Paul Keating once said that when you change the government of a country, you change the country. And so, on September 7, 2013, Australians voted for a change of government. Since that time, and after six tumultuous years of the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd Labor governments, the political tenor has changed significantly. New Prime Minister Tony Abbott declared that ‘Australia in now open for business’. And – in the year since the election of his government – we have seen considerable winding back of a number of the critical Rudd/Gillard policies.

This special edition of GMJ AU offers papers that explore a range of perspectives related to the role of the media in the political change process and on the political landscape, one that changed significantly since Whitlam rallied us in 1972 with his memorable election ‘call to arms’, ‘It’s Time’. (See the dedication to Gough Whitlam above).

The edition begins with ‘Kick this mob out’: An investigation of the relationship between the Murdoch media and the Australian Labor Government from 2007 to 2013. In this paper, Mitchell Hobbs and David McKnight explore the role of Rupert Murdoch’s varied interests in the election, particularly his controversial, yet unabashed, advocacy of the Liberal-National Party campaign via a series of front page headlines that shaped the tone of the campaign. The issue of media ownership and bias emerged as a topic of widespread discussion. The paper describes the campaigning role of Murdoch’s newspapers in attacking key policies of the first Rudd, and subsequent Gillard, governments. [permission for the re-publication of the front pages for this article has been requested but as yet – not granted by News Ltd].

In contrast to this focus on traditional media, Peter Chen’s New media electioneering in the 2013 Australian federal election,examines the role of new forms of social media in the election campaign. Chen’s paper observes that the two major parties considerably professionalised their management of new media for the 2013 campaign and that it contributed more strongly to the communications mix. The author goes on to argue that while new media would seem to offer opportunities for new players to increase their visibility, this was not the case in 2013. The two major parties, he asserts, continue to dominate the new media environment due to their disproportionate access to electoral resources.

One of the most contentious issues of the Labor government was that of media accountability. Following on from the UK phone hacking scandal, the Finkelstein Inquiry and  the Convergence Review placed print media (in particular) under significant scrutiny. Steven Maras uses Bateson’s use of a ‘double bind’, to explore this debate in Media accountability: Double binds and responsibility gaps. In this paper, he examines the intertwined notions of responsibility, accountability and freedom as they relate to this vexed issue. As reactions to the Abbott government’s recent enactment of section 35P of the National Security Legislation Amendment Act (No. 1), calls for a responsible media are usually met with reference to the importance of the media to a healthy democracy and a defence of press freedoms. As Maras reminds us, this section of the new legislation makes it an offence, punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment, to ‘disclose information’ about a so-called special intelligence operation.

With a focus on social media, Michele Zappavigna explores the way in which voters used the microblogging platform Twitter during the election in Enjoy your snags Australia … oh and the voting thing too #ausvotes #auspol: Iconisation and affiliation in electoral microblogging. Zappavigna is interested in the discursive processes by which microbloggers align around shared values materialised as ‘bonding icons’. In particular, her paper focuses on the iconic election day ritual of the polling place sausage sizzle. She concludes that Twitter in particular, facilitates a form of election day camaraderie in the context of communal complaint about the voting experience.

The ‘denouement’ of one of the most politically divisive issues of the last six years – climate change policy and the ‘carbon tax’ – is explored in Missing in action? The ‘non’-climate change debate of the 2013 Australian federal election. In this paper, Myra Gurney analyses both the extent and substance of the debate during the election period. Using the text analytics program Leximancer, she examines the discursive characteristics of the mainstream media coverage of climate change policy, concluding that what little debate occurred was largely framed in relation to the politically contentious ‘carbon tax’, rather than in terms of the environmental imperative. The paper then explores the extent to which the apparent waning of political will by both major parties to substantially engage Australian voters on the need to take carbon abatement seriously, was a genuine reflection of voter apathy. For the author, this was a reaction to an over reliance upon opinion polls or symptomatic of a broader political and media disconnect.

In a fascinating contrast to the 2013 election, Josie Vine examines the media coverage of the ‘forgotten election’ of 1901 for evidence of journalistic ‘eyewitnessing’, a concept that is central to the philosophy and practice of modern political journalism. Vine compares the reporting of the major speeches of the main political protagonists Edmund Barton (who went on to become Australia’s first prime minister), and his opponent George Reid, for the existence of an early form of the so-called ‘zoo plane’, where correspondents en-masse follow the leaders on the campaign trail. The possible existence of journalists relying on an early form public relations media management is canvassed.

The last major contribution to our theme is an essay by Roumen Dimitrov titled ‘Does this guy ever shut up?’ The discourse of the 2013 Australian elections. Using the campaign slogans and media catchphrases, Dimitrov explores the message and image strategies of the major players, with particular attention to the issues of carbon pricing, asylum seekers, economic management and party reform. He concludes that the 2013 elections narrowed the bipartisan language and thinking in which the differences between the rivals, (with the exception perhaps on carbon pricing), were fewer than they wanted the voters to believe. He notes that the language of electioneering moved from long-term policies in the plural, to short-term politics in the singular, and concludes that the increasingly irrational discourse of the election period has not dissolved, but rather hardened following the election of the new Abbott government.

The election also spawned a large number of political tomes, and so our book review section includes perspectives on the Rudd/Gillard years from a variety of authors who are both political actors and media commentators.

Finally, as this edition of GMJ AU was being prepared, Australia lost Gough Whitlam, its 21^st prime minister (1972-75), and a man whose brief time in office profoundly changed the country with its wide ranging social reform initiatives, the vestiges of which are woven into the fabric of Australian life today. Many of these are outlined in the tribute to Gough titled ‘Politics can be a noble profession’ written by Eric Sidoti, Director of the Whitlam Institute within the University of Western Sydney (UWS). UWS, the host of this journal, has a special affiliation with Gough Whitlam and we take great pride in being able to contribute to his political legacy, particularly in education and the arts. We thank Eric for his contribution.

Finally, the last word should go to Gough, as presciently remembered by his long time speechwriter and political advisor, Graham Freudenberg at Whitlam’s memorial service on November 5.

As he put it in 1972:
‘Between the habits and fears of the past and the hopes and demands of the future’.

Optimism, enthusiasm, confidence – against fear, prejudice, conformity. That is his enduring message to the men and women of Australia. Never more than now.

November 2014