Yesterday, Andrew Bolt got a bit scathing and dirty on the ABC’s Insiders about veteran press gallery journalist Laurie Oakes. Bolt said that Liberals were ’concerned’ about Oakes’ reporting, whatever that amounts to. The immediate cause of Bolt’s attack was Oakes’ ‘ambush’ of Turnbull during the week over the Opposition Leader’s inclusion on the BRW rich list. But Punch has also taken aim at Oakes’ extraordinary explanation of the Rudd-Swan budget spin in a column published on Saturday. Oakes wrote:
The advice of the spin-doctors – accepted by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer – was that the Government should embrace the numbers, not run away from them.
Swan did not leave the deficit figure out of his Budget speech deliberately. It was supposed to be there. Stuff-up, not spin, was the explanation.
And when Rudd kept saying that the debt would peak at “around 300″ – without using the words “dollar” or “billion” – it was not a cunning ploy to avoid giving the Liberals a line they could use in their election commercials.
The PM is simply a sucker for jargon.
Saying “300″ instead of “300 billion dollars” is Treasury-speak.
Having sat around with Treasury boffins for weeks preparing the Budget, Rudd started talking like them.
I don’t buy it. It sounds like spinning the failed spin to me.
4 Comments
Oh come on Laurie. Peter Costello spent 11 years locked up with Treasury officials and I don’t think he ever started talking like one of them. Rudd’s obfuscation over the deficit figure was cynical and calculated. It was only when it became searingly obvious that the game was up with the media and punters that they gave up the ‘Treasury jargon’.
I met the grand LO in the PM’s Phillip St Sydney offices vestibule trying to weedle my way as a non journo into a Costello Howard leadership presser in 2006. No dice, but got to greet the grand old man and asked him straight, as an admirer, how long are you going to keep going? He was amused and without blinking said 20 years!
I was suitably incredulous and his snotty offsider told me to butt out, no second Q. Then turfed out politely by security, bad luck bloggers.
Soon after LO went on a weight loss thing, we blogged it, noticing the folds in his suit jacket on Sunday 9 tv pieces, and News Corp reported it later that year too. No longer the Oakbarrel of smart alec blogger references.
But here’s the thing: Perhaps LO really is working on another 17 years now, and back scratching for the insider drip and drop on his press gallery rivals, so to speak. I am reminded of the novel The Natural where our hero survives a bullet in the guts from a crazy woman on a train, only to make it big years later, only to fake an innings in big money baseball and break the young fan’s heart.
LO is a national treasurer, but if he keeps this up he will be attracting the Marcus Einfelds – aging disgracefully. Don’t do it LO. We gotta have someone to believe in, without fear or favour. You got class like The Grattan and indeed Fran Kelly. And besides we would have to cook and eat you metaphorically speaking.
Sorry Laurie, only a Labor hack could accept such a ridiculous explanation for failing to append “billion” to the “300″ figure.
RATHER THAN ASKING A QUESTION A 14 YEAR OLD CHILD COULD COME UP WITH. I CANT UNDERSTAND WHY THESE SO CALLED JOURNALISTS DON’T DO AN EXPOSE ON THE LEGALITY OF THE TENDER PROCESS FOR PRIVATE EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES, WHICH OCCURRED MANY YEARS AGO AND MADE THE RUDDS AN ABSOLUTE FORTUNE AND IS CONTINUING TO DO TODAY.