Comments on: Marion Scrymgour – picks ‘big stoush’- gets bloody nose

By: piper

piper — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 12:33:06 +0000

I’ve got it! The Country Liberals are running a fiendishly clever campaign to infiltrate Labor ranks and win the next election by planting subversive advisers who deliberately make their Ministers look incompetent by giving the worst possible policy and media advice. Look how effective it was at getting rid of Elliott McAdam.

Surely by now Minister Scrymgour must be wondering if the advice she is receiving via the oversized ego of her Senior Adviser, Jamie Gallagher, will eventually lead to her downfall.

By: Bob Gosford

Bob Gosford — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:56:35 +0000

As I wrote in response to the media minder of a Federal Minister to whom I sent a list of (quite straightforward) questions recently:

“…and of course if the Minister wishes at any time to be more forthcoming in her responses I will welcome her answers to the questions asked rather than a spokesperson’s comment that tells me something I already know.

This of course is in no way your fault and I appreciate the difficulty of your position but responses like this are barely any more assistance than none at all.

And again, thanks for your prompt attention to this matter.

Yours truthfully and ever hopeful,”

It is a frustrating business sometimes and I live in hope that one day I might get a meaningful response from a politician. The most frustrating point about this business is that the failure to provide a meaningful response can only work against the politician and/or minder in that by not responding it allows me to put forward unchallenged assertions that may or may not be accurate but which I have sought a response to…

By: ltep

ltep — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 05:32:59 +0000

How outrageous to be treated like that!

By: matthew campbell

matthew campbell — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:49:57 +0000

Hi Bob, at least you got a response. I have sent three considered emails to the Minister over the space of the last month and have not had a reply beyond: “Marion will get back to you soon”. In addition I have started to CC Paul Henderson in and that has made no difference. All this is from the Labor Party that Hendo assures us is “now listening”. The most painful aspect of this is not the lack of courtesy and good practice in replying to NT citizens who elect them (I want to call them something stronger but shan’t), but the fact that there is still no substantive address of the impacts that the policy will have. As I asked in one of my emails if they have evidence that bilingual education doesn’t work in Aboriginal communities then this shows that Aboriginal people are unique in the world in that bilingual education inhibits their learning of English (evidence from the rest of the world shows that first language literacy is the best avenue to literacy in other languages). This of course will have the social Darwinists salivating (and the RWDB’s) because it would be a demonstration that Australian Aborigines need special programs to save them from themselves as they are socially and evolutionally incapable of learning like everyone else in the world.

I am 100% behind Yalmay Yunupingu who recognises the benefits that bilingual education brings. Do we in the NT, and the rest of Australia for that matter think that it is mere coincidence that the Aboriginal people (Yolngu) who are the most visible and taken most seriously (see Garma, Ten Canoes, Yothu Yindi etc etc) also have the longest, most active and most theorised bilingual program that they have been instrumental in developing and implementing?

Keep up the good work on this as this change is a change for ever. The ones who it effects are loud and strong in the condemnation of this and I stand with them.

One of course could suspect that this, like lots of Aboriginal policy, is made for the benefit of the voters in the northern suburbs of Darwin, not for the people who will be its beneficiaries (I mean victims).

By: Andrew Bartlett

Andrew Bartlett — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:25:20 +0000

You right some good solid, considered pieces on this stuff Bob.

That response from the Minister’s Media Advisor is a disgrace. It would be one thing to say a detailed response would take too much time or resources in the circumstances. But to just refuse to answer because they only deal with “reputable media outlets” and throw an insult about “electronic gossip sites” is just pathetic.

A “reputable media outlet” would rarely have the space to go into this sort of detail, even if they had the inclination.

The mindset of refusing to deal with or respond to anyone other than the small and narrowly confined media outlets and writers is antithetical to open government, and also a sign of how the limitations of mainstream media can sometimes serve to protect governments when they are trying to get away with things.

You could just as easily be writing for a website of the NT News or The Australian and legitimately ask the same questions.

It looks like the NT government might not have learnt much from their election near miss. The ‘dodge and smear’ tactic is becoming more and more common. Its prevalence seems to grow in proportion to the number of years a party is in government.