I think I can reliably be described as the sort of person who doesn’t like Peter Dutton much, his politics, or his values, at least to the extent that any of those things about him are knowable from his public persona. And yet, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of—was it empathy? —for him when he was interviewed by Sarah Ferguson on 730 last week.
Her first question was this: “Was it humiliating for you to have to stand up and support Labor’s changes to the tax cuts?”
I presume this was meant to be one of those tough, unexpected, put-them-on-the-spot questions designed to catch the leader of the opposition off guard and perhaps make him uncomfortable enough that he might flub other answers later in the interview or be more vulnerable than he otherwise might be, but it felt off to me.
It was ill-judged.
To even ask the question is itself to engage in a form of humiliation, and I don’t think it was appropriate in this situation for a journalist to be doing that. Politics can be a horrible, confronting business, and the people it attracts to its professional ranks— particularly to the ranks of hardcore institutions like the mainstream political parties—are often, because of this, the worst sort of thrusting, self-important ego maniacs imaginable, and it is tempting to rub their faces in it when they come a cropper, as Dutton obviously had.
After all, they are powerful people whose decisions and behaviours can have lasting effects on all of us and there is a case for ensuring that they retain an appropriate level of humility.
But politics is also a necessary function in a democratic society and its nature—rightly—is that it involves people putting their ideas and their values on the line in a very public way. The public enactment and defence of such views and positions is essential to democratic governance and it necessarily comes with the risk of making an idiot of yourself, of getting something wrong, or simply losing an argument.
The argument over the stage-three tax cuts has been ongoing and fraught. From the moment Labor were suckered into supporting the horrors of Stage 3 so they could support the other two stages of the tax cuts, the issue has been a hot political item. Albanese and Co. have spent most their first term dodging questions about the matter and dealing with the pressure brought to bear by various individuals and groups pointing out the problems with Labor supporting huge tax cuts for the wealthiest.
The fact that they were able, eventually, to muster the nerve to change them and that that change of heart and change of policy has been so extraordinarily successful in political terms is good for all us. Not only in this specific case—improving on what was a horrible package of tax cuts—but in the more general sense of showing a level of maturity about the desirability of changing policy for the better. The media may not be able to grasp or report the matter in other than the most basic win-loss terms, but the whole process is actually a good example of how politics should work.
Of course, Labor will gloat in victory, and the Coalition will bristle in defeat—it will inevitably be seen in those terms in some quarters, because there is undeniably that element in the process—but we need to look deeper than that.
In short, we want—we need—politicians to be willing to engage in this sort of argument, and when the dust settles, we don’t want them to feel humiliated just because their side lost. Politics shouldn’t be about humiliation even if it is inevitably humiliating. It should be about everyone accepting that democracy involves accommodating different political views peacefully, without the need to wallow in the other side’s humiliation.
Ferguson’s question focussed on the wrong thing, and worse than that, it played into an understanding of politics that does us all damage. By foregrounding “humiliation” she incrementally decreased the chances of such changes taking place in the future.
Dutton, as it happened, was completely unfazed anyway. He went straight into his talking points and didn’t leave them for the entire fifteen minutes and forty-nine seconds he was allotted. Whatever Ferguson was trying to achieve with her opening question failed, and what’s more, her pointedly personal approach—do you feel humiliated? —played into Dutton’s hands.
The thing that became obvious as the interview unfolded was that Dutton came prepared with a line of attack/response that sought to put the interviewer and her network on the defensive, and it worked a treat. He constantly accused her, and the ABC, of being biased, of being leftwing, and Ferguson was left defending herself and her employer in precisely the way in which Dutton intended.
She became a victim of the same sort of personal attack that she had launched the interview with.
You were humiliated!
You are biased!
Every moment spent on these things distracted from the issue at hand, and we ended up with the sort of political costume drama that really doesn’t serve the public at all. Yes, the interview revealed something useful—Dutton’s intent to play the bias card, something we can expect to see again and again as the next election draws near—but the revelation had nothing to do with the quality of the interview: the revelation was pre-ordained.
The point is, if we want to raise the standard of political debate in the country, we have to attract as broad a group as possible into the fold, and if people think they are going to be publicly humiliated for simply holding a counter view, we aren’t going to achieve that. Highlighting political humiliation in this way undermines the possibility of a better democracy.
As it happened, Australian politics presented us with another example of public humiliation this week—when video and photos emerged of former deputy prime minister and former National Party leader, Barnaby Joyce, collapsed, according to reports, in a drunken heap on a main street in Canberra—and I’m going to argue it should be treated differently.
A journalist who asked Ferguson’s question about feeling humiliated in any forthcoming interview with Barnaby Joyce would be well within their rights. Humiliation is front-and-centre in this story, and it would be foolish to pretend otherwise. So, while Peter Dutton had no need to feel humiliated for losing the Stage 3 argument and supporting Labor’s legislation, Joyce has reason to be confronted with what was a humiliating display. It would be legitimate for a journalist to confront the matter and seek an explanation.
Let’s be clear here, though. We can say with a high degree of certainty, based on endless rumours and hints, and enough incriminating clips over many years, that Joyce has a drinking problem. He should be treated for that and given all due consideration. But his behaviour leaves him—and his party, for that matter—in an untenable position.
This most recent incident brings to a head a problem that has existed—and been known about—for a long time, and it is simply unforgivable that his party, and other members of the political class, including the media, have let the matter drag on for as long as it has. As many have pointed out, no Indigenous person, woman, or Labor Premier would have been indulged in the same way, or for as long as Joyce has been. And if you doubt that, imagine—just imagine—the media’s reaction if photos of Daniel Andrews in a similar state on a Melbourne Street had emerged.
In fact, it is instructive to compare how the prime minister reacted to the Joyce matter relative to how he reacted to an incident at a nightclub involving now-independent Senator, Lidia Thorpe:
Speaking on Perth radio, Anthony Albanese made light of Mr Joyce’s predicament suggesting he had never found himself lying on the street in Canberra.
“Not in that position,” he told 6PR radio.
“That’s a matter for Barnaby Joyce to explain. I think that’s a matter for him I don’t intend to comment on what is clearly difficult circumstances for Barnaby Joyce.”
His approach is very different to the one he took when ex-Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe was caught having a public meltdown outside a strip club on CCTV.
He urged Ms Thorpe to “get some support” after she engaged in a verbal altercation with a group of men outside of Maxine’s Gentlemen’s Club, in Melbourne, last year.
It’s an outrageous double standard and doesn’t speak well of the PM’s judgement.
The bottom line is this: Dutton losing an argument about tax cuts and being forced to endorse Labor policy shouldn’t be seen as humiliating, and it does political debate harm to focus on that aspect of the issue.
But a politician who has a long history of having his unacceptable behaviour indulged and minimised, who belongs to a party that is not at all averse to making political mileage out public drunkenness they allege happens in Indigenous communities, and whose colleagues, like the prime minister, are willing to extend him an absolution they would not provide to others, is ripe for a confrontation with their own hypocrisy and any humiliation that goes with it.
It is time for Joyce and his enablers to confront his problems and remove him from public office, not to humiliate him—he brought that on himself—but because we-the- people deserve better.
NOTE: I am happy to say we are off to visit our son in France for a few weeks: haven’t seen him in a while. Posting, and responses to comments, may be a little more sparse than usual.
Quite perfectly written Tim. It's actually boring both ways re: Ferguson. Boring that she thought the question was appropriate, and boring that Peter had his notes ready. Boring that viewers had to hear those notes because he does a remarkable line in disingenuous does Peter.
I heard him on the ABC yesterday, championing his love for multiculturalism to Raf Epstein, I nearly pranged the car. A listener had asked him if his African gangs tactics were still in play, and off he wandered on a long ramble avoiding the question entirely. Raf did very politely point out - more than once - that Peter's note son the economy were demonstrably incorrect. But Peter's notes were not for changing course. On he sailed, with Raf politely correcting Peter as we went.
It's actually surreal hearing an LNP leader on the ABC in 2024. But as Peter and you and I and all of us know now, he's not going to get those teal seats back without hard yards on the ABC. One of Morrison's huge errors was dismissing the avenue of hard interviews that not being on 2GB/3AW offers. Peter has started at the bottom. And by the sounds of his efforts yesterday, he won't get much further.
More broadly, I think political interviews and debates are worse than useless. The starting point is high school debating, where you learn to provide clever defences of arbitrarily chosen position. It's great training for barristers, and that is not a compliment.
TV interviews are the same: gotchas from the interviewer, and from the interviewee a mixture of focus-tested talking point and straight-bat denials of the obvious.