Home › About › Henry Mayer Lecture › Professor Rodney Tiffen

In several important ways Australian democracy was in a worse state at the end of the Howard era than at the beginning. Such judgments are always problematic, and Australian democracy is more vibrant and resilient than critics of government action sometimes think. If we focus exclusively for example on the way that the Freedom of Information Act has been eroded or implemented in ways that undermine its purposes, then we may lose sight of the larger countervailing social forces moving in the direction of greater disclosure. Nevertheless the concentration of executive power and the use of public resources and institutions for partisan advantage both became considerably worse during the eleven and a half years of the coalition government. In particular the larger dimensions of the spin enterprise and efforts at the control of and shaping of information and of manipulating the media all became even more pronounced. 

This lecture considers some of the trends undermining Australian democracy during the Howard era especially as they relate to the news media, and also speculates about which of them will continue to get worse whatever the colour of the government, and which are particular to the government just defeated.