Bartlett's Blog

Some sad news for independent media today, with the announcement that the New Matilda website is likely to be shutting up shop at the end of next month. As most readers would be aware, I've had a number of pieces published on New Matilda over the years. I'm sure I'll still be able to find places to publish my pieces if and when I want, but I'll certainly miss ...

From the very first day after I’d finished my term in the Senate in July 2008 – in fact for many weeks before I’d even formally finished – there would be no question I have been asked more frequently that the one about whether I miss being in politics and whether I’m enjoying being out of it.  Even months after having announced I was getting formally involved with ...

I just saw this piece on The Advertiser's site about a new law which has come into force in South Australia The law "requires internet bloggers, and anyone making a comment on next month's state election, to publish their real name and postcode when commenting on the poll." The law will affect anyone posting a comment on an election story on mainstream news websites.  It reportedly also applies to social networking sites, and ...

Paul Syvret is one of the regular writers for the Courier-Mail. When he’s not writing pieces about politics and the economy – usually in a manner which tries to make economic news intelligible – he writes general opinion pieces. Maybe it’s the opportunity to sound off about something other than economics and politics, but from time to time he really lets fly. What is interesting is not that ...

Annabel Crabb has written a piece on the ABC's new website, The Drum, admitting that she likes politicians - and then even goes on to say why. Perhaps not surprisingly, I think it is a good piece, although the Christmas spirit of goodwill might have made her a bit more charitable than she needed to be.  It does make some important points though, including about the impacts that the ...

Mackay based MP James Bidgood has been in political hot water for selling to the media a photo he took of a person outside Parliament House who had tried to set himself alight.  Graham Young has queried what all the fuss is about – a view I tend to agree with. If it was wrong to take and sell the photo, it would also be wrong for the ...

There are lots of coverage and comment about the report by the independent group reviewing the Northern Territory intervention.  This is one of the more important amongst the many reviews set in train by the federal government. I hope the government is able to ignore the politics and focus on the substance of the report. As I said many times in the various pieces I have written about the ...

Despite the disproportionate amount of attention often given to Question Time in the federal parliament, I have long felt that it is not only an absurd parody of an accountability mechanism, it can also distort the direction and content of political debate. So I was pleased to see last week that outgoing Senate President, long-serving Liberal Senator Alan Ferguson (now in the role of Senate Deputy President), gave his ...

I’ve just realised that a week ago was the fourth anniversary of starting up this blog, which gives me cause to reflect on how tiresome it is to still see the stale, dead-end ‘journalists versus bloggers’ argument being aired far too often. This recent, very over-defensive effort in The Australian is an example - written by Christian Kerr, who developed his career through commentary in the independent media and should ...

I had an unexpected reminder when I opened today’s Courier-Mail of just how cute my daughter was as a baby. An unnamed uncredited photo of my daughter at one day old with her tiny fingers wrapped around my thumb, was used to illustrate a story (syndicated from the Daily Mail) about older men fathering children. The newspaper obviously just used a stock newborn baby photo from their archives, ...

The Senate Committee report into the sexualisation of children was tabled last week. It doesn’t seem to have pleased some of the children’s advocacy groups, or Family First for that matter. Clive Hamilton, who has campaigned on the issue for some time, is also pretty peeved, if his piece in Crikey is anything to go by – although I have to say I found his ‘pretend advertising industry memo’ a ...

Understandably, there are plenty of media stories in recent times noting the imminent end of the Democrats' presence in the Senate. No doubt there'll be more over the next week or so. It was sweet to read in today's Courier-Mail editorial that the Democrats demise "is unfortunate". They state that the party "earned a deservedly high reputation for being scrupulous and tough in negotiation", their "achievements in that period ...

The drawn out contest to determine the next President of the USA is an extraordinary process. I find some components highly laudable, and some of them less than ideal. One of the problems with such a very long process is the need for the media (and the general public to some extent) to constantly try to find new angles and stories about the campaign. This could be seen ...

Further to my post from the previous weekend, featuring Michael Gawenda (and me) bemoaning the nature of election campaigns and coverage, Margaret Simons has some suggestions in today’s Crikey on “what might be some more useful ways of covering an election campaign”.

Michael Gawenda’s article in this weekend’s Age & SMH is a dispiriting but accurate account by an internationally experienced journalist of just how hollow Australian political campaigning and the media ‘coverage’ of it has become. He writes of “the emptiness of this campaign, empty in the sense not of its importance, but of spontaneity and debate and political speeches and humour and anything approaching a real conversation - ...

I will refrain from regularly doing my own commentary on the media commentary. I have no doubt that, however much coverage I manage to get, I would always like more, and however much coverage there is of the Senate contest, I will believe there should be more. Having said that, I did manage to get much wider reporting of my initial comments upon the official announcement of the election, ...

On the eve of a crucial federal election, with both the government and the Senate in the balance, our national political debate is reduced to front page news in the Sunday Papers repeating gossip about a government Minister, married with kids, who is allegedly visiting gay bath houses and having gay affairs, followed by petty political squabbling over who is actually responsible for peddling the gossip. Gossip, smear and ...

As my post from just 4 days ago suggests, commenting on a different media frenzy that came out of the Canberra press gallery, I REALLY hate media stories that feed the notion of politics as a soap opera, or as a gossip factory full of intrigue. The latest excitement about the story of Kevin Rudd’s visit to a New York ‘gentleman’s club’ (whatever you think of strip clubs, it’s ...

The arrest of a Gold Coast based Doctor for questioning over possible links to failed bombings in the UK has been big news in Brisbane. The first seven pages of my local newspaper, The Courier-Mail, were given over to the topic. At this stage there’s no information about whether this Doctor is a suspect. A second Doctor taken in for questioning has already been released. It is ...

A couple of weeks ago I attended the launch of the Close the Gap campaign – to eliminate the gap between the life expectancy and opportunities for Indigenous Australians and the rest of our nation. It was held at the Olympic Stadium in Sydney, and there was a big media contingent there in part due to the presence of Olympic champions Cathy Freeman and Ian Thorpe, who were both ...