In recent years, the ALP has all but mastered the dark arts of media manipulation.
In NSW, former premier Bob Carr worried obsessively about the daily news cycle.
Carr, a former journalist, was brilliant at winning the daily battle with the Opposition for favourable headlines.
He and his successors (Iemma, Rees and Keneally) have become infamous for their habit of announcing and de-announcing plans, strategies and projects.
They think the past doesn't matter, as long as they can conjure up some more bright, shiny baubles to promise a greedy electorate eager to believe that Santa Claus lives on as a politician.
In Canberra, the same obsession with media manipulation has been evident since Rudd was elected.
Unexpectedly, the GFC came along and gave the Rudd government a rationale for massive spending and massive spending means lots more of those seductive announcements. Insulation for every home, a laptop for every student, new classrooms, big new infrastructure projects and so on and so on. Not to mention hundreds of dollars of cash deposited directly into the bank accounts of a large slice of the voting age population.
Announcements, funded under the guise of the economic stimulus, seemed to role out almost daily.
These sad little affairs get the desired positive media coverage, but it's unclear what the political impact is.
Unlike politicians, voters pay little attention to the daily avalanche of political stories with their breathlessness and superficiality.
Voters just want more: "what will you do for me tomorrow?"
It is easy for politicians to confuse clever campaigning with sound government.
Both Rudd and Carr seem to have been unable to distinguish between politics and government.
Government is not about making promises, or staging media stunts to make yet another announcement.
Government is about program design and delivery. It's about accountability.
Government is about working through a strategy and a plan, week after week, year in and year out.
Government is boring, complex and difficult.
Just the sort of stuff the media hates.
So politicians deliver glib announcements and sound-bites. Just what the media needs to fill all that empty space everyday.
But if you hang around long enough all the campaigning at the expense of governing catches up with you.
Most voters would be hard-pressed to name three achievements of Carr's long premiership.
They do remember, with cynicism and bitterness, the broken promises.
And none of them really believe that the Keneally Government will deliver on the transport plan it announced yesterday.
If NSW Labor had been governing not campaigning for these past 15 years then most of what was in yesterday's package would have already been delivered.
The Labor Government would be proudly ticking off real achievements and not relying on empty soundbites like '96% ontime running'.
The public would have more confidence in Labor's new promises, and less desire to risk a change.
In addition, Keneally's effort is not a strategy, it's a series of announcements.
All the pretty maps, big dollar figures and arbitrary start and finish dates don't cover the ugly fact that the 'plan' doesn't actually address Sydney's transport problem.
In 20 years, we'll still be relying on private vehicles for about the same percentage of trips, the plan does not deliver a significant switch from cars to other modes. So our roads will just keep getting more congested, and our city noisier and more polluted.
In Canberra, Rudd's mania for announcements is starting to catch up with him.
People are starting to notice that his flair for announcing stuff, complete with obligatory picture opportunities, is not being matched by an ability to deliver competently and on-time.
Rudd needs to learn from the very big hole the clever, media manipulators of NSW Labor have dug for themselves.
Comments