{"id":2880,"date":"2013-03-28T20:57:32","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T09:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/australiansforhonestpolitics.wordpress.com\/?p=2880"},"modified":"2019-04-13T23:24:17","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T13:24:17","slug":"morrisons-brick-wall-on-how-hell-stop-the-boats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/morrisons-brick-wall-on-how-hell-stop-the-boats\/","title":{"rendered":"Morrison’s brick wall on how he’ll stop the boats"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Scott

Scott Morrison<\/p><\/div>\n

By\u00a0Peter Clarke<\/a>
\n<\/b>March 26, 2013<\/p>\n

Yesterday, we published a detailed de-construction of an interview<\/a> between the ABC 730\u2019s Leigh Sales and Prime Minister Julia Gillard. It was a critique of Sales for what we opined were her inadequate interview techniques in that specific context and of Julia Gillard for her blatant refusal to answer questions and her use of media training 101 avoidance techniques to manipulate media interviews. Neither came out of that encounter with much credit, least of all the PM.<\/p>\n

Here in the comments section and on Twitter the responses have been vigorous and varied. A very worthwhile discussion is still flowing online.<\/p>\n

As always, partisan passions appear to animate many people\u2019s perceptions, judgments and opinions. A very few observers were able to bring a sense of disinterested appraisal to bear that rose above merely backing sides.<\/p>\n

This is not about being a cheer squad for one of the political parties over another. That\u2019s way too easy really. This is about effective, ethical journalism. And (look away now if you must) THE TRUTH. I know, I know, THE TRUTH is a highly contested idea and many would argue it barely exists, certainly within journalism as widely practised, but it is still a guiding ideal to aim for in some reasonable form.<\/p>\n

Any other suggestions? Post-modernists, come on down!<\/p>\n

We celebrate and<\/i> critique journalistic practitioners using a range of measures and factors, depending on each case we examine. We critique politicians who, out of one side of their mouths, extol the notion of a ‘free press’ in the abstract, especially within a parliamentary political debate such as around media reform, and then, in their daily political encounters with legitimate questioning, seem to do their best to hobble and intimidate journalists and avoid the tough enquiries of that free press as they fulfill their democratic, fourth estate roles and functions.<\/p>\n

Mind you, they and their media minders keep the avalanche of media releases, leaks and duchessing of favoured scribes flowing and rejoice if slabs of their propaganda appear in print, come out of broadcaster\u2019s mouths or get picked up as talking points or assumptions during interviews by journalists too time pressed and\/or lazy to do their own original research.<\/p>\n

A free press? Sure thing.<\/p>\n

Or even worse, as Tony Abbott has done and continues to do, avoid forensic interviews almost entirely. What does an outlet such as the ABC do then?\u00a0 Media entities are institutions within the media-saturated democratic ecology too. The ABC, historically and today, holds a special and vital place in our system despite its flaws and the many and growing pressures upon it. Both sides of politics despise it more than love or even respect it.<\/p>\n

The commercial sector is just as vital. The strong advocacy (often overtly, corporately self-serving) character of much of News Limited\u2019s contemporary journalism, recently most stridently around media reform, is a major blot on the journalistic landscape.<\/p>\n

We @nofibs are not naive. Of course it is a battleground out there – especially now. But there is a decent dollop of hypocrisy attributable to those who can support a motherhood ideal in the abstract but fail to carry it into practice at the pointy end when they are confronted and questioned by skilled journalists doing their job on our behalf as citizens.<\/p>\n

And that brings me to Sabra Lane, one of the ABC\u2019s journalists in their Canberra bureau.<\/p>\n

This morning on ABC Radio’s AM, Lane conducted a live interview with the shadow spokesman for immigration, Scott Morrison.<\/p>\n

In my piece on the Sales\/Gillard interview, I advocated a more radical approach by interviewers facing intractable stonewalling. I do not suggest Lane went all radical in this interview, but, as you will see, she did her very best to crack through the Morrison force field that included the well worn use of weasel words, hostility and gratuitous rudeness allied to a ‘no answer’ technique.<\/p>\n

Sabra Lane did a fine job of conducting a difficult interview. Sadly for her and us citizens she came out of it with no useful information, having to be content with that secondary outcome: that many listeners would be able to perceive how Morrison behaved and how little respect he gave the wholly legitimate enquiry process about the coalition\u2019s proposed policy shift in relation to asylum seekers.<\/p>\n

Mind you, for every listener who came to that view, there would be as many who would think, ‘Good on you, Scott, you showed that pushy ABC reporter where to get off!’ That\u2019s the way it is in our political\/media environment.<\/p>\n

Here is the interview and the transcript. I do encourage you to listen to the audio as it is <\/i>radio, and the whole story of this interview lies in the aural tone and dynamic as well as the verbal content.<\/p>\n

Sabra Lane:\u00a0“Government must stop the boats: Morrison<\/a>” Thursday, March 28, 2013\u00a008:10
\n[audio\u00a0http:\/\/mpegmedia.abc.net.au\/news\/audio\/am\/201303\/20130328am-Morrison-boats.mp3 ]\n

Before briefly analyzing what happened between Lane and Morrison on air this morning, I mention that Tony Eastley\u2019s lead did concern me a little.\u00a0 You\u2019ll notice that the title is \u201cGovernment must stop the boats: Morrison\u201d. And Eastley starts his lead with: ‘The Opposition says 600 asylum seeker boats have arrived in Australia since Labor was elected in 2007 and it’s high time Labor did something to stop the flow.’ Call me old fashioned, but I think that is a poor way to frame this story. It smacks of being a conduit for a pure coalition perspective. Is it too much to ask for the ABC to frame this story in a way that makes it their<\/i> chosen perspective not merely piggy-backing on an opposition assertion? This is a very long running, layered, complex, highly contested story after all. I thought that was lazy and overly reactive journalism.<\/p>\n

But that was the lead Sabra Lane heard in her headphones as she sat waiting to commence her live interview with Scott Morrison over a thousand kilometres away in Adelaide. I mention the distance because being able to visually interrupt (with her eyes or facial expressions or body movements) was not available as part of her interviewing repertoire on this occasion. You will see the relevance of that shortly.<\/p>\n

TONY EASTLEY:<\/strong> The Opposition says 600 asylum seeker boats have arrived in Australia since Labor was elected in 2007 and it’s high time Labor did something to stop the flow.\u2028\u2028 The increased number of recent arrivals has the Government considering putting asylum seeker families on bridging visas and releasing them into the community.\u2028\u2028 Until now only single men have been placed on the visas which give the holder the lowest possible welfare payment available and also makes them ineligible to find paid work or receive Medicare benefits.\u2028\u2028 The measure is being considered to save money and ease up the pressure on detention facilities.\u2028\u2028 The Opposition’s immigration spokesman Scott Morrison is in our Adelaide studio and he’s speaking to our chief political correspondent, Sabra Lane.<\/div>\n
SABRA LANE:<\/strong> Mr Morrison, good morning and welcome to AM.<\/div>\n
SCOTT MORRISON:<\/strong> Thank you Sabra, good to be with you.<\/div>\n
SABRA LANE:<\/strong> How many Navy ships and Customs boats would a Coalition government send north to enforce the Coalition’s policy of boat turn-arounds?<\/div>\n

A reasonable first question? The nub of the Coalition\u2019s policy around asylum seekers is ‘turning back the boats’ to stem the tide as they and many electors describe the situation.
\nHOW exactly that would be done (considering also Indonesia\u2019a public attitudes and past behaviors) would seem wholly germane to any policy discussion around asylum seekers.
\nBut not with Scott Morrison. Read and learn how obfuscation works in practice.<\/p>\n

SCOTT MORRISON:<\/strong> Well that’s obviously the first thing we’d be discussing with the Navy themselves and Customs and Border Protection. But we have a significant fleet and we would be deploying those assets that were necessary to get the job done.<\/div>\n

Lane challenges, asking reasonably whether the detail of that policy has been explored with the Navy or Customs. She includes now the issue of costs as well.<\/p>\n

\n

SABRA LANE:<\/strong> So you haven’t discussed yet with anyone the likelihood of how many vessels it would take and indeed how much money would be needed to enforce this strategy?<\/p>\n

SCOTT MORRISON:<\/strong> I didn’t say that Sabra. What I said is we’d be deploying the assets to get the job done. Obviously we are working through all of our policies and I’m no stranger to this space Sabra, but I’m not about to give the people smugglers or other a heads-up about those sorts of operational matters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Well, to quote him back ‘the first thing we\u2019d be discussing …’ Did he ‘say that’? The slipperiness increases.\u00a0Lane changes from general to specific (deduction to induction).<\/p>\n

\u2028<\/b>SABRA LANE<\/strong>: But boats, are we talking one, two, half a dozen, a dozen?
\nSCOTT MORRISON:<\/strong> Well I think I just answered the question Sabra. I’m not about to give people-smugglers or anyone else a heads-up. What they can be assured of is they can expect an Abbott-led Coalition government to put an end to this madness and we will deploy the assets that are necessary to get the job done and the resolve that is needed to get the job done.<\/div>\n

Even superficially, the ‘heads-up’ argument, now used twice in both answers, seems questionable.\u00a0Perhaps Lane, as she multi-tasks within this interview, decides to let that aspect go for the moment and focus on costs.<\/p>\n

SABRA LANE:<\/strong> So how much money would you believe is needed to enforce this strategy?<\/div>\n
SCOTT MORRISON:<\/strong> Well, we understand that we can do it within the operational arrangements we currently have. But having said that, if you stop the boats Sabra then you start to achieve significant cost savings in immigration. I mean we’ve got a $2.5 billion budget this year which we’ll certainly blow. It was $85 million when the Coalition left office. \u2028\u2028If people want to cut costs as a result of the asylum policies this Government has been running, well the way to do it is stop boats coming.<\/div>\n

Politically, you would have to give that exchange to Morrison. It is<\/i> clearly circular and largely untestable within this interview. Most interviewers would recognize the tactic in a short interview and move on.\u00a0Lane doesn\u2019t argue but immediately shifts to another key, and for both the ADF and much of the general population, a real concern.<\/p>\n

\n

SABRA LANE:<\/strong> But you’d be getting Navy personnel to board those craft, to steer them, turn them around and all the dangers that involves?<\/p>\n

SCOTT MORRISON<\/strong>: Well Sabra, at the moment they’re running a very expensive taxi service…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Morrison comes back with a quite nasty piece of sloganeering to avoid the thrust of that question. Nasty? He knows people have died in the latest incident at Christmas Island. He knows that Navy and Customs personnel have been involved in difficult and, doubtless for them, traumatic experiences. For their work to be summed up as ‘a very expensive taxi service’ does the shadow minister no credit.<\/p>\n

SABRA LANE:<\/strong> Well hang on, just on…<\/div>\n

Lnme attempts to interrupt to presumably challenge that proposition<\/p>\n

SCOTT MORRISON<\/strong>: …and there are people out there every day putting themselves at risk\u2026<\/div>\n

Morrison uses another and distinctly contradictory assertion about ‘putting themselves at risk’. This is, of course, the thrust of Lane\u2019s earlier question around the ‘how’ and practicalities of any turn-back operation at sea.<\/p>\n

SABRA LANE<\/strong>: Mr Morrison specifically\u2026<\/div>\n

Lane moves to be more specific as her interviewee makes quite wooly general claims\u2028.<\/p>\n

SCOTT MORRISON:<\/strong> \u2026and there are many vessels out there, Sabra if I could finish the answer to the question that’d be great.<\/div>\n

Now Morrison pushes back against the journalist attempting to reach specifics using the well tried ‘let me answer’ tactic. Sometimes that is fair and reasonable. Is it here?<\/p>\n

We’ve already got Navy personnel and Customs and Border Protection personnel out there on a regular basis almost every day. We’ve had two boats a day for the last week. They’re all out there. The ships are all out there. That’s the job they do. And we have great confidence they’ll do it well.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
SABRA LANE:<\/strong> I’m trying to have a considered discussion here about your policy. What would it involve? Would it involve Navy personnel, Customs personnel getting on those boats and steering them towards Indonesia?<\/div>\n

This is an important juncture. Having failed so far to bring Morrison to specifics, Lane steps back to re-frame the whole purpose and character of the interview. This is not radical but a kind of middle ground appeal to the shadow minister to lower his tactical hostility and approach this policy discussion on a reasonable basis. She then immediately, with energy re-states her questions, beefing them up somewhat to give them more clarity and force.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2028<\/i>\u2028<\/i>SCOTT MORRISON<\/strong>: Well again the operational details are not matters that I’m ever prepared to discuss. But the Navy and the Customs and Border Protection are the ones who’d be managing the operational issues at sea as they did last time, as they do today. \u2028\u2028And our officers and our naval personnel are trained in these areas and we know that they have the capacity to get the job done, just like they do over in the Gulf where they intercepted about 1000 vessels and many of those vessels had armed weapons pointing at them when they did so.<\/div>\n

Now we come to the main tactic Morrison is using to avoid being specific. ‘Operational matters’? He is trying to sound like a defence minister? Is it a reasonable claim? Or weasel words?<\/p>\n

The Associate editor of The Australian<\/i> and specialist writer on defence, national security, federal politics and international affairs, Cameron Stewart, tweeted his view after apparently listening to the AM interview:<\/p>\n

\n

@bennpackham<\/a> @vanonselenp<\/a> Scott Morrison is wrong. Explaining how Navy will safelyturn around boats is not a sensitive operational matter.<\/p>\n

— cameron stewart (@camstewarttheoz) March 27, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n