Victoria’s socialist premier, Labor’s Daniel Andrews, seems to have been emboldened by his unexpected increased majority in that state’s 2018 election. Chairman Dan seems to have decided that he’s now premier-for-life, like his idol Xi Jinping.
Like Chairman Xi, Chairman Dan also seems to think that the media should be nothing but his personal propaganda unit.
There’s supposedly a big difference between China and Australia on media freedoms. For one, our media is meant to be able to hold to account governments whose actions don’t pass the pub test.
But Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’s controversial dalliance with China’s Belt and Road Initiative seems to have rubbed off on his attitude to a free press[…]
There’s a standing joke in the Victorian press gallery that the Andrews crew expects reporters to behave like the journalistic stenographers of the China Daily, not your regular Aussie press pack.
That attitude clearly extends to broadcasters. Repeated requests (including two more last week) by Melbourne’s radio king, 3AW’s Neil Mitchell, for a chat with “Chairman Dan”, as Mitchell has dubbed him, have been curtly rejected or ignored.
[…[As Mitchell tells Diary: “One of his mates told me recently: ‘He wants you to apologise.’ I asked: ‘What for?’”
Chairman Dan might want to consider what happened the last time a Victorian premier spectacularly got on the wrong side of a Melbourne talk radio giant. When Jeff Kennett chucked an on-air tanty at ABC doyen Jon Faine in 1999, it was a pivotal moment in the election campaign that lead to Kennett’s downfall. Miffed at Faine’s line of questioning, Kennett declared that he was just going to sit and drink his tea. An embarrassing stretch of dead air ensued. Kennett wound up looking like a petulant autocrat.
In Andrews’s stubborn absence, Mitchell hammered Belt and Road last week while Andrews somehow found time for some soft three-minute interviews on Melbourne FM radio.
On the print side, multiple reporters have told Diary of a hostile reception from Chairman Dan’s crew to reasonable questions on everything from whether Belt and Road was a “captain’s pick”, to the involvement of Jean Dong, a self-styled pro-China “influencer” and lobbyist.
At times, Andrews’s office has been sulky.
For once, Australia’s normally jellyfish-like legacy media are finding something resembling a spine.
But if the Andrews team’s combative style is meant to win undying media devotion, a la China, it’s failing. Journalists at both News and Nine have only been emboldened by the stonewalling to further scrutinise Belt and Road.
As one Melbourne scribe told Diary last week: “If you’re a doctor, you press where it hurts.”
Still, I can’t help but notice that “our” ABC isn’t on the list of journos holding the socialist Dear Leader to account.
It’s nice to know that a billion dollars of our taxes pays for a bunch of government stenographers.
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