Antinuclear

In between, the government’s COVID economic recovery panel, chaired by another energy company executive, also urged that gas be used as part of Australia’s economic recovery. Both ideas would require massive government subsidies for gas companies like Santos.

As a result Santos has had a good week. Last Friday, the company saw its share price close at $4.60. Yesterday it closed at $5.29, a 15% rise compared to just 3% on the ASX 200.

This represents a handy return on investment. Santos is the country’s second-biggest fossil fuel industry political donor after Clive Palmer, having given over $1 million to the Coalition in the last decade. It has a rich history of exchanging staff with Coalition governments……

[In the media coverage] The story was treated as an energy or climate policy story, rather than one about corruption and power…….

When even good, experienced journalists fail to give a full account of the fossil fuel companies working to not merely stymie climate action but to turn climate policies to their financial advantage, it points to a serious problem in our media — an inability to explore how surface events reflect underlying structures of power in Australia.

And it results in a normalisation of corruption.

Why do we instinctively see corruption if Trump does something, but if the government here does exactly the same thing, it’s written up seriously as an energy policy story, with the government and business on one side of a serious debate and “green groups” on the other?

We see through the words a figure like Trump uses to disguise their corruption; here, the same words are taken at face value, and debated as serious contributions to policy……

Turnbull at least spoke and wrote about the role of fossil fuel interests and News Corp (which he correctly described as a foreign political party, rather than what it purports to be, an Australian media company) …..

Despite the woeful level of transparency around influence-peddling, there is considerable information available about the financial and personal links between key stakeholders and policymakers across federal politics.

Michael West is the one journalist who assiduously explores these links and compiles information about them. He sees the flow of money and follows it, showing how it can be done even by a lone journalist willing to delve into the details.

At the ABC, Stephen Long is one of the few mainstream media journalists who sees his “investigative” role as extending to the structures of power rather than simply the surface. Paul Karp of The Guardian is also attuned to the tendency of donors to benefit from political parties. But they are, sadly, exceptions.

We’ve seen before what happens when the media ignores the underlying reasons for decisions by policymakers.

For years, the extensive donations by the major banks to the Liberal Party, and the revolving door between the executive suites of banks and the ranks of both ministerial staff and ministers themselves, was ignored by the media. The donations and revolving doors operated for both political parties, but the Liberals had — and have — by far the deepest and richest links with the banks.

But the role of these financial and personal links in the Liberals’ long-running protection of the banks from regulation, and their constant attacks on industry superannuation funds, received little attention…….

Australia’s political system is corrupted.

Corrupted not merely or even particularly in the NSW Labor way of bags of cash and dodgy deals for mates, but systemically, institutionally corrupt, a pervasive soft corruption in which the powerful use money and lobbying to influence policymakers and get favourable policies, indeed, as we’ve seen this week, often get to craft policy themselves.

All it takes to understand and explain that is to look beneath the surface.

Is the Australian media holding policymakers to account? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column.  https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/05/22/political-reporters-not-doing-their-job-power-corruption/