The Brumby Dump exercise, in which Swinburne University of Technology students scrutinised more than 200 reports tabled by the state government on a single day in September, is now closed. The exercise has resulted in 16 stories in Crikey covering topics from ghastly neglect of the disabled to the melting down of memorials for the newly dead.

Another three stories have been published in regional news media around the state.

We know that it has worked for journalism and as a learning exercise. It has also told us something about the texture of governance as we approach the state election.

The whole exercise began with a suggestion from Kathy Bowlen, former ABC Stateline host, who was enrolled in one of our journalism units in digital literacies — how to publish online and gain an audience through use of social media. Bowlen rang us on the day all the reports were tabled and suggested we harness the power of our students to read and report on them.

The decision was made in a flash. Yes, it would be lots of work. Yes, it would be lots of trouble. Yes, it was crazy to make a decision that risked sending the semester off track at such short notice. Hell yes, let’s do it.

We rushed to parliament, loaded up boxes and returned to campus with a cab straining under the load. Using Blackboard learning software, we set up a wiki to manage the exercise. All the stories were submitted and sub-edited on the wiki, so everyone could learn from the exercise, and so that ideas and perspectives could be shared.

The lecture at which we introduced the idea ended with the words “this is important, and this is ambitious”. Whether or not it would work — we hardly knew. But it did.

The exercise attracted support from some leading media figures. On Twitter, we gained endorsements from other journalists and journalism educators. We seemed to miff a few people, too, when we dared suggest that some media outlets had missed a particular story.

And then, out of the blue, a benefactor — a former senior media executive in this town who wished to remain anonymous — contacted us to offer $1500 donation to be used as cash prizes for the journalism students. His only request, that awareness of audience be one of the criteria.

The prizes will be awarded early next year, under the title the Public Interest Journalism Foundation Civic Journalism Award. Recognising that not all students who worked hard got a publishable story, we have set the criteria to award effort and ability, not necessarily published result. The criteria are:

  1. Demonstrated news sense
  2. Tenacity and effort in research and interviews
  3. Demonstrated understanding of the audience, and the best way to communicate with that audience
  4. Commitment to accuracy and fairness
  5. Understanding of deadlines and the imperatives of news production.

We think that’s a fair description of the job and the skills we are trying to teach.

So what themes have emerged from this close-up look at governance in Victoria?

The Brumby Dump exposed some of the underbelly of Victoria — the issues that don’t make media releases, and don’t make pretty PR-driven stories, and rarely get airplay in an election campaign. But they are part of the story of our state, its government and how things really run.

First, despite health and welfare being the claimed strengths of the Labor government, The Brumby Dump suggests that regional health in particular, could be one issue with the potential to aggravate the electorate.

Regional hospitals and health services across the state are straining. Certainly those in marginal seats have benefited from big spending — the new Bendigo Hospital is one example — but other areas are struggling with old buildings, inadequate staff and general neglect.

Not all the problems in health are the state government’s fault, its true. Emergency departments are straining partly because GPs no longer want to work out of hours. There has been a meteoric rise in the complaints about dental health care largely because the federal government’s medicare rebate scheme for dentists is terribly inadequate and under funded.

But some issues are firmly in state government territory. We think one of the most shocking stories we have published is this one, which includes evidence of abuse, gross neglect and failure of state government regulation when it comes to Victoria’s most vulnerable citizens. How can any well-managed government allow this to continue?

Other welfare organisations also report chronic under-funding, particularly those such as the Queen Elizabeth Centre that stand at the top of the cliff, trying to stop family problems from becoming critical.

Those combing through the fine print of departmental reporting also saw the traces of one the sleeping issues in Victoria — the exploitation of international students, who are now a big part of our economy and the life of the state. But as the Department of Consumer Affairs has found, many of them are being ripped off in dodgy unregistered rooming houses.

Turning to the law, we reported on the continuing tensions between Director of Public Prosecutions Jeremy Rapke and the Court of Criminal Appeal over sentencing. And in more evidence that the courts are out of kilter with community standards, we reported on the Sentencing Advisory Council’s shocking finding that despite adequate penalties being available under the law, pa-dophiles who have s-x with children younger than 10 get  average prison sentences of only 3.3 years in this state.

And what is happening in our state that leads to a big increase in complaints of discrimination against the aged? And why is state government revenue from gambling taxes on the rise, despite all the problems that industry brings?

There were other issues that didn’t make publication, not because they aren’t important but because mainstream media had covered them: the shortage of child-welfare workers, the questions over whether the desalination plant is really needed now that it has rained, and of course corruption, and the efforts of the existing institutions to deal with it.

The wash-up? A state with plenty of problems and a government that deserves scrutiny. Not because it is any more problem-plagued than any other but because government is complex. We suspect The Brumby Dump has been worthwhile because it has meant more in-depth reporting at a time when this is increasingly hard to come by in the media.

How did The Brumby Dump exercise work for our students? It’s fair to say that it stressed them out.

They worked hard, and learned fast. Whether it was Wez Matthews-Naylor doing a crash course in nuclear science to write this story or Aliyah Stotyn trekking out to Springvale to take photographs of cremation memorials, they got the terrier instinct and kept on trawling.

Most of them are in the first year of their degrees. Many had not previously turned their minds to details such as the relationship between the Director of Public Prosecutions and the rest of the court system. Yet within weeks, they were holding government to account.

And they found out what it is like to be a journalist. We got their plaintive emails — wanting to know what they should do about government media advisers who didn’t return their calls, politicians who wouldn’t answer questions, police media representatives who treated them with contempt, and so on and so forth. We found lots of ways to say:  welcome to journalism. This is what it is like. Keep on going. Ring back as many times as it takes. Ask the hard questions.

Inevitably, not all of them ended with publishable stories. That was the luck of the draw in the handing out of the reports. But all of them, or almost all of them, learned a lot about the job, and the nature of government.