Richardson: Bad weeks and mad leaks
“It has not been a good week for the Weatherill Government.”
That is a line that could conceivably have opened any given missive on any given week for many months now, but it is as applicable now as ever.
Because it was, by any measure, quite spectacularly unsuccessful.
That sprawling monolith the Department of Education continues to belch negative publicity into the ether, and while those charged with repairing its public image – recent ministerial appointment Jennifer Rankine and new chief Tony Harrison – can credibly claim to be untarnished by the historic malaise, this Government continues to be engulfed because the man chosen to lead it, Jay Weatherill, is so inextricably linked with the troubled portfolio.
And moreover, the political response continues to appear sluggish, insensitive and blissfully aloof from the rapidly changing landscape. The Debelle Royal Commission was prompted, in part, because Weatherill’s office did not think to inform him about a serious sexual assault at a public school under his watch. The fallout from that inquiry continues to dog Labor and yet, when another former student contacted the Premier’s office in writing last month about his ill-treatment by the bureaucracy – which culminated in his being compensated $30,000 in exchange for his silence – evidently no-one thought to inform the Premier. Weatherill told ABC Radio this week that the first he heard of the incident was when it threatened to become a news story. That appears to remain the criteria upon which the Government measures such incidents and the required level of response: will there be bad publicity? Will this damage the department or the Government?
Each successive revelation becomes yet another brick in the wall that threatens to entomb the Weatherill administration, and with each the Government’s ability to find sympathetic ears for its own rather lo-fi policy announcements diminishes.
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"Surely if someone wanted to embarrass the Government, there are more damaging documents floating around than a rather beige schedule for making relatively unremarkable announcements about generally inconsequential policies?"
Peculiar, then, that we also saw this week one of the oddest of internal “leaks”: strategy documents “seen” but not “obtained” by The Advertiser, detailing aspects of Labor’s PR strategy over the coming weeks. The strategy (such as it is) wasn’t a revelation in itself; indeed, I outlined it in exasperated fashion in these very pages last week.
So it was an odd gambit, particularly since – as Weatherill happily and frequently pointed out – it actually did him a favour of sorts, giving him an excuse to talk up his proactive policy prowess, albeit largely revenue-neutral “rats’n’mice” type policy. But he evidently wasn’t quite as calm about it all behind the scenes; the culprit was quickly unmasked and stood down.
Another odd gambit, inviting (as it swiftly did) the obvious comparison that where Weatherill was not prepared to sack the staff lambasted by the Debelle Royal Commission for failing to inform their minister about the rape of a student, he is more than eager to do so over a trifling leak. It hardly reinforces his oft-stated commitment to transparency, either.
True enough, though, the leak was evidently designed to wrong-foot the Government, and as such displays the kind of kamikaze stupidity we’ve traditionally come to expect from the Liberal Opposition. What it represented was a chink in that one piece of armour that until now has remained relatively untarnished under Weatherill – party unity.
But so bereft is the Labor (for want of a better word) “strategy”, even their internal dissidents can’t quite nail their brief. Surely if someone wanted to embarrass the Government, there are more damaging documents floating around than a rather beige schedule for making relatively unremarkable announcements about generally inconsequential policies? Almost anything currently circulating around the Education Department, for instance?
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It was such a flaccid work of subterfuge, some in the party were genuinely convinced the leak was officially orchestrated to give the Premier a soapbox from which to remind the world he was on a policy crusade.
Nonetheless, without the subsequent witch-hunt and disciplinary zeal, the entire episode would have been well and truly forgotten by now. Instead, it will snowball into yet another crisis for Labor, a symptom and symbol of a restless Government incapable of maintaining internal discipline.
And most disappointing of all, the entire episode has completely overshadowed Law and Order Week (or “Community Safety Week, Part One” as the leaked memo calls it).
Let’s hope Modern Living week is a better one for the Government.
Tom Richardson is InDaily’s political commentator and Channel Nine’s political reporter.
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