Now we are means-testing people for the right to have an opinion in television commercials, it seems that only those who struggle with absolute penury can speak for Australians.
Everyone else is tainted by the bias of success and salaries.
Billionaires can’t complain about higher taxes on super-profits; screen stars can’t complain about pollution.
This is clear after the savage reaction to Cate Blanchett’s five second appearance in a TV advert with a bunch of other people.
Clearly, role models are not what they used to be. Once, successful people were listened to because they obviously had useful insights, and not necessarily restricted to their fields of employment.
So for example, footballers might be rounded up to warn against the menace of alcohol overconsumption or explain how to treat girlfriends.
But Blanchett, it seems, cannot support pricing carbon pollution and must limit herself to advice on how to appear in films.
She and advert partners, including fellow actor Michael Caton, backed the imposition of a price on carbon to cut pollution, as proposed in general terms by the Government.
However, Blanchett’s success and her estimated worth of $53 million angered some who insist she has no right to ``lecture’’ anyone worth less than $53 million. This limits her to wagging her finger at about 0.1 per cent of the Australian population.
But it also opens her to becoming a political emblem who can be punished.
Blanchett’s appearance was an opportunity for Opposition MPs who quickly grabbed the chance for a bit of luvvie bashing, with Blanchett a surrogate for Julia Gillard.
This was skilled, hard-core political exploitation of what viewers might have otherwise dismissed as an annoying interruption to normal TV programming. Some below-the-belt moves were involved, as the actress might say to the Abbott.
The Government didn’t fund the ad and Prime Minister Julia Gillard wasn’t involved in it, but the fact that Blanchett essentially agreed with Gillard was enough for Tony Abbott to insist they were a seamless propaganda unit.
“She should stop thinking that a handful of celebrities somehow represents the voice of the Australian people,” Abbott said of Gillard, without providing a source for this claim.
He further said in Parliament: “This is a Prime Minister who is happy to listen to actors, but she won’t listen to voters.
“She wants to say yes to celebrities, but she won’t say yes to the people of Australia by having an election on this topic.”
Those anti-carbon tax people rallied by a Sydney radio station in Canberra few months ago - and criticised for their witch/bitch signs - would have been nodding vigorously.
If Abbott was tough on Gillard, he was brutal towards Blanchett, who when he was finished twisting things sounded like a privileged airhead.
“I think it’s very important that the actors and celebrities of this country should have their say. They should have their say,” he told Parliament with massive sarcasm.
“People who live in eco mansions have a right to be heard. They really do. People who are worth $53 million have a right to be heard, but their voice should not be heard ahead of the voice of the ordinary working people of Australia.
“Their voice should not be heard ahead of the forgotten families of Australia.”
There was no evidence from Abbott that Blanchett’s opinions were queue jumping.
Abbott insisted voters want an early election on carbon pricing. An Essential Media poll released as he spoke in Parliament revealed there wasn’t majority support for an election. Voters were split 42/42 per cent on the issue.
So who can offer an opinion to Australians if successful people can’t?
Step forward Andrew Laming, a Queensland Liberal federal MP who boasts he is living on less than $1 a day. Surely this means he is poor enough to be free of bias caused by achievement?
He survives “by eating lentils and rice and the occasional little bit of cheese and chocolate”, Laming told reporters last week.
And he makes anti-poverty campaigner Richard Fleming, who last year lived for months on $2 a day, look like Richie Rich.
“And I lived not on $2 a day, but 65 cents a day, so anyone should be able to do it,” said Lamming.
To his significant credit, Laming has under-taken this exercise in deprivation as part of a bid to show people what it would be like to have to live below the poverty line.
And for as long as he continues without benefit of his parliamentary salary he can appear in television ads on carbon pricing, which he opposes.
But should Laming again enjoy his MP’s salary, which like Tony Abbott’s is roughly two and a half times the average individual wage, he will have to join Cate Blanchett on the over-paid outer.
And herewith Mr Laming’s response! First of all, apologies from The Punch for past misspellings of his name. But more importantly, here’s what he had to say following Mr Farr’s piece, above:
The Cate Blanchett storm is a debate not about actors’ rights to campaign, but the degree to which celebrity endorsement works in Australian politics. Our nation is typically sceptical about being told what to do by the rich and powerful. That includes politicians. It is just the way Australians are. It is probably more a bad trait than good, but it constantly reminds public figures to be ‘like them’ rather than walk in our own shoes and tell others what to do.
Part of Blanchett’s dilemma is that she has been shoehorned in with other grabs which barely pass the credibility bar. The 30 second ad features a retiree standing behind a fake one metre dollar coin lauding a carbon tax. That is weird enough. When she says ‘Yes to help for people struggling with their bills,’ and it is the carbon tax which causes the bill increases, scepticism understandably gives way to cynicism. Unfortunately left-wing campaigns notoriously swoon to star power then wonder why such campaigns end up in tears.
Just as footballers can warn against the menace of public health scourges like alcohol over-consumption, Blanchett could have chosen to front any number of less controversial green campaigns; like land clearing, reforestation or bush care. But Blanchett happily signed up for an issue where a fault line runs straight down between two political parties. She chose to back a scheme that PM Gillard promised would never happen under a Government she leads and scepticism is running at nearly 70%.
Blanchett’s reappearance evokes memories of the 2020 summit where there were too many movie stars and too few outcomes. All this lumped together has tipped Blanchett over that subtle line of party politicisation where by entering the cut and thrust of party political debate, she compromises the near universal admiration of being a star. Good on her for the courage to do that.
Most Australians are acutely sensitive to being talked down to. I suspect the reaction to her involvement in middle Australia would have been decidedly mixed. This morning, Blanchett is putting conditionality on her support, including that the poor have to be adequately compensated.
She could start by asking our PM how two blue collar families headed by single-income factory workers are compensated, when one is far more fuel-stressed than the other. In fact, she should have asked these questions before agreeing to appear in the ad. No one else has succeeded in getting those answers from our PM, which is why most would have stayed away from such a superficial and deceitful 30 second advertisement.
Malcolm Farr (in The Punch today) is right that pollies like me are elected to live for a short time on less than a dollar a day. But that is not done in an effort to convince the poor of anything. We endeavoured to walk in the shoes of the 1.7 billion worldwide without food security for a few days, learn a bit about our dependence on food and in the process, raise awareness of going without.
Blanchett’s problem is different. She isn’t trying to see this debate from the perspective of the most vulnerable. Instead she is informing them that the benefits exceed the costs when she isn’t really sure that is the case. The fate of this tax depends overwhelmingly on how the poor are compensated for cost of living, carbon leakage and job losses. The best way forward is a coordinated strategy involving all commodity exporting economies. But Blanchett urges action now and that is what’s likely to worries workers.
Placing it all in perspective, these third-party ads are funded by unions who fund the Labor Government who in turn fund Unions. The ads are also funded by GetUp; majority CFMEU funded, with Labor donors overwhelmingly bankrolling its operations. Blanchett has every right to appear in party political ads and she would have expected the mixed reaction. Her telling us to ‘eat cake and pay the tax’ just doesn’t seem right and in a vigorous liberal democracy, no one need apologise for pointing that out.
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