Raising Hell: Issue 93: The 24 Hour News Cycle Never Sleeps. Neither Do I, Apparently
"Money is like manure. If you spread it around, it does a lot of good, but if you pile it up in one place, it stinks like hell," - Clint Murchison Jr, son of Texan oil baron, a'la Francis Bacon
I honestly don’t know what to say. Every year, the end of the year feels like a knock-down, drag out effort to push my blood corpse to the finish line. I guess this is just what it means to live in the end of history.
I know I’m not alone in this, but just this month, I’ve had half a dozen investigations and deep-dives go live, with a few more pending publication. In the last two weeks we’ve had the Murdoch papers give over their editorial masthead to run gas industry propaganda for a week. And then we finished out with the Coalition trying to take out the trash with its suggestion Australia might embrace nuclear and so wind back the clock to the 1950s when men were men and the British were nuking Indigenous people at Maralinga.
If you, like me, had been quietly paying attention to this over the last several months, I expect you’d be equally appalled at how the release of the Coalition’s costings on nuclear played out. After months and months of stonewalling and false promises to release the detail “in due course”, Peter Dutton finally convened a press conference on Friday morning last week where he and his crack team spent a good chunk of their effort attacking Labor instead of talking about what, precisely, they were actually planning.
The numbers, naturally, had been dropped to select political reporters ahead of time, who in turn reported them as if they were a good faith effort at a policy response. Their write ups repeated the major points the Coalition wanted, giving them golden headlines about how much cheaper their plan was compared to Labor’s.
These costings, notably, weren’t released in full until the Coalition called a press conference that morning to trumpet their bold vision for an atomic Australia. This meant no reporter in the scrum had the chance to review these figures or to seek independent legal advice before being given the opportunity to answer questions. Had they been able to, they might have asked why the costings do not include the entire state of Western Australia and makes no mention of water — which is important if you’re trying to keep uranium cool and generate steam as the French have learned. Neither did this modelling mention “climate change” or “global warming”. Though it mentioned the word “emissions” 17 times, and “fossil fuels” four times, the phrase “carbon dioxide” was also absent.
The strategy here was all about timing: drop this thing at the end of the year, later in the day, when everyone is exhausted and the biggest guns in the business half a foot out the door ahead of their holiday. ABC Insider’s was on hiatus, meaning there would be no discussion, and having achieved the golden headlines with a drop, the reporters left to do the legwork would only be able to file somewhere in the middle of the Friday afternoon dead zone — that time when the majority of the public has switched off and gone to the pub. The Coalition understood that few would be paying attention as those reporters filed their stories and the expert reactions came in, and that was the whole point.
Given the enormity of what was being proposed, the experts appeared to give exception under this set of circumstances and queued up, one after another, to shoot down the whole idea. All the way down, every expert approached for comment struggled to find anything kind to say about the proposal that Australia should embrace nuclear. The broad strokes were that the Coalition plan echoed its approach to the NBN; a Gen X dad promise to do half as much in the same amount of time mostly because who needed fast internet or renewable power anyway? The resulting savings, they said, would be glorious — a major win for the party of fiscal responsibility and good economic management. It was also a happy coincidence that the plan would extend the life of coal generation long being its planned lifespan, even as the plants fell apart, and would effectively lock in gas use over the long-term.
What was worse, as multiple others have pointed out to me, was that the whole charade served as little more than a distraction. As a politically, economically and industrially unworkable pipe dream, getting the nation to talk about nuclear served as a way to keep people from talking about climate change or phasing out coal, gas and oil. The Coalition were never going to win a federal election on nuclear. The goal from the start has always been to stoke and then harvest public discontent, and then claim a mandate from the public to “get on with the job” of nuclear post-election. A classic bait-and-switch.
Needless to say, this — combined with the stories published this last fortnight, those to come and the handful of pending projects I will be chasing over the holiday period while everyone else is feasting and partying — is why I’m closing out the year with this short screed. Hopefully as the new year rolls around, and we get more time, I can get back to core business, writing up new finds, detailing any interesting FOI work that comes through and using Raising Hell as the first draft for new projects.
Before we put this to bed for another year, let me say that if you are a financial supporter: thank you. There have been more than a few times throughout 2024 where the kind contribution by Raising Hell’s paying supporters have helped cover Freedom of Information applications, flights for archival visits, hiring researchers and the purchasing of resources that have fed into the stories I have told, or will tell. Thank you also who just subscribe here to follow my work: as I keep saying to people, I can’t keep going unless people read and engage with what I do. I know the news has been bad of late, and will probably keep being bad as we move into 2025. I also know there is a temptation to switch off, but if there’s no audience for what I do, then I’ll eventually have to find something else to do with my time — so I remain grateful that you’re sticking around.
I have also picked up some extra work helping out with Al Jazeera English over Christmas, and when that finishes up, I may actually take a fortnight off in the new year as things quiet down. For now though, we can call it a wrap. Raising Hell will be on hiatus until January 21 when we’ll pick it up again. At the appointed hour, we will resume fortnightly dispatches every Tuesday at 9:14am, South Australian time.
In the meantime, stay safe out there.
Good Reads
Because we here at Raising Hell know how much you love homework…
Cam Wilson writing in Crikey has this excellent story about Jonathan Haidt — author of The Anxious Generation — and his non-response to his critics. Haidt’s work, you may recall, has been used to justify the social media ban embraced by Labor.
I also enjoyed Peter Thiel’s long, painful struggle to answer a question on live television about the American public’s embrace of Luigi Mangione, the man who shot a UnitedHealthcare CEO.
With grim times in the media across the board, Meena Thiruvengadam writing for Nieman Lab resonated for her observation that “Instead of rewarding these things with fair pay, job security and moral support, journalism as an industry exploits their love of the craft.”
"Many books about climate change are worthy but dull. Slick, however, is as readable as it is shocking." - Richard Denniss, The Australia Institute, writing in The Conversation.
Reporting In
Where I recap what I’ve been doing this last fortnight so you know I’m not just using your money to stimulate the local economy …
‘Australia’s Clean Energy Transition Partnership a ‘huge win’ on climate' (The Saturday Paper, 14 December 2024).
‘“Gas eating gas:” Analysis warns new supply will do nothing to alleviate high prices’ (RenewEconomy, 13 December 2024).
‘Regulator to force gas companies to be “clear and accurate” when comparing electric appliances’ (RenewEconomy, 12 December 2024).
‘“Slow moving train wreck: “ Gas prices triple since Woodside cut special deal with state government’ (RenewEconomy, 6 December 2024).
‘Gas warfare: News Corp tabloids’ week of energy doom ends with an anointed saviour’ (Guardian AU, 6 December 2024).
‘Dead native birds and flying foxes found in SA town home to one of world’s largest lead smelters’ (Guardian AU, 5 December 2024).
In book-related news, Slick has also had a few honourable mentions and a new review!
Slick was listed second in The Walkley’ Foundation’s summer reading list — owing in part to it receiving a short-listing at this year’s book award.
Slick also received a very kind word from Walter Marsh in InReview’s 2024 book list.
And Professor Daniel Nyberg writing for The Australian Institute of International Affairs gave Slick a glowing review.
Before You Go (Go)…
Are you a public sector bureaucrat whose tyrannical boss is behaving badly? Have you recently come into possession of documents showing some rich guy is trying to move their ill-gotten-gains to Curacao? Did you take a low-paying job with an evil corporation registered in Delaware that is burying toxic waste under playgrounds? If your conscience is keeping you up at night, or you’d just plain like to see some wrong-doers cast into the sea, we here at Raising Hell can suggest a course of action: leak! You can securely make contact through Signal — contact me first for how. Alternatively you can send us your hard copies to: PO Box 134, Welland SA 5007
And if you’ve come this far, consider supporting me further by picking up one of my books, leaving a review or by just telling a friend about Raising Hell!