CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The entire Australian media landscape, from the culture wars desperados at NewsCorp to the Stockholm Syndromed ABC, are still struggling with the fact that the Liberal Party just lost 50% of their sitting MPs at the 2022 Federal Election.
The bizarre fantasy has become rather clear this week, as radio programmes and newspapers around the country continue to act like the Australian people are beholden to a political party that is still reeling from being absolutely pumped at the ballot box just over two weeks ago.
With 6 teal Independents snatching the safest electorates ever held by the Liberals, and Labor confidently claiming once-unwinnable seats in Melbourne and Perth – Australians are unsure why we are expected to give a fuck about anything the dregs of this ousted party have to say about anything.
But still, the Australian media are committed to pulling themselves over every announcement made by the Liberal Party’s new leaders: The supremely competent Peter Dutton and the high-profile up-and-comer Sussan Ley.
It is almost like Australian journalists are unable to reprogram themselves to a new political climate, where the Liberal politicians they have spent the last two decades desperately humanising – are now either unemployed, or completely powerless.
It’s a scary new world our journos find themselves in – where the party that so gently massaged them, from Abbott to Morrison – is now about as relevant as a Nielsen’s Radio Rating Survey.
This delusion may be a result of the fact that the Australian media pundits realise deep down that by finally acknowledging the fact that the Coalition are not in power, they are also indirectly acknowledging their own irrelevance.
It’s a particularly hard pill to swallow, given that literally not one journalist or commentator was able to correctly predict an election result that saw Anthony Albanese claim a majority government, and the Coalition losing their entire next generation of talent to a cross-bench of Independents that now outnumbers the National Party in seats.
With a 6 week campaign that saw both the Costello newspapers and Murdoch newspapers smear any opponent of Scott Morrison on every front page, every single day – the actual election result appears to have forced traditional media to confront the existential reckoning that maybe we’ve all tuned out.
