Is today’s press coverage relating to Andrew Wilkie’s behaviour as a senior Duntroon cadet in 1983, on balance, in the public interest?
Wilkie himself, in a thoughtful and forthright performance at his press conference today to respond to the claims, dismissed a direct link between this matter and the club industry’s expensive, if barely literate, campaign against him. Beyond that, it is a fine judgment to make.
The get-out clause for the media is that Wilkie himself has placed issues relating to his behaviour at Duntroon on the public record, thereby, arguably, inviting scrutiny. Moreover, the matter relates not to Wilkie’s personal life, but to his chosen profession.
Nonetheless, what is the public interest in raising Wilkie’s behaviour 28 years ago? Is the full past of any politician automatically open to scrutiny? Should journalists go digging through the personal histories of each member of Parliament for anything of interest — rather than being in the public interest — simply because they’re politicians? To do so would be to further tilt the scales against the participation in public life of non-career politicians — that ever-diminishing breed of people who had a real career, and a life, before deciding to enter Parliament.
Rather, it would encourage the very people we already have too many of — the professional politicians who plot a career from student to apparatchik to adviser to MP to post-political life on a board or as a consultant.
Or should such ancient history be raised only when there is a public interest in a past action or statement? Wilkie hasn’t been involved in the fallout of the ADFA scandal before now, indeed appears not to have commented on it until today. This undermines the public interest case for revealing the details about his own participation in the then-prevalent culture of bastardisation, either as a victim or as a perpetrator. And will the military discipline records of other former ADF personnel like the Liberals’ Stuart Robert, or Labor’s Mike Kelly, be subject to similar scrutiny by the media?
At first glance, Wilkie’s alleged participation in such practices is newsworthy. But try to pin down exactly why we are being told this now, and to what public interest it relates, and the case starts to look weaker.
If the media want to adopt this approach, it’s on for everyone. As media outlets jockey for influence, and commentators consider themselves players in the political process rather than observers and reporters, why shouldn’t we be asking what inappropriate behaviour, or worse, they were guilty of as young men and women?
Sod “Wilkie” – I want to know more about what Abbott, Bishop (either), Gillard, Windsor, Bill “Heiferman” and Martin Ferguson, got up to, in their younger days – from the same sources we’re getting all this “news”, now! Or are they of “less interest” because of their “hokey-pokie” stance, and the fact they’re not “an Independent” in our present parliament with it’s “structure”, with such “influence”?
But I do love the smell of “Swift Boats” in the morning!
What about the digging through the back-yard of a few “jouno’s”, considering their influence and role in “public life”?
Interesting to note in these cases – and I’m now thinking of the eternal raking over the coals of Lee Rhiannon’s membership of the ACP – no mention is ever made of the good work they do in parliament – for example Rhiannon’s work uncovering the web of donations to the Labor and Liberal Parties.
It is a very worrying trend in Australian political life that this concerted mudslinging – cf The Australian’s Greensbashing division’s daily stories – is more and more prevalent.
And one more thing – the little disclaimer on the Daily Terror story on Wilkie’s misbehaviour that the journalist who wrote the piece – Andrew Rule is – related to the complainant
I entirely agree with the above sentiments. I daresay there are very, very few of us who haven’t done something stupid in our youth that we are somewhat ashamed of now.
It’s highly significant that the story appears in the agenda driven News Corp rags. Ethics? Moral compass? News of the World? I can hardly believe the hypocrisy of the Murdoch mob.
Wilkie has, for his entire public life, shown himself to be a man of high principle; even to the extent of sacrificing his career.
Interesting closing thought. We have a fair idea of where this would lead for those self appointed guardians of public virtue like Alan Jones, John Laws etc…….