Progressives could afford, briefly, to bathe in an afterglow of electoral success this week. Back in government after nine long years, the other lot reduced to its lowest parliamentary representation since Menzies founded the Liberals in 1946, a defeated Scott Morrison snivelling in front of a congregation of not-so-happy clappers: life, in short, was good.

Consider some of the high-profile LNP casualties booted out of Parliament on Saturday night: Tim Wilson, charmless “champion of freedom” from Goldstein (Victoria); Fiona Martin, who “couldn’t tell the difference” between two Asian-background Labor candidates (Reid, NSW) and the daddy of ‘em all, Josh Frydenberg, “Treasurer for NSW” and the man seen as our future Prime Minister (Kooyong, Victoria). Little wonder lefties (and teals) were basking in what Twitter wags coined “Schadenfreudenberg”.

In a normal world of action and reaction, one might expect some kind of course-correction from the LNP in the aftermath of Saturday’s election drubbing. A moment of reflection in which it dawned on someone, anyone, that selling yet-to-be-invented carbon sequestration technology as our ticket to net zero emissions wasn’t the way to go, or that shunting the Murugappan (Biloela) family off to Christmas Island was a wedge too far.

Forget about it, Australia. With its moderate faction stripped of parliamentary numbers, a National Party in the thrall of fossil fuel interests and Peter (“he’s no monster”) Dutton at the helm, the LNP is doubling down on right wing dogma.


Exit, stage right. Cartoon: David Rowe, Financial Review

A rightward shift by Dutton et al will comfort progressives, making it that much harder for the LNP to “capture the middle ground” and regain government in three years. But don’t think they and their enablers in the commercial mass media won’t tear this country apart trying.

Thus, while the last change of government in 2013 spawned celebratory copy such as “Libs victory a boost for confidence” and “Tony Abbott will hit the ground running”, corporate media last week gave an early taste of the more hostile fare to come this time around. “Major price hike to power bills” screamed Channel 9, ignoring the fact that regulators sat on that announcement until after the election, while Paul Murray on Sky News got right to the point: Australia has a thousand days to “take the country back from the mad left”.

While the LNP-corporate media assault on the new Albanese Government has yet to fully take shape, it will pretty well mimic the two early thrusts outlined above. Economic hardship (inflation, utility bills, interest rates) much of it attributable to Morrison and Frydenberg’s handling of the economy but blamed exclusively on the new government and amplified to absurdity, and the portrayal of the latter as a pack of woke, would-be socialists determined to sacrifice our liberties on the twin bonfires of “government overreach” (pesky stuff like proper emissions targets and a Federal ICAC) and “political correctness” (among other wedges, the proposed Indigenous voice to Parliament).

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If any of this sounds like the importation of US-style, Fox News-stoked culture wars, that would be because it’s just that. Morrison laid the groundwork for such division with sneering references to inner city progressives, whose “cancel culture” and “identity politics” were at odds with those of the hard-working, mythical “quiet Australian”; you can bet London to a brick that Dutton (previously dubbed “The Minister for Culture Wars”) will be more-than-happy to take that several steps further.

Lachlan Murdoch himself foreshadowed what’s coming in March, the London-born, US-based mogul accusing an “elite” of attacking Australia’s “core values … successes and even our history”.

Vying for the role of Australia’s Tucker Carlson will be Murdoch acolytes such as the aforementioned Paul Murray, the odious Andrew Bolt, and their Sky News Australia colleague Rowan Dean, an excitable fellow who spruiks such fantasies as “cultural Marxism in our primary schools”:

It remains to be seen whether dividing Australian against Australian in this fashion will facilitate a return to power for the LNP.

But it’s clearly in both the new government’s and the nation’s interests that our unhealthy concentration of corporate media ownership – which affords oligarchs like Murdoch the power to divide us in this way – be broken up, lest we see here the kind of News Corp-hyped pandemonium that came to pass at the US Capitol in January last year.

Oh, and if you think a January 6 style riot can’t happen here, here’s a reminder that deluded souls likely glued to Bolt at 7pm on Sky News brought a hangman’s noose (complete with blow-up “Dan Andrews”) to the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House last November.
Late last year, a Labor-Greens majority on the Senate media diversity inquiry recommended a judicial probe with actual teeth to take on “large media organisations [that] have become so powerful and unchecked that they … consider themselves beyond the existing accountability framework”.

While it’s not yet Labor Party policy to follow through on this recommendation, the door remains ajar to what – coupled with a Federal ICAC with broad powers – is a critically-needed change.

Meaningful media reform of the kind a judicial inquiry would undoubtedly recommend can help produce a relatively level playing field in the battle of ideas. This means progressives can push for other important reforms without the media – whose owners and assorted mates often have an interest in stopping such change – distracting, dividing and frustrating it.

If anyone has a motive to curb the power of media oligarchs in the country, it is Anthony Albanese who, during the April-May election campaign, was on the wrong end of arguably the most one-sided, hostile coverage a candidate for high office has ever faced in this country. Should Albanese bite the bullet and launch a judicial inquiry into the media oligarchs, the resulting, bilious front page lies about him will be seen for what they are: sour grapes.

That’s clearly in his, and our, best interests.