The silence is deafening, and money even louder: which ministers are hiding from the media this election?
Who are the ministers mentioned most in the media this election campaign? How about those quoted most frequently? The results say a lot about the issues we're prioritising, and who's spending the most money, according to Streem's Conal Hanna.
The exchange came 52 minutes into the third of three debates, and both leaders appeared tetchy.
Morrison: Who is your home affairs minister to be?
Shorten: We will pick after the election.
Morrison: I was wondering.
Shorten: Will you keep the same environment minister?
Morrison: Yes.
Shorten: Well where is she?
In case it wasn’t abundantly clear, the subtext to this exchange was that the Coalition thinks shadow minister for immigration Shayne Neumann isn’t much chop.
Labor thinks the same of environment minister Melissa Price, and Shorten was referring to a widespread belief that she has been hidden from reporters as the debate about climate change rages.
It’s not just Ms Price. A prevailing narrative during this campaign has been that Scott Morrison has dominated the spotlight for the Coalition, while keeping his ministers behind closed doors. An article by the ABC’s Annabel Crabb on Friday described Mr Morrison as “the Justin Timberlake to (the Liberal Party’s) NSYNC”.
Yet the data suggests both parties are strongly favouring a presidential style of campaign, with the two leaders commanding 2.5 times the media coverage of the rest of their front benches combined. On metropolitan TV, it’s more than four times as much.
This is a shame. Our Westminster system is meant to be a team sport. If we’ve learnt one thing in Australian politics over the past decade, surely it’s the corrosive nature of focusing too narrowly on party leaders at the expense of policy or substance.
Apparently not.
There are two ways to look at the data: the number of media items mentioning each cabinet and shadow-cabinet member, and how many articles quote them.
On the first measure, the 20-strong shadow front bench has appeared in just 29% as many media items as Shorten himself, while Coalition colleagues have 49% of Morrison’s tally.
Of course, it’s one thing to be written or spoken about, as opposed to being quoted in the press.
To measure quotes, we relied on articles from newspapers and online only (radio and TV are included in the mentions tally but quotes are a bit harder to delineate at scale).
Again, Labor shadow ministers trailed their Coalition counterparts, being quoted in only 72% as many articles as their opponents, or 84% in metro markets (regional publications favour the Coalition).
So who are the ministers who have been missing in action this campaign?
The quietest frontbencher for both mentions and quotes has been Labor’s Don Farrell, although it should be noted his Senate spot is not up for re-election this year.
Labor’s Jason Clare, Amanda Rishworth and Michelle Rowland join Mr Farrell as having been quoted fewer times than the lowest-ranked Coalition cabinet member: defence industry minister Linda Reynolds.
Our environment minister Ms Price ranks 14th for the Coalition, which does seem unusually low when climate change has ranked alongside the economy and health among the campaign’s top three issues.
Mr Neuman ranks 15th for Labor, which might also be seen as low, although border protection hasn’t featured nearly as heavily as in prior campaigns.
One can only assume, given her high profile on the campaign, that former NSW premier Kristina Keneally will be primed for a frontbench position if Labor is to win; she has more media mentions than 13 of the current 21 shadow cabinet members.
Whether the same can be said for Tony Abbott is uncertain, but the former prime minister has appeared in more media items than any other Coalition MP, with the exception of Mr Morrison.
Both Mr Abbott (6th) and Ms Keneally (14th) don’t feature quite as heavily when it comes to quotes.
Meanwhile, who is the third most quoted politician of the campaign? Clive Palmer. Money talks.
Conal Hanna has been a journalist and editor for 18 years. He is now media and partnerships lead for Streem realtime media monitoring.
Labour’s decision to have Shorten dominate is baffling. He presents as scripted, fake and untrustworthy, whereas Plibersek, Wong, Albanese and a few others all present with far more humanity and integrity.
Given the election really is an open goal, it might not matter but if they don’t win a significant majority or if they don’t win at all, he’ll only have himself to blame.
This article seems to completely ignore the role the media itself has in driving the narrrative. In particular FTV & the tabloids thrive on a presidential style campaign as it creates more compelling stories/narratives for less engaged voters to be drawn in by. Not sure the parties, in particular Labor, can be held completely responsible for that.
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Agreed. Especially when the Liberal Party have made Bill Shorten the explicit focus of their attack campaigns.
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It doesnt take a rocket surgeon to know Dutton, Hunt and Taylor are poison and the Liberal party dont want them as a focus.
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This is true. I remember when Morrison was made leader of the party, one of those FTV morning shows explicitly ran a segment about “Could Morrison beat Shorten?”, rather than anything to do with the parties
At least Labor have run some team-style ads (even if it’s only the big players) – one assumes the focus on faction warfare in the Liberal party has made them hesitant to talk about the team (the same issue Labor had 8 years ago)
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Yes, how baffling to run with your party leader. Said no-one.
And in most elections the incumbent (correctly) gets more mentions as they are the ones being held more accountable.
Nothing to see here.
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Agree.
NewsCorp / 7, blatantly peddling the LNP party line are echo chambers. (Between them they more or less own Fox (oops ‘Sky’) News Australia…
Not sure if anyone has seen the recent schooling of a so called up and coming conservative in the US; Ben Shapiro? He was being interviewed by Andrew Neil (a conservative), on the BBC and found himself in a real interview and not on Fox News. The outcome = Shapiro gets absolutely owned (found out for what he is; a fraud). Neil literally, reeled him in. Totally schooled him. Well worth a watch. (Neil used to debate at Glasgow Uni back in his Uni days and would tear the place to shreds…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VixqvOcK8E
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but Shorten isn’t the incumbent, he’s the challenger.
of course he needs to be featured, I just think having him so dominant is a mistake – his party’s asset is the depth of their popular and well credentialed bench. Morrison doesn’t have that – we know how crap most of them are by now – whereas he himself remains relatively popular compared to his team