My book, The Rise of the Fifth Estate is released tomorrow. It is available in ebook form in various formats.

Here is a bit of a taste – an excerpt from the first chapter.

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Chapter One: Thrills and Spills

 

For as long as the media have had any say in how the news is to be provided to the public, journalists within its warm and self-protecting bosom have adopted the role of gatekeepers.

This is never more the case than when it comes to the Canberra press gallery. Imagine what it is like to be one of those few — well, actually, the not-so-few. The email list of the federal parliamentary press gallery runs to nine pages, and contains nearly three hundred names (The Australian has eighteen by itself, and the ABC’s names run for over two pages). But when you get down to it, the number of them who get by-lines, whose faces appear on television, and whose voices broadcast the news of the day, are few and privileged.

Oh, to be one of those few. Imagine the power — to be able to decide what to write, the angle, the slant, the lead. To be able to head off for dinner in Kingston or Manuka with some minister — either government or shadow — for a little off -the-record briefing (because we can safely assume that not all of those un-named ‘government sources’ are made up). Imagine being one of those who sit in the parliamentary gallery, overlooking the elected and deciding their fates. Oh, mighty Fourth Estate! Gatekeepers of the
news; provider of opinions for us all!

And should you disagree with a particular opinion or with the presentation of the news, send an email, or get hold of pen and paper, and write a letter to the editor — and see the wonders of free speech and freedom of the press combined (ignoring the fact that the media is the gatekeeper of even the public’s views of the media).

Back in 2007, in the run-up to the November election, the world of political blogs in Australia was beginning to disrupt this nice, century-old tradition. The ‘old media’ — The Australian, most particularly — didn’t take it particularly well. This was odd, not only because it was strange that a paper that held itself up as the leading newspaper of the country should care what a few ‘amateurs’ might think, but because at the time The Australian had one of its best journalists doing great work as a blogger.

The late Matt Price would have been perfect for the Twittersphere. A love of politics and sport, and the ability to mesh both with popular-culture references — such as when he compared the voting publics’ declining attraction to John Howard with Price’s own inexplicable indifference to the band REM — along with an ability to see both sides of a debate, and also to find humour in all things, would have seen Price as assuredly the dominant Australian political journalist on Twitter.

In 2007, Price’s output on The Australian was also the only kind of writing that deserved the name of a ‘blog’ being posted on a mainstream-media website by a journalist. Sure, by this time, Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt had blogs running on The Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun websites, but Price’s blog was secondary to his work as a journalist. On news.com.au, Tim Dunlop was showing everybody how it should be done, as he spent long hours responding to comments, guiding the debate, providing updates and links, and moderating the comments.

Dunlop, however, was a blogger from way back, and was an anomaly among the authors of new-fangled ‘blogs’ that News Limited websites were trying to fashion. While the newspapers would occasionally fi re shots at the blogosphere, and journalists would obviously read the blogs — especially when their own name was mentioned — the interaction between the public and the gatekeepers remained as it ever had been. This was a state of media stasis that, a mere five years later, seems quaint. A look back over recent years shows the great changes that have occurred in the way that political events are reported.

On 11 September 2007, news came through from Canberra of a possible leadership spill within the Liberal Party. In the morning, Sky News ran a story that Malcolm Turnbull and Alexander Downer were withdrawing their support for John Howard. Both Tim Dunlop and Andrew Bolt were onto the story quickly on their respective blogs. Bolt ran with ‘Downer, Turnbull give up on Howard’; Dunlop, with ‘The last days of chez Howard?’ But the best place for readers to find answers to their questions was from Matt Price, who was also covering the story on his blog with the tantalising opening stanza of ‘Something is on in Parliament House’.

What we saw this day would not be the end of the Howard prime ministership, but it was the start of social media breaking down the gate-kept world of Australian politics. Throughout the day, Price provided updates of events taking place:

On the way out of questions, Downer walked past a bunch of journalists and dismissed all this as much ado about nothing, declared nothign [sic] would happen with the leadership, and predicted we’d all get sick of idle speculation over the next six weeks or so.

Yes, even the odd typo would get through — something that bloggers and Twitter users know happens, and that only the most miserable of pedants worry about. The social-media space is fast and messy, and is not the environment for as perfect a news article as one that has passed under the watch of a vigilant subeditor (back when sub-editors were employed directly and were valued).

However, Price was doing more than just providing updates; he was also responding to comments and questions from his readers. During the day he responded fourteen times to readers’ comments.

Some of these involved his calming down the hopes of lefty readers:

LukeH Tue 11 Sep 07 (10.45am) looks and smells like D-Day has arrived for the PM. baseball bats ready?! present arms!

Matt Price Tue 11 Sep 07 (12.18pm) Not so sure, Luke. Howard will need to be blasted out.

Or the delusions of the right:

deadcato Tue 11 Sep 07 (11.35am) Matt, a hypothetical: Costello’s unelectable, Howard’s gone, Turnbull hasn’t had much cut-through despite being fairly high- profile: what are the chances of a genuinely fresh face being vaulted in? I’m thinking Julie Bishop- two months to tart her up, election in January?

Matt Price Tue 11 Sep 07 (12.29pm) You’re dreaming, Deadcato.

He also gave insights into how the system works, and how journalists are never passive agents during a leadership spill:

Jane Tue 11 Sep 07 (11.42am) Is this a case of the Canberra press gallery getting too excited or is it going to be one of those historic days in Federal politics?? I guess we’ll just have to stay online (with Sky news on in the background) to see what happens …

Matt Price Tue 11 Sep 07 (12.33pm) Let’s be clear about this, Jane. When leadership battles are on, MPs use the media to pressurise rivals and send messages to colleagues. I don’t believe David Speers is inventing his story on Sky — clearly, senior Libs are attempting to force JWH to quit.

And then a final summing-up:

nomad3 Tue 11 Sep 07 (01.23pm) Matt, someone asked you a question earlier ... please respond … have you ever seen anything like this this close to an election … whats your take ? you think today is the day?

Matt Price Tue 11 Sep 07 (01.31pm) We’re in new territory, Nomad. Right now it seems Howard will hang in, but who one earth knows?

Over on Andrew Bolt’s blog, predictions were being made:

UPDATE 2: .... Costello isn’t stirring any of this, but is ready to lead. He’ll be prime minister tomorrow

And Matt Price was being used as a primary source:

UPDATE 4: No confirmation from Matt Price, but a sense of end of empire …

This was the blogosphere come to the mainstream media — blogs referencing other blogs, readers discussing events with each other, and it all being done in a fluid and (in the case of Bolt’s prediction) messy way.

There is often a messiness to blogs that is tough for the traditional media to accept (except when they make similar errors). But while it is easy to go in hard on Bolt’s error of foresight, it is clear that he was expressing his gut reaction. On some occasions (such as, much later, when he speculated wrongly about the religion and motives of Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik), this can be unwise, and can lead to false conclusions being made that become fact in the minds of trusting readers. But in the case of the machinations of political parties, Bolt’s readers were after his insights and hunches — and they knew they were just that. No one was thinking it was fact that Costello would be prime minister on 12 September.

Such discussions were not new to the blogging world, but what made this day unique was the presence of Matt Price inside the walls — responding directly to readers, and not filtering them through his editor or the editor of the letters pages.

It was an indicator of where the media would be going, because it was where consumers were demanding the media go. Write a letter to the editor? Why on earth would you bother to do that, when you could leave a comment on a blog of the journalist who wrote the very piece about which you wished to comment? While Price’s responses to his readers showed the way, they were still just a taste of what could be. His fourteen responses were written between 12.17 and 1.31pm. Most of them were in reply to comments written at least an hour earlier.

The nature of the moderation policy for blogs on media websites reduces the ability of the blogger/journalist to provide quick responses, and means that there is next to no chance for there to be quick dialogue between the commenters. Those blogs in September 2007 had brought the interaction between readers and journalists closer than ever before, but real-time responsiveness was still beyond reach. Readers could call out their comments, and know that the journalist would hear them, but the distance between producer and consumer was still there, and it could be measured by the lapse in time between query and response.

The cheek-by-jowl closeness of Twitter was yet to arrive.

Even by the time the leadership of a political party next became the subject of urgent political discourse, little had changed in the social-media landscape of Australian politics. On 15 September 2008, when Malcolm Turnbull challenged Brendan Nelson, none of the journalists in the Canberra press gallery had yet joined Twitter.

There were a few early adopters who existed on the periphery — Sky News director John Bergin had joined on 3 September. The earliest joiner of Twitter from among the main political journalists in the country was news.com.au’s Paul Colgan, who had signed up at the extraordinarily early date of 7 April 2007. Political blogger Malcolm Farnsworth and Crikey blogger Possum Comitatus (Scott Steel) had joined respectively in April and May of 2008, but had little cause to use it. Of the over three hundred journalists who covered federal politics or national affairs, only ten were on Twitter at the time of Turnbull’s leadership challenge.

Some politicians were also on Twitter, but little to do with politics was happening or said there — and certainly not by them. The Greens’ Senator Sarah Hanson-Young was the first Australian politician on Twitter. She joined in April 2007, but she would not find another parliamentarian to tweet to until Malcolm Turnbull joined in October 2008 after his ascension to the leadership of the Liberal Party. Thus, for the social-media history of Australian politics, we can move swiftly past this glorious peak for the Member for Wentworth, and move to his awful valley.

Throughout 2009, Twitter — a social-media program that enabled conversations of 140 characters in length that had been around since March 2006 — suddenly became popular in the Australian political-media world. Journalists who would scarcely admit to reading blogs, let alone commenting on them, were suddenly joining up and putting themselves out in the world of the Internet, and ‘micro-blogging’.

At the end of 2008 there were fourteen Canberra press gallery journalists and Australian political bloggers on Twitter: Paul Colgan, Malcolm Farnsworth, Scott Steel (‘Pollytics’), Michael Rowland, Sophie Black, John Kerrison, Tim Dunlop, Andrew Landeryou, Jonathan Green, John Bergin, Joshua Gans, James Massola, and Jessica Wright. By the end of March 2009, there were forty-six. Among the group that had joined were some of Australia’s most high-profile journalists — the ABC’s Leigh Sales (then with Lateline); Mark Colvin, the host of PM; Annabel Crabb, who quickly built up a large following, and remains the most followed Australian political journalist on Twitter; Crikey’s Canberra correspondent and ex-public servant Bernard Keane; The Age’s Misha Schubert; and News Limited’s David Penberthy.

After being badgered by Scott Steel on the Crikey blog Poll Bludger, I also decided to join — putting aside my concerns that not much of worth could be said in 140 characters, and after I was convinced it was not just a mini-Facebook. I joined in June 2009, by which time seventy-three journalists, political writers, and bloggers were on board. Others less political but ready to ride the social-media wave were aboard — Mia Freedman, having discarded the dead-tree magazine life, and finding branches online with her blog, Mamamia, had joined in February.

One of those journalists less well known to the broader public was Latika Bourke — a young reporter for Fairfax radio. She had joined in March, and quickly took to the medium in a manner that would bring her to a prominence well above what someone in her situation would normally command. She would be one of the first to grasp the possibilities that 140 characters afforded, and it would lead to her becoming one of the top-four most followed journalists covering federal politics — trailing, on the Twitter
mountain, only Annabel Crabb, Laurie Oakes, and Leigh Sales.

Australian politicians were also joining in greater number during 2009. Malcolm Turnbull had been joined by Kevin Rudd on 17 October 2008, and they were later followed by others such as Rob Oakeshott, Steven Ciobo, George Christiansen, Joe Hockey, and Jamie Briggs. Other than Rudd, Labor MPs and senators were somewhat slow on the uptake — the concerns of stuffing up in government being somewhat higher than when they were in opposition — but long-time social-media/Internet champion ACT Senator Kate Lundy joined Twitter in February 2009, followed the next month by Kate Ellis and Tony Burke, whose Twitter style would be the source of amusement and notoriety eighteen months
later, during the 2010 election campaign.

This all led to a community of political writers, participants, and watchers who were ready to put the speed of Twitter to use. Twitter denizens who were confident that they would discover the news well before it made it onto a news website or radio bulletin boasted that Twitter was the future of news here and now. All that was needed was an event of such importance that it would galvanise everybody interested in Australian politics.

This event happened in the last sitting week of the parliamentary year in 2009.

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The book charts the use of blogs and twitter in the coverage and debate of Australian politics and what happens when the traditional media collides with this world – most notably on Twitter. Rather than focus on how media companies and political parties attempt to use the internet to further their aims and adjust their business models I instead examine how journalists and politicians themselves are coping in this new environment. I look at the problems both blogs and the MSM have dealing with comments and misogyny, the fights that can occur on Twitter and what can happen when those in the social media tweak the nose of the traditional media – including what happened when I was outed by The Australian.

The chapter titles are:

Introduction
1. Thrills and Spills
2. The Australian Blogosphere: what, what, how, who, why?
3. Where Are All the Women?
4. Never Read the Comments
5. The MSM v Bloggers: ‘let the professionals do their job’
6. How to Become a Twitter Hashtag
7. Journalists All a Twitter
8. One, Two, Three, Four, I Declare a Twitter War
9. How Many Votes Are There on Twitter?
Conclusion

Hope you enjoy it.

My Drum piece today is on the Oscars. I have been putting off getting back to writing about politics for a long as possible. I suppose I could have churned out something on the Australia Day stuff, but, meh.

Due to my book writing labours I’m not able to quickly get out a piece in a few hours on Tuesday afternoon, which is disappointing because I would have loved to have written about Abbott’s lame National Press Club speech, and the lamer response by the assorted journalists there and those watching.

Any one who had any thoughts that Abbott would “flick the switch to positive” found themselves to be much mistaken yesterday. Abbott read out a speech he must have given at least 50 times by now. It contained nothing new. Nothing. Not a thing.

Here’s the thing – why can’t the press gallery slaughter this chump? It’s not like they can use the excuse that they didn’t know what he was going to talk about. Nothing he said was new. Nothing.

The same sound bites that he uses – came out again and again. Here’s a taste:

Australia was a stronger society because we had a stronger economy. Between 1996 and 2007, real wages increased more than 20 per cent, real household wealth per person more than doubled, and there were more than two million new jobs.

Since then, real household wealth has declined, productivity has stagnated and 2011 was the first year since 1992 without a net increase in jobs.

Well shit me. You’d almost think there was no Global Financial Crisis, eh Tony?

No good government would ever spend more than a billion dollars putting pink batts into roofs and a billion dollars to take them out again. It wouldn’t spend $16 billion on over-priced school halls while the standards of academic achievement actually fell.

Only thing is of course it didn’t spend $16b on “over-priced school halls”; no report anywhere has suggest it did. But hey – let that one go through to the keeper. Academic achievement actually fell?? Actually what happened is the NAPLAN tests revealed that 

93 per cent of students are achieving at or above the minimum standard in reading, writing and numeracy, but that the best students were not doing as well as in previous years.

The NAPLAN report also found

'The line representing the trend is almost completely flat … This picture of no change applies equally to males and females as well as to students with a language background other than English and students with an English language background.''

Now firstly – that is according to NAPLAN, which is just one indicator – but “the best students not doing as well”, or “the trend is flat” does not mean “academic achievement actually fell”, actually. What it means, actually is that Abbott is making stuff up.

Through to the keeper.

Big savings could be made in the government’s $350 a throw set top box programme since Gerry Harvey can supply and install them for half the price.

Ah Gerry Harvey. Praise be the non-complaining business man. That no journalist in the room nailed Abbott to the wall on this bit of shite is just another one to add to the pile of indictments. The set-top box scheme was demanded by the Liberal Party – they were worried about pensioners and the like being left sitting in front of a TV that didn’t work. Harvey can do it for less? Well good, because here’s what he needs to do for $350, via the DBCDE website:

Fact: the $350 figure is an average cost for the assistance package per household, not just for a set top box. It also includes:

• Administration costs for Centrelink to advise people if they are eligible, to set up appointments for installation, follow up phone calls and checks
• A set top box which is accessible for the elderly and people with special needs. The Consumer Expert Group was consulted on the appropriate set top box for the Scheme.
• Installation of the set top box and any re-wiring, antenna adjustment and demonstrations.
• An in-home warranty.
• Access to a free hotline for 12 months following installation.

As Conroy said at the time, if Harvey can do it for less, there’s a profit to be made Gerry, go to it. Now this little furphy has been around since May last year. Where are all the stories of rorts and waste? Sure there some good ole anecdotes, but are you telling me if I didn’t ask around I couldn’t find anyone who has some complaints with something they bought from Gerry Harvey? 

I keep wondering why journalists are so stymied by Abbott, but really the reason is clear – he’s a journalist. The guy was a leader writer for The Australian. He thinks in anecdotes. He thinks the one does actually represent the all. There’s a school with a poor BER spend? Why then $16b was wasted. Gerry Harvey says in an interview that he could do set-top boxes for less? Why then it must be true. Run with it! So when he spouts lines in the same manner that journalists would report them, well geez… what do journalists do… hmmm maybe ask if he is going to go positive?

Most in the press gallery are hamstrung because he thinks like they do. Paul Bongiorno actually had the temerity to stand apart and introduce some facts taking about the fact all credit agencies rate Australia AAA, that the cash rate is lower than when the Howard Govt was in office, and the response was “lower taxes, less waste yada yada yada”. It was a good effort by Bongiorno, but he had little support.

Take this from Abbott yesterday – again nothing new:

Finally, the coalition’s plan for a more prosperous future will try to ensure that our children and grandchildren look back appreciatively on the big decisions this generation has made.

We have a responsibility to ensure that our land is as productive as possible, that’s why we are looking at new dam sites especially in northern Australia which could become a food bowl to Asia.

Sounds wonderful. Geez, I wish it could be so, but here’s the thing – In February 2010, the Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce released a report. This was a Taskforce that wanted to find good news. It had Bill Hefferrnan as its chairman. Here is a paragraph on ITS FIRST PAGE

The north is not a vacant land. It needs to be actively managed for resilience and sustainability, based on a contemporary and informed understanding of the complexities of the landscape and its people. Contrary to popular belief, water resources in the north are neither unlimited, nor wasted. Equally, the potential for northern Australia to become a ‘food bowl’ is not supported by evidence.

Now I was sitting at home, writing away on a chapter for my book incidentally about how journalists use social media, and I heard that statement by Abbott. I immediately thought, that old chestnut, hasn’t that been shown to be a pipe dream?

A 20 second search on Google found the report. I didn’t link to it, but I did link to this ABC article on it titled

Report kills northern food bowl dream

Now maybe Abbott has some new evidence he can tell us about that has come to light since 2010. We’re all ears Tony, ante up.

Who was in the gallery, either in the NPC or online was also thinking “that old chestnut”?

No one. Instead we had the likes of James Massola, who made the statement on Twitter after seeing some tweets by ALP MPs who were also watching Abbott’s speech:

seems like a few Labor MPs tweeting from the same script following the Abbott press club speech. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

When I challenged him that all I had seen was a couple MPs mention the figure related to spending as a proportion of GDP, he replied:

also 1 about taxes and small business. as i said, "not that there is anything wrong with that". it just stands out in tweetdeck

Well geez. Two tweets. Well done, ace. Good to see you’re using social media for all that it is worth.

Last month the NY Times public editor wrote a column that asked:

Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?

I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

Well hell. You can only imagine the response.

But here’s the thing – who is being a truth vigilante here? All I see is journos repeating what Abbott said and then telling us that he cuts through, then they go looking for signs of how the ALP are reacting, of if Rudd’s about to challenge. Take Peter Hartcher’s oped on Abbott speech. It’s all bullshit blather about his tone, and how he’ll need to be positive and how yesterday was a start down this road:

He told us not only what he opposed but what he stood for. He was pro-immigration, pro-environment, pro-manufacturing, pro-social spending, pro-Aborigine, pro-infrastructure, pro-tax cuts and pro-productivity.

You gotta be kidding me.

We knew that all before yesterday.

THERE WAS NOTHING NEW!

What we also knew what that those statements are based on nothing. Pro-environment? What does that even mean?

Last year I wondered how Abbott could continue after he admitted to Kerry O’Brien that he stretched the truth during the cut and thrust of interviews.

I wondered how could a guy who admitted to lying when it suited him survive. But of course, he was only lying to journalists. Who the hell wouldn’t? Most people if you asked  them – would you lie to a journalist if that meant they would go easier on you? The answer would be a “Hell yes”. Most people would say anything to get rid of the journalist, most people don’t trust them, so why should it matter if Abbott lies to them? 

Where is the journalist who is sitting at his/her desk and is linking to reports and ABS data as Abbott speaks? Latika Bourke transcribes everything said at any press conf quite well. She is good to follow if you can’t watch it yourself. We don’t need two of her. Where is the person who has the knowledge of policies so that when Abbott (or Gillard, or Pyne or Swan or Hockey or Combet or Robb) says something in a press conf, he or she is known as the one to follow because he or she will find the evidence that either supports what they are saying, or the evidence to show its all bullshit?

No one in the media that I am aware of. 

For that you need to read blogs. Blogs written by folk who don’t give a damn that some Minister’s press secretary might freeze them out.

And if I’m wrong. C’mon journalists, send me the links with all the articles written today pointing out the dodgy statements, unsupported claims and pie in the sky bull that Abbott said yesterday.

Hit me with them.

My Drum piece today is on how the film industry keeps making crap and treats consumers like crap and then wonders why box office revenue is falling… oh yeah “it’s the pirates”.

The piece has a few graphs (but of course), but I didn’t have space to put in are I think quite instructive, which are posted below.

By the way long time readers – yes, you three – will know this has been a bit of a hobby horse of mine. I am a bit of a nut for box office data because, well I love data and I love film, so it’s kind of a perfect match. It all started because when I wrote my PhD thesis on satires of Hollywood I wrote this one sentence:

Thus even the once examined total gross figure has been replaced by a short term figure (opening weekend); one that reflects more the ability of the studio’s marketing department than the film’s artistic quality, or popularity.

It sounded good, but I realised I needed to be able to prove it or I had to cut it (such is the life of a PhD student). And so I spent the next week gathering the box office data on every film that had opened in America since 1981, did a few statistical things, made a lot of graphs, and then wrote a footnote. One week’s work to prove one sentence and to produce one footnote. Such fun.

Anyhoo here are the graphs.

The first shows the number of films each year in America that reach number 1 at the box office:

The more films that reach this indicate more “blockbusters” and less time each film (including poor little Australian ones) to achieve success in the cinemas.

The other one is a comparison of the percentage of films released each year with an “R” rating (effectively like Australia's “M”) and also what percentage such films account for in Total Box Office:

Even up till the late 1990s R rated films accounted for half of all releases; now they’re down to 30 per cent. If you think there are less movies aimed towards adults, you are right.

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The other thing of note is today in the Canberra Times, Markus Mannhein writes about new guidelines introduced by the Australian Public Service Commission for public servants and use of social media out of work. The new guidelines include provisions which Mannheim writes have been dubbed “The Jericho Amendments” (as one on Twitter has suggested, that sounds like the next John Grisham novel).Now firstly, this will be covered in my book on social media that I am currently writing (so thanks APSC for the need to write a new section) and so I will hold most of my thoughts for that (also I’ve thought about this for about an hour so it’s not fully developed).

The news guidelines do include some good advice about commenting anonymously online – advice in fact that I lived by when I wrote under a pseudonym.

But then they also contain these “principles”":

Making public comment in an unofficial capacity—general principles

When APS employees are making public comment in an unofficial capacity, it is not appropriate for them to make comment that is, or could be perceived to be:

• being made on behalf of their agency or the Government, rather than an expression of a personal view
• compromising the  APS employee’s capacity to fulfil their duties in an unbiased manner. This applies particularly where comment is made about policies and programmes of the employee’s agency
• so harsh or extreme in its criticism of the Government, a member of parliament from another political party, or their respective policies, that it raises questions about the APS employee’s capacity to work professionally, efficiently or impartially. Such comment does not have to relate to the employee’s area of work
• so strong in its criticism of an agency’s administration that it could seriously disrupt the workplace. APS employees are encouraged instead to resolve concerns by informal discussion with a manager or by using internal dispute resolution mechanisms, including the APS whistleblowing scheme if appropriate
• a gratuitous personal attack that might reasonably be perceived to be connected with their employment
• unreasonable criticism of an agency’s clients and other stakeholders
• compromising public confidence in the agency or the APS.

The first point is fine; the second is OKish, but can be subject to a wide view – you are always going to be in trouble if you start commenting on policies that you are working on. I wrote a couple times about the insulation scheme which was being run in the Dept of Environment, of which Arts was within (but completely separate from) and I commented on the program’s media coverage and response by the opposition rather than the policy itself. As a rule though I steered clear of the Department.

The third point though is utterly stupid. It is written by someone who does not understand social media, and bizarrely has no concept of what public service work is all about. It is written like the public service is a company. My work in the public service rarely had anything to do with politics or policy which was controversial. I first worked for the Howard Government, and thought as a whole his government was terrible – but I liked the policy/programs on which I worked and did my best to ensure they were implemented or advocated. This is actually how it often is. You think things the Govt does as a whole are dopey but you like your own area. Even if you think your own area’s policy is dopey you do it, and you don’t comment publicly that you think it is dopey. Like most workers in Australia you just complain about it over coffee at morning tea.

Pretty reasonable.

But now we have “Such comment does not have to relate to the employee’s area of work”. Which potentially means every Government policy, and because Government policy covers much of life that will mean that as well – pokies, internet filtering, gay marriage, media regulation, climate change…

We also have “so harsh or extreme”.

What is “so harsh or extreme”? Who defines this? In my experience all this will do is encourage trolls on the net to go looking for public servants on Twitter and threaten their jobs if they make any political statements. It will also encourage lazy “journalists” who are seeking a bit of kudos from their bosses in any lame anti-social media fight they wish to wage to go hunting for public servants as well.  The worst James Massola could come up with was me writing:

Greg Hunt "could write a PhD thesis on environmental political cowardice."

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is "the master of spin" and, on the Rooty Hill leader's forum, "because it wasn't a debate Abbott was able to get away with an inordinate amount of bullshit".

Is that really harsh or extreme?

And as for writing about my own Dept again here’s the best Massola could find to damn me with:

"Garrett was demoted for no good reason" and that ". . . Garrett has been demoted, despite no-one in the media or the opposition actually being able to explain just exactly with any level of intelligence what he did wrong, he was deemed to have 'bungled'."

Not exactly policy specific – and also quite impartial because I was actually attacking the opposition and media for failing to show any intelligent reason why Garrett should be demoted and Rudd for demoting him!

But ahh such joys you can have debating such things – and if you are a public servant you are more likely to be debating them with your boss.

The guidelines won’t actually affect one bit how any public servant does their job; it will just mean people’s lives will be made hell for periods while the media or trolls (or both, as they can at times be indistinguishable) turn their attention on them. And then those public servants will probably create a new pseudonymous Twitter account and lock it.

The last four points are either so obvious or dumb as could only be written by a public servant. I’d like them to find one Tweet or blog post that could “seriously disrupt the workplace”. The only way that could happen that would not have previously been covered by the code of conduct is if media attention on a workplace occurred because of the third point. So in effect these guidelines will cause the disruption; not the social media comments.

The rest are points that are obvious from any reading of the APS code of conduct, but only serve to murky the waters for example “gratuitous attack connected with their employment”. Is that someone who works for Centrelink or the Dept of Agriculture tweeting that Gillard’s policy on asylum seekers shows her to be absolutely soulless? Or someone writing that her not being in favour of gay marriage is a cruel act that smacks of homophobia? Probably not, but with these guidelines I wouldn’t make a habit of such tweets because they may get the attention of someone who thinks it’s fun and games to start sending off emails to the Secretary of your Department in the hope of having you sacked. (And believe me, such people exist.)

The thing about the APSC is in that not once in entire time since I have gone through what pretty much everyone acknowledges was a first for a public servant in Australia have they contacted me to seek any input on social media policy. It nicely ironic that “the Jericho Amendments” had no input from this Jericho.

Want to know how pathetic the APSC is when it comes to social media – take a look at their Facebook page. They have no idea what social media is or how it operates.

The public service is constantly being encouraged to be less worried about risk in order to free up bureaucratic process and to embrace social media. These guidelines are contrary to that.

Dumb move APSC.

Not surprising, though.