Opinion_template

Opinion- 28 November 2006

"I'm not here just to fill a place on the front bench. I actually want to achieve things." -- Julie Bishop

Puff Piece: an article or report in the media that is based on exaggerated praise to promote a person, entity, or event.

This past Saturday, Michael Gordon* had a 4400 word article in The Sydney Morning Herald's Good Weekend, "Good Morning Ms Bishop".

It is a remarkable piece of journalism and if it is an accurate portrayal of the current Minister for Education, Science and Training it is the antithesis of what is known by journos as a puff piece.

What comes through is an individual of overweening ambition who, like Brendan Nelson before her, is serving her time in the portfolio, but poised on the starting blocks to get out and up to where the real action is.

Gordon has the minister telling a group of "year 11 girls at an outer suburban Adelaide high school... 'I can't wait to wake up every morning and get to work... It's so exciting.'"

And Gordon follows this up, one feels quasi-sotto voce, "says one federal MP. 'She has some areas of passion but they're well-hidden because she knows that, if you want to get on, you have to conform.'"

Gordon then gives paragraph after paragraph of snippets of Julie Bishop's personal history to show that she is hard and focused on being politically upwardly mobile. "When Bishop decided to run for Parliament in 1998, few in the party gave her a chance of winning the seat of Curtin, in Perth's west. The higher-profile Ken Court, brother of Richard and son of Sir Charles, had tried and failed to win the seat back from Allan Rocher, a Liberal-turned-independent, less than three years earlier in 1996.

"The bigger obstacle to Bishop's run, however, was that Rocher, who had held the seat since 1981, remained a good friend of John Howard and used the Prime Minister's endorsement of himself as 'one of the most honourable people I have associated with' prominently in his election material. The day Howard flew to Perth to have his photograph taken with Liberal candidates, The Australian reported that the Prime Minister had told cabinet colleagues not to campaign in the seat, prompting a toe-to-toe argument between Bishop and the PM in the office of another Liberal MP, Don Randall, where the photos were to be taken.

Bishop points out that John Howard has now appointed her to cabinet, but does not go into the reasons, but it is a reasonable assumption that it is in part to keep Costello and Downer on side.

Gordon then makes the observation, "just as Costello's future will be less certain if Howard wins again next year, Bishop is now just one of several potential contenders for the deputy leadership including [Alexander] Downer, Brendan Nelson, Tony Abbott and Mal Brough."

And then Gordon gets in this shot, "Bishop says her singular focus is on performing as a cabinet minister, representing Curtin and responding to requests from colleagues to speak at electorate functions. Initially, she was portrayed as a contrast to what critics saw as the headline grabbing, confrontational approach of her predecessor in the education portfolio, Brendan Nelson.

"Having stressed the importance of a 'dispersal of power' in her maiden speech and expressed initial confidence that she would work with state education ministers, all of them from the Labor Party, it seemed Bishop would opt for a more conciliatory approach. It didn't last."

What happened, well we can only guess but we have a hint from something Brendan Nelson let slip when he explained to an audience what the Prime Minister had charged him to do when he made him Minister for Education, Science and Training:

What has become evident once she began to court the media was her being prone to commit gaffes. The most reverberating being the claim that some themes emerging in school curricula were "straight from Chairman Mao". That was in the text she gave to the media on October 6, 2006. It raised enough of a stench when referred to in the morning papers, that she cut it out of the actual address she made later that day.

A guess --- three days earlier on October 3 Prime Minister Howard in an address celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the journal Quadrant told his audience, "We should not underestimate the degree to which the soft-left still holds sway, even dominance, especially in Australia's Universities."

A thematic variation by Ms Bishop perhaps to curry favour with the Prime Minister?

And her repeated championing of US liberal arts colleges, such as Wellesley (current endowment ~A$1.6 billion, student body 2,300 women, student/staff ratio of 11.5), as models for the diversification of Australian universities shows a remarkable lack of understanding (or interest?) of the resources available to them or the breath of their curricula and quality and function of their academic staff.

But by far the most depressing part of Michael Gordon's article is that in the entire 4,400 words there is not a mention of science or research or universities.

But in fairness university got one mention when Gordon refers to the bout of glandular fever Julie Bishop had in year 12. "Even so, she did more than well enough to earn a place in law at the University of Adelaide."

Although Michael Gordon has her telling the year 11 girls, "I can't wait to wake up every morning and get to work... It's so exciting," we're not told if she explained just what it is that is so exciting, nor has he explained just what is the something she "actually wants to achieve".

With an advocate such as Ms Bishop there really is no need for higher education or science to scour the land for opponents.