puts the performers in an environment where they can receive expert coaching, instrumental backing and a sound studio that they would never otherwise have and takes much of the speculation out of the question of whether they will succeed. In fact, Australian Idol has probably produced 6 or 7 viable performers who may all have careers, many of whom in any other format would never have progressed beyond Karaoke.
Idol is also a demonstration, in a way that Big Brother and most of the other reality TV shows aren’t, that competition doesn’t have to be unfriendly, nor does it have to be a win-lose proposition. Shannon Noll would not be happy to come second, but it didn’t appear to ruin his friendship with Guy Sebastian, and why should it? One might be the idol, but they both probably have careers, and in the long-run who is to say which of them will be most successful. It’s often the same out in the supposedly cut-throat world of business.
Last night I heard Karen Brookes critically refer to Idol on Australia Talks Back as “manufacturing” a pop star. I don’t understand why this is a problem. If our species just did what came naturally we would still be tenuously scavenging around the African savannah. “Manufacturing” – a process which is really the externalization of knowledge into artifacts and systems – is what makes our species unique. Australian Idol is one incarnation of it. I’ll be watching Guy Sebastian, the Christian who looks like a Garden Gnome Budhha, to see just what sort of incarnation he turns out to be.

If ever there was an appropriate contrast to the whole Oz Idol contrived celebrity thing, it’s Michael Jackson’s fall from stardom into what looks like big trouble. Jackson is more talented than all the Oz Idol contestants put together, but he is clearly a complete mess as a human being.
Underneath it all is the fact that very few people can actually handle such white hot celebrity. Jackson had little chance – deprived of a proper childhood by his hungry father, Jackson spent too much time in the whirling confusion of showbiz when he was much too young. Then the fame and money allowed him to cater to his growing dysfunction.
Jackson’s parents and the whole showbiz monster should be on trial along with this pathetic, lost child who just does not understand the rules. A man who hated himself so much he tried to change his skin colour and his whole face, he has been ill served by the hordes who always feed off the rich and famous. And this is an old story.
So those who seek out this monster of fame better be aware that it has a habit of destroying those who can’t take the pressure.

According to the Financial Review today John Howard is being an “interest rate dove”. In other words he is pressing the argument that there is no need to raise interest rates any further, just as I suggested he should (don’t you love people who blow their own trumpet?).
Howard is quoted as saying: “The things that drive interest rates up, such as high inflation, high wage growth, perhaps a weak dollar, ….aren’t present. In fact, we have the reverse.
“We have a strong dollar, we have very low inflation and we have wages growing in a very sensible way because we have higher productivity and firms can afford to pay their workers more without that being inflationary,” he said.
“So the conditions are pretty good for interest rates.”
He has an unlikely ally here. A recent ACOSS study found that 1.3 million Australians lack jobs – twice the official unemployment rate. That suggests that while official unemployment figures may appear to be reaching the NAIRU figure (the lowest unemployment figure compatible with price stability) there is an untapped reservoir of potential workers that can easily enter the workforce. Good economic policy should try to eliminate that reservoir by drawing on it. That means increasing employment in the economy much further than where it is now, and the existence of the reservoir means this can be done with limited inflationary implications.
According to ACOSS women feature disproportionately in the hidden unemployment bracket, and they cite a lack of affordable childcare as a factor. Here’s some more advice for Howard – boost the government assistance provided to childcare. After allowing for paying some of these women the supporting parents benefit as well as the extra tax that all of them will pay as wage earners there is a good chance that this boost wouldn’t be so much an expenditure as an investment bringing more revenue and savings than it costs. Perhaps ACOSS could provide the figures on this? I’ll ask them. An added feature is that it would be more popular than the “baby bonus” which is only of real benefit to upper-middle class professional women.
I’m not sure that Reserve Bank Governor MacFarlane will be swayed by these sorts of arguments. His boffins appear convinced that Reserve Banks have a role in bursting bubbles. (Thanks to Jozef Imrich for the link). It’s not a view I necessarily disagree with in all circumstances, and if I spent more time on this paper I might change my mind. However, it is based on a mathematical economic model and getting across the maths will take more time than I have. Still, on a cursory examination I do have one niggling concern with the model – it assumes that a boom will have an overall expansionary affect on an economy.
Someone might like to correct me here, but isn’t it just possible that all other things being equal a bubble will merely redirect resources from other parts of the economy and have no real effect on expansion, one way or the other? Isn’t it also possible that while many people lose when a bubble bursts, those people who have sold into the bubble take their profits and invest them elsewhere? And isn’t it therefore possible that these two factors mean that with most bubbles there will be little real effect on the economy on the way up or the way down, all other things being equal? ? It certainly seemed to be the case in the US where the tech boom burst had little real impact on the domestic economy. Neither did the 1987 stockmarket bust.
If John is really reading these columns, perhaps he could dispatch a Treasury economist to give me the answers, it might be enlightening for both of us.

We are going through a little debate here in Perth about cars, speed and young men. It started with debate about how much speed does actually contribute to the accident rate. Obviously it does, but one problem is that the police place their multinovas in locations that maximise revenue, not safety. And if the police wanted to really do soimething about dangerous speeding they’d clamp down on tailgating. From my observations, about 20% of drivers tailgate in traffic now. Interestingly, it is almost as likely to be a young woman in a newish small car as a boy in a performance car (new or old) or a businessman in a Commodore or Falcon or a tradesman in a battered ute.
But with all this debate the manufacturers of high-performance cars manage to avoid responsiblity. They make these cars to be driven fast, and by definition, dangerously and usually illegally. The ads show us how to do it, whether it’s outpacing helicopters, bush-bashing, or driving backwards past semis. And if we miss that message there are countless TV shows and films to show us how to drive recklessly.
These performance cars should be banned and speed governors placed on all new cars. The harsh fact is that boys and increasingly girls simply cannot accept the responsibility to drive carefully, so we shouldn’t then hand them the keys to cars that actually encourage bad driving.
As for motor bikes, a nursing friend once told me about the ward she’d been in chock full of boys with severe brain damage, all of them what the police call ‘temporary Australians’ or bike riders. Apparently they looked quite serene lying there literally without a thought in their head.
We should get over our puerile obsession with cars and instead develop a real interest in the well being of our young, and indeed all road users. But what is the chance of this happening once the car, oil, media and all the other vested interests get organized?

Friends of John Howard say that he knows the batting averages in parliament as well as he knows those in test cricket, and that he wants an average that is up there with the best. Just as there is only one Bradman, there is only one Menzies, and Howard understands that he will never be number one, but he can hope to be the Border or Waugh of his generation.
When it comes to Prime Ministerial run-making there is Menzies, then there is Hawke, then there is Fraser. By winning the last election Howard guaranteed himself a better score than Fraser, and a win at the next election will see him eclipse Hawke, but Howard knows that mere run scores don’t guarantee you a pre-eminent place in history. Bradman is acknowledged as the best batsmen ever not because of the total number of runs scored, but because of the quality of them. Menzies has quantity and quality, and so do Hawke and Fraser. At the moment, with the exception of the GST, Howard has more quantity than quality. That is ultimately why I think he is probably prepared to call a double dissolution election next year. Whether he does or not depends on how much he can wangle out of the Democrats between now and the election using the threat of a double dissolution.
Yesterday’s announcements on Medicare and university funding give an insight into the way this government works. On Medicare it is prepared to increase its spending from $917 to $2.4B to buy its way out of political trouble on the issue. On university funding it appears to be trading away many of its changes to buy-off key constituencies (although one should assume that some of these trades were anticipated right from the beginning and were in fact designed in). As predicted in our Havachat analysis, this may also include ditching the industrial relations part of the package.
It is politically smart for Howard to do these things and the changes will probably mean he will get the legislation through the Senate. In fact, he probably owes the Senate. It is inadvertently helping him to fine-tune his political message by opposing parts of his legislation. But there is other legislation that cannot be massaged through in the same way, including the industrial relations bills.
There is no chance that the changes to the Senate that Howard is promoting will be passed in a referendum. A measure of the hopelessness of this task is the fact that you will find no stronger opponents of Howard’s “reforms” than a branch meeting of the Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy, which is Howard heartland. That being the case, there is another purpose to this push, and that is to set-up a situation where if Howard calls a double dissolution election he will have a strong alibi. It is also about striking fear into the hearts of the Democrats.
On current polling figures the Australian Democrats would virtually get wiped out in a double dissolution. Even though the quota for a Senate seat reduces by almost half to 7.7%, they would still not get there in any state with the possible exception of South Australia. Their only hope is that while the hurdle is higher in a normal half-Senate election they have a number of long-term Senators who won’t face election next time around. In 2007 when the election after next is due the Democrat vote may have recovered enough to save them.
Democrats report that frequently when they attempt to negotiate with the Government there is a lack of engagement from the other side. Instead the matter is airily added to the “DD List”. It could be that the government is actively courting a double dissolution, or it could be a game of chicken. One thing is sure. Howard is now playing for a place as one of the iconic Prime Ministers of Australia. He needs more than the GST to claim that place. He needs to be able to demonstrate a significant influence on Australian society. Having settled in at the crease Howard has so much confidence that he is just as likely to crack the ball aiming for the top of the pavilion as he is to glide it gently down to long-on. A double dissolution is therefore very much a possibility.

This week the CMC began an inquiry into the trials and tribulations of Pauline Hanson and David Ettridge, but it is the wrong body. Hanson and Ettridge deserve a judicial inquiry.
Many people from all sides of politics think that there is something wrong with the Queensland justice system. Last Sunday Professor Rosemary Hunter of Griffith University was quoted in the Sunday Mail commenting on the Fingleton case saying it was “the misuse of the legal process to destroy the reputation and career of a woman who dared to be different.”
Fingleton was Queensland’s Chief Magistrate but was jailed earlier this year on a charge of retaliating against a witness. The matter arose out of a dispute between Fingleton and a junior magistrate Anne Thacker. Fingleton wanted to transfer Thacker to Townsville and Thacker didn’t want to go and took the matter to judicial review. Fingleton’s subordinate, Co-ordinating Magistrate Basil Gribbin became involved and Fingleton told Gribbin that as he had given Thacker an affidavit she would have to demote him. Gribbin was a witness in a judicial matter, Fingleton was threatening him – pretty clear case I would have thought.
There was a public campaign against her conviction at the time with a variety of defences being raised. Most prominent were various anti-female conspiracy theories which sat very oddly with the fact that the original matter concerned a woman, the Director of Public Prosecutions is a woman, the Sydney barrister who conducted the case is a woman and two-thirds of the jury were women. Apparently there are a lot of gender Quizzlings in Queensland. There were other arguments to do with her working class origins etc., but the common theme was vicitimisation and the common intent appeared to be to bully the legal system into reversing the decision. Alas for Fingleton, the Appeal Court held firm.
In the case of Pauline Hanson similar themes ran through the defence: victimization (almost leading to sanctification via martyrdom), and a belief that public pressure would somehow lead to the appeal court reversing the decision. In this case the Appeal Court did reverse the decision, but in the process also appeared to change its mind. Two of the three Appeal Court judges sat on both the appeal against the Sharples Case and this one.
In Sharples they held that One Nation was fraudulently registered by Hanson and Ettridge, but in this case found Hanson and Ettridge innocent of fraud. As a result prominent lawyers in Brisbane (including some judges) are privately speculating that the judges caved in to pressure.
This possibility has been brought into sharp focus by the largely ignored decision of the High Court, delivered last Friday, to refuse leave to David Ettridge to appeal against the original Sharples case. In its reasons the court (a single judge) cited the neglible prospects of the appeal succeeding as one of its grounds for refusing the application. As various lawyers have been saying to me all week – the two original judgements cannot stand together, one has to be wrong. The High Court appears to be indicating that it is the second judgement involving the Queensland Court of Appeal that is wrong, which is why we need a judicial inquiry of the most simple and regular kind.
In these circumstances it is not good enough for the Chief Justice, the Government and the Opposition to blame the DPP and Hanson’s legal representatives for the state of affairs when the very real possibility is that the court itself is to blame. Tough as it may be, Director of Public Prosecutions Leanne Clair has to put the credibility of the DPP even further on the line by launching an appeal in the High Court against the quashing of Hanson and Ettridge’s conviction. Otherwise there will be a continuing perception that the Queensland courts can be influenced through public pressure, as well as a lingering doubt about the real reasons for which Hanson, Ettridge and even Fingelton were convicted.

George Bush, who is facing a well organised protest in London when he visits soon, has a simple and effective response to such activity. As he did in Canberra when Bob Brown expressed dissent, Bush just says how much he likes free speech.
So it is somewhat ironic that many Americans are begining to wonder what the future is for free speech in the US itself. As part of the war on terror, many Americans have found their assumptions about the right to express their views, and especialy their dissent, under question. First there was the fear that showing any disagreement with the ultra-patriotic reaction to September 11 would generate abuse or even violence. And then the government began to undermine a whole series of activities under the excuse of seeking out terrorists or information about terrorists. So, very quickly many Islamic men suddenly found their right to free speech curtailed by imprisonment. Then many other Americans found that the government intended to monitor their mail, other communications, and even the books that got from the library. There has been resistance to this growing surveillance, but a newfound sense of unease haunts those who may disagree with what Bush or Fox think.
Bush wants to export ‘freedom’ to the middle east. Presumably this freedom includes the freedom to dissent. Let’s hope that the essential freedoms of a healthy democracy remain strong in the nation that is supposedly the template for all the emerging countries. Like Iraq.

Iraq is looming as a huge problem for the US and Bush. And despite Howard sneaking away from it with talk about Australia ‘moving on’, the blowback may yet feature in the next election. After all, the putative new defence policy promises plenty more Iraqs.
One argument that really gets me about Iraq is the one that goes: “Look, Saddam has gone, so it all worked out in the end”.
Well, first, Saddam is still alive and kicking, and the Iraqis are not materially better off yet. Maybe, probably, they will be, but not yet.
But these are not the key issues. The central point is this: If we are to avoid catastrophic conflict, including world war, we must develop a viable system of world governance. What the US did in Iraq (which was not immediately threatening the US) greatly impeded this development. While the US thinks it can act unilaterally (albeit with the support of a few international toadies, like Australia), it has no incentive to join in a real global governance system. If the US opted in, this could be effected very quickly, but while it stays out there is no chance.

Gough Whitlam spent a lot of time and energy persuading the ALP before 1972 that Labor could only accomplish things in government. Being in opposition, he argued, meant being impotent. And Labor had spent a lot of years in opposition by 1972.
This idea, that it was all about winning government, became a mantra for the post-Whitlam leadership, which was kind of ironic because most of Whitlam’s ways were anathema to the self-styled hard boys who took over post-1975. In particular, they equated debate within the party with a public perception of internal division, which was supposedly death at the polls. The NSW right in particular used this formula to hammer the left when any issues of principle arose.
I’ve never believed this maxim, although I could see how Whitlam had to promote it to get Labor out of its pre-1970 torpor. The very existence of a principled opposition puts moral as well as political pressure on the government, a role currently played mostly by Bob Brown.
And especially as an election looms the opposition can really shape issues, just by talking about them.
Hence the new government policy on Medicare. Howard wants Medicare dead (he did not put that notorious head-kicker Abbott there to revive it) – it has long been a bone in his throat. As mean as it is, there is no way the government would be seriously considering the matter at all if they did not fear that Labor’s concentration on health and education was hurting them.
A disciplined opposition can shift the whole agenda of national political life, as Whitlam did before 1972. As such, the opposion wil not only get government eventually, but also get it with a clear mandate for change.
Influencing policy from opposition requires a lot of hard work, a viable strategy and long term thinking. The trouble is, I’m not sure Labor has any of these capabilities at the moment. The potential is there, but there has to be a change in the whole culture of the party before it can happen.