How Shifting Goalposts Allowed Rupert Murdoch to Shift Politics Right.

 

Recent elections delivered Labor Party a record large majority. Normally it would be a good reason to rejoice for majority of people. After all most people are not rich business owners represented by Liberals. Most people are either employees or unemployed who are much better represented by the left while often demonised by the right.

However, this time around, reactions are more cautions. Sure, members of Labor are celebrating, but broader public so far is quiet. It is far from when Kevin Rudd won in 2007. Back then everyone could clearly see that time of Howard's Work Choices is over, and Labor will bring back justice. Why do people not feel the same now?

Back in the days I wrote several articles on how Labor got too gentrified and out of touch with common people. How now Greens effectively took over the left because they better understand how poor people live and what they have to go through. Greens have solutions, but Labor does not. It all was very damning for Labor.

It's not that what I wrote back then was incorrect, but it still overlooks a very important, but carefully hidden reason for our current problems: shifting goalposts.

It is well known that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has a near monopoly on media in Australia. He is routinely accused of manipulating politics to suit his far-right bias. That all well and good but that is not enough. To really defeat Murdoch, you need to not just accuse him of manipulation, but to also expose how he is doing it.

Murdoch's manipulates politics by shifting goalposts. He and his media company carefully and deliberately misinterprets public opinion to suit their right-wing agenda. What does it mean? I can give a rather recent example.

In 2022-2023 prices on groceries and other things rose up dramatically. Media and public dubbed it a Cost-of-Living Crisis. During the electoral campaign this issue was named as the biggest concern by the Australian public. That led to bi-partisan consensus that fixing cost of living is what new government should focus on.

However, how one can fix cost of living? There could be many solutions: lowering prices artificially, rising salaries and social payments, making certain goods and services free. All sensible solutions.

However, none of these options were discussed by the politicians. Instead, politicians focused on cutting taxes. Cutting taxes was often reported to public as a measure to combat cost of living crisis.

However, why of all measured they could take, politicians focused on cutting taxes. There are many better options that would actually help people. Cutting taxes would only help rich, who can afford groceries anyway. The reason is Murdoch press. 

Murdoch newspapers ran a concerted and choreographed effort to equate Cost of Living with cutting taxes. They deliberately ignored and overlooked any and all alternative measures and insisted that solving cost of living crisis means cutting taxes. Phrase "Cost of Living Crisis" became a middleman that allowed them to pull this trick. First, they label, rising grocery prices "Cost of Living Crisis", then equated solving "Cost of Living Crisis" with cutting taxes.

If we remove phrase "Cost of Living Crisis" and directly connect 'rising grocery prices' with 'cutting taxes', then it is easy to see how much of a nonsense it is. There is no way to fix rising grocery prices by cutting tax. Remove the middleman phrase and its obvious. It is also obvious that government should not cut taxes but do other measures to combat rising grocery prices.

That is how Murdoch press operates. They use these middlemen phrases like Cost-of-Living Crisis to move the goalposts towards their real objectives: making rich richer and poor poorer. Public and government were misled into supporting a measure that does not benefit them in any way to solve the problem they acutely need actual solutions for.

Labor Party too fell victim to this "moving goalposts" strategy. Chalmers competed with opposition in how to better cut tax, making Murdoch happy. It does not matter if Coalition is in opposition if Labor simply does anything he and other ultra rich want. No matter who is in government, Murdoch wins either way.

However, this Murdoch's moving goalposts strategy is bad for the county. Public consistently does not get policy that benefits them. People lose trust not only in government of the day, but in system generally. They start thinking that maybe democracy does not work, and alternatives are needed.

All this is very concerning and dangerous. We need to act fast against Murdoch's propaganda machine if we are to save our democracy and country. 

Murdoch is in Putin's pocket and will turn Australia into another Putinstan if he is allowed to continue. Government should realise Murdoch is duping them and should stop listening to anything he says. There should be Royal Commission into Murdoch's collision with Putin and his editorial practices.

Hopefully incoming government will finally be able to reign in Murdoch's lies and tricks and fix Australia from the damage he has done.