The Media and John Howard P.M.: The Canberra Press Gallery 1996-2007 Author Ester, Helen Published 2009 Thesis Type Thesis (PhD Doctorate) School Griffith Business School DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/1072 Copyright Statement The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/367561 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au The Media and John Howard P.M: The Canberra Press Gallery 1996-2007 Helen Ester BA (Australian National University) DipEd (University of Sydney) MA (Journalism) University of Wollongong Department of Politics and Public Policy, Griffith University Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy April 2009 ii Abstract This thesis examines the impact of the Howard government’s media management strategies on the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery (FPPG) and its capacity to fulfil the quasi-institutional fourth estate role of independent over-sight of the parliament and the executive government. Although the relationship between politician and journalist in any parliamentary democracy is neither easy nor harmonious, tenets of open governance demand that, at the very least, this relationship is functional. The evidence in this thesis shows that this functionality was tested to its limits under the Howard government. Chapter 1 begins with the development of questions about the Howard government’s media strategies, their impact on the Canberra fourth estate and the role of more intense government media management, new technologies and the co-location of executive government and press gallery in Parliament House. Answers are sought with multi-method research including historical research, documentary analysis, case studies and elite interview techniques*. Twenty-five journalists from the FPPG’s thirty-three mainstream bureaus participated in interviews and their willingness to answer open-ended questions ‘on the record’ added valuable empirical data. Chapter 1 concludes with a comprehensive review of relevant literature and a brief survey of the further chapters. Chapter 2 is an historical analysis that explores key continuities and changes in executive-media relations across a number of Australian federal governments located in Canberra since parliament opened there in 1927 in order to identify the drivers or levers on hand when the Howard government took office in 1996. Particular attention is paid to strategies used under the Curtin, Menzies, Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Keating governments. Chapters 3-5 examine issues raised by government-FPPG relations during the Howard years. ‘The Interface’ (Chapter 3) deals with the effect of increasing numbers of ministerial media staff and closer control of face-to-face fora such iii as interviews, press conferences and background briefings. ‘Spinning along the Information Highway’ (Chapter 4) explores the reduction in access to political news by gallery journalists because new digital media technologies increase government control of the flow of political information, particularly by the deployment of sophisticated modern surveillance techniques. ‘News values in the New Parliament House’ (Chapter 5) examines changes in conventions arising from the new building’s architecture that facilitated the implementation of policies designed to maximise executive control of political news. Chapter 6 provides case studies of key moments in the interaction between the government and the gallery that demonstrate the executive’s powerful capacity to manipulate a relationship based only on convention and goodwill. The first study concerns the 2003 visit of US President Bush and the unprecedented way the Australian executive overrode longstanding conventions in relation to the FPPG and the parliament. The second concerns former Treasurer Peter Costello and the ‘Dinnergate’ episode that kept public information off the record for years. This thesis adds a fresh Australian perspective to international political communication scholarship by filling a gap in this literature where the self- reflexive views and experiences of political journalists working at the interface between the public and government have been overlooked. This study reveals the extent to which the Howard government used the executive’s latent power over media relations to maximise control over flows of information, and how its misuse can work to the detriment of parliament as well as political journalism. This thesis concludes that the Howard years bound and constrained Australian political communication because an increasingly dominant government executive successfully exploited the Canberra fourth estate’s poorly defined role and status. Whilst this study also confirms the need for reform in government- media relations, it is equally clear that it would be politically naïve to expect any government (or opposition) to develop the political will to tamper with conventions demonstrably weighted in the executive’s favour. iv However, the unpalatable media management regime of the Howard years also triggered an historic coalition of commercial and public media which conducted an independent audit of free speech in Australia (Moss 2007), and called for more explicit, legislative recognition of ‘Australia’s Right to Know’. This study argues that this presents a significant opportunity as any change for the better would not only need the pro-active goodwill of parliamentarians outside the citadels of party-executives, but also the media’s reassessment of the manner in which they resource Canberra political journalism. This thesis concludes that apart from issues relating to an imbalance of coverage in favour of the executive and away from the parliament, there are other weighty matters relating to the status of the FPPG worthy of the media’s further consideration—such as the status of media bureaus within parliament house (now that of ‘licensees’), and the fact not only is there no constitutional basis for the ‘right to know’ in Australia but there are few if any, applicable conventions in ‘either British constitutional precepts or Australian news media practice’ (Lloyd 2001, p.1). - - - - - - - - - * Disclaimer I worked as a journalist in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery from 1973-1982. For the majority of this time (seven years) I was self-employed in a one-person bureau Monitor News Services—editing and writing Monitor Newsletter a publication I founded that covered policy relating to health, welfare, education, migrants, women and Indigenous people. I was also engaged as the freelance Canberra correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and Nation Review. Prior to this I worked as a full-time employee—firstly with Don Whitington’s Australian Press Services bureau as the correspondent for the Northern Territory News and secondly with Fairfax Media in the Sydney Sun bureau. v vi Statement of Originality This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. Helen Ester vii viii Acknowledgements The development and completion of this thesis began in 2004 following the transfer of my part-time PhD candidature from Central Queensland University to the Department of Politics and Public Policy at Griffith University. Prior to Griffith University the groundwork for historical and theoretical aspects of this research occurred during my time as a senior lecturer in the School of Contemporary Communications at Central Queensland University with research supervision from Professor Alan Knight and Professor Denis Cryle and a sadly short period of guidance from the late Professor Clem Lloyd. In the first half of 2003 I had a productive and rewarding period as a visiting scholar at the Department of Journalism at the University of Queensland where Dr Chris Lawe-Davies supported my decision to collect contemporary qualitative interview data from Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery journalists. At Griffith University the research for this dissertation progressed at the Department of Politics and Public Policy under the supervision of Professor Patrick Weller and Associate Superviser Dr Liz van Acker. In late 2007 Associate Professor Stephen Stockwell from the School of Humanities generously agreed to be co-principal superviser with Professor Weller. I also acknowledge the material support provided by Heads of Department and support staff at the department of Politics and Public Policy. I am indebted to Dr Robyn Hollander who made it possible for me to write full-time from September- December 2007; and to Dr Anne Tiernan whose exemplary thesis, Ministerial Staff under the Howard Government: Problem, solution or Black Hole? (2004), provided a model for the structure, research methods and presentation for this dissertation. At the same time this work received a great deal of support from elsewhere— and I have benefited greatly from the voluntary enthusiasm, intellectual generosity and advice of Professor Mark Pearson, Dr Jim McAllister and the off- campus supervision of Professor Denis Cryle. Acknowledgement is also due to ix Dr Martin Hirst for his generosity in providing access to his unpublished transcripts of interviews with Canberra gallery journalists in 1998. Many thanks. also to Cathy Boyle and Carole Colville and Dr. Jim McAllister for their editorial assistance, to Dr Alison Ruth