I’ll be out door-knocking in Bennelong this weekend, talking to real people and listening to their stories. Nothing beats it for direct feedback on a range of fronts. Every time I do it I come away with a couple of reaffirming anecdotes – usually about people’s resilience, ingenuity, wisdom, and humanity. Real human interest stories aren’t hard to come by. You just have to listen.
The last thing I’ll be doing this weekend will be switching on the television. I’m trying to avoid becoming an unwilling passenger on Michael Jackson’s final journey home to Neverland.
Despite my best efforts I suspect that, like death and taxes, celebrity death coverage will still prove to be inescapable. As we’ve seen across last week’s media landscape, dead celebrities are the undisputed rulers of the news cycle.
Death is only the end for the celebrity in question. The soul is gone but the estate lives on. Eternity is assured by the posse of agents, lawyers, relatives, hangers-on, and other vultures circling to feed off the carcass.
With all those extra channels to fill and web pages to keep refreshing these days celebrity carkees are in hot demand.
Yesterday it was Mollie Sugden and Karl Malden. While Karl did win an Oscar it seems any bit part is enough to win you an obit these days. Even British B-grade comedian Reg Varney got a guernsey in November last year for dropping off the twig. Around the same time the passing of the wonderful Australian children’s author Ivan Southall went mostly unmarked.
This phenomenon is all about easy access to other people’s coverage off a satellite. It has nothing to do with defining who or what is important to our lives in Australia.
What hope then for stories about real people’s struggles when even the great and the good in Australia are crowded out of coverage?
Stories about people who aren’t celebrities require character development. But they’re so much more rewarding and compelling.
I gave a Constituency Statement in Parliament last month about a little girl called Matilda Rose Carnegie. She was born with bilateral profound deafness. As a baby she spent more time in hospitals than you would wish for any child, but today, fitted with a state of the art Nucleus Freedom implant, she is a bright communicative 10 year old student at St Catherine’s in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
Her success is a result of many things – an indomitable spirit, devoted and gutsy parenting, early intervention and outstanding technology.
It’s why the story of the week for me was when the Prime Minister acted on an idea put to him by former Liberal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson that every new born infant be screened for hearing impairment.
Harvey Dillon, the Research Director at the National Acoustics Laboratory tells me that Australia is recognised as having the best system in the world for looking after children once their hearing loss is detected, but testing at birth, across the country, is patchy.
That will change, with a commitment from the PM, for universal coverage by 2010.
As with so many things to do with infant care, early detection is essential. Those born with a hearing impairment and who receive a cochlear implant before their first birthday do much better than those who are fitted with the device at a later age.
For children, language is learning. Opening the door for deaf children to the world of speech is revolutionary. Think of that the next time you want to mock the notion of an Education Revolution.
Bravo Kevin and Brendan. You’ve proved that politicians can rise above their differences to work together for those in need.
The celebrity dominated news cycle might mark the passing days, but it’s governments that make a difference in people’s lives.
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