The right-wing media is carrying the Liberal Party to its death

The sweetest spot for a politician is to be on the same page as the public. But increasingly these days, so many of our politicians and many members of the public aren’t even looking at the same book. When it comes to getting out political messages and explaining policy, traditional media is proving insufficient. But the new forms of communicating carry their own dangers. Anthony Albanese’s recent ridiculous misstep with a comedy podcaster, and the high dudgeon generated by it, is a case in point.

Albanese has come under fire for his reflections on the desirability of Kylie Minogue, but his oversharing on the connection between his conjugal relations with his new bride and the on-field performance of the South Sydney Rabbitohs seemed more toe-curlingly inappropriate to me. In his way, Albanese reminded us just how much times have changed; it’s hard to imagine Sir Robert Menzies volunteering that he would tend to get frisky with Dame Pattie whenever Carlton knocked off Collingwood at Victoria Park.

I’ve got a handful more years on the clock than Albanese, but since turning 60, I’ve found that the proverb “there’s no fool like an old fool” should never be allowed to stray too far from one’s consciousness. Then again, I’m not the target audience for a podcast hosted by someone who operates under the double-entendre stage name “Bushie”.

In truth, I’m a fully fossilised member of the traditional media audience because I’ve been a creature of it for all my adult life. I consume the mainstream media platforms every day – national, Melbourne and Sydney – and read them from front to back, or whatever the digital version of that expression is. That’s my way of trying to keep in touch with what’s going on.

But it’s not what a large proportion of Australians do these days. They get their information from social media or just by picking up random bits and pieces almost through osmosis. Or they don’t bother to follow the news at all.

This presents a massive challenge for everyone in politics – hence the attempts to reach Australians via non-traditional forms of media, including Bushie. The challenge has been a little more acute for the government because the conservative media has built its business model around mostly hostile coverage of the Labor Party.

This hostility reached its highest point with the budget, delivered in mid-May. It’s been so ferocious that Graeme Samuel, former head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, was moved to observe in an interview in The Conversation last month that “vested interests” were getting too much uncritical coverage from “sections of the traditional media … you don’t actually have to read the articles. You look at the byline, you know immediately what’s going to be said. It is quite extraordinary.” (He wasn’t referring to this masthead.)

Samuel is hardly a spittle-flecked pinko. He once sought Liberal preselection for the safe seat of Higgins and later served as the treasurer of the party’s Victorian division. He was appointed as ACCC head by deputy Liberal leader Peter Costello, much to the Labor Party’s chagrin at the time.

Unfortunately for those prosecuting the case against the budget and the government with such relentless vigour, the signs that their efforts are bearing fruit are somewhere between microscopic and non-existent. It’s as if the political world that’s the focus of the media and the political world that’s the focus of the public are different things.

The general media portrayal of Albanese throughout the first half of this year – under pressure after the Bondi massacre; a humiliating reversal over a royal commission; the worst-received budget since black-and-white television that was full of mistakes and terrible, harmful changes; under siege from Pauline Hanson – failed to show up in the polls at the end of the budget session last week.

If anything, the polls reflected a counter view: support for the parties and leaders that prosecuted the case against Albanese and the budget had gone backwards and Labor had come out ahead. People grumbled about Albanese going back on election undertakings not to touch negative gearing and the capital gains tax, but they wanted a government that took action on housing, and they got it.

The government is still viewed by most Australians – at this stage anyway – as legitimate and worth backing. Only a little over 12 months ago, 55.2 per cent of those who cast a vote opted for Labor through the preferential voting system. Most actually aren’t crazy about Albanese and never have been. Some have fallen away, but the core support is still there, unlike the Liberals, who are staring at a potential catastrophe.

The irreversible slide will come for the prime minister and the government at some point. It happens to every government and every leader. But if it’s going to be the Coalition that capitalises on that, and not One Nation, the conservative media will need to stop slowly killing the Coalition with kindness by providing a safe haven where the tough questions aren’t asked. A key reason the Coalition lost so badly last year was that it saw its friendly traditional media outlets as the only market it needed to satisfy.

Only by producing coherent policies and seeking out new audiences with whom they’re not all that comfortable will the Coalition parties have a chance of restoring their shared fortunes. But maybe avoid Bushie.

Shaun Carney is a regular columnist, an author and former associate editor of The Age.

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