Among the many lessons to be learnt by Australia’s defeated Liberal-National coalition parties from the election is that they should stop getting into bed with News Corporation.

Why would a political party outsource its policy platform and strategy to people with plenty of opinions, but no experience in actually running a government?

The result of the federal election suggests that unlike the coalition, many Australians are ignoring the opinions of News Corp Australia’s leading journalists such as Andrew Bolt and Sharri Markson.

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Last Thursday, in her eponymous programme on Sky News Australia, Markson said:

For the first time in my journalistic career I’m going to also offer a pre-election editorial, endorsing one side of politics […] A Dutton prime ministership would give our great nation the fresh start we deserve.

Sharri Markson issues own Dutton endorsement as ACM says ‘Australia is Tanya Plibersek’https://t.co/UYh0xKeXPR

— amanda meade (@meadea) May 2, 2025

After a vote count that sees the Labor government returned with an increased majority, Bolt wrote a piece for the Herald Sun admonishing voters:

No, the voters aren’t always right. This time they were wrong, and this gutless and incoherent Coalition should be ashamed.

Australians just voted for three more years of a Labor government that’s left this country poorer, weaker, more divided and deeper in debt, and which won only by telling astonishing lies.

That’s staggering. If that’s what voters really like, then this country is going to get more of it, good and hard.

The Australian and most of News’ tabloid newspapers endorsed the coalition in their election eve editorials.

Repudiation of minor culture war
The election result was a repudiation of the minor culture war Peter Dutton reprised during the campaign when he advised voters to steer clear of the ABC and “other hate media”. It may have felt good alluding to “leftie-woke” tropes about the ABC, but it was a tactical error.

The message probably resonated only with rusted-on hardline coalition voters and supporters of right-wing minor parties.

But they were either voting for the coalition, or sending them their preferences, anyway. Instead, attacking the ABC sent a signal to the people the coalition desperately needed to keep onside — the moderates who already felt disappointed by the coalition’s drift to the right and who were considering voting Teal or for another independent.

Attacking just about the most trusted media outlet in the country simply gave those voters another reason to believe the coalition no longer represented their values.

Reporting from the campaign bus is often derided as shallow form of election coverage. Reporters tend to be captive to a party’s agenda and don’t get to look much beyond a leader’s message.

But there was real value in covering Dutton’s daily stunts and doorstops, often in the outer suburbs that his electoral strategy relied on winning over.

What was revealed by having journalists on the bus was the paucity of policy substance. Details about housing affordability and petrol pricing — which voters desperately wanted to hear — were little more than sound bites.

Steered clear of nuclear sites
This was obvious by Dutton’s second visit to a petrol station, and yet there were another 15 to come. The fact that the campaign bus steered clear of the sites for proposed nuclear plants was also telling.

Dutton has come out this morning to say his biggest regret was not attending more petrol stations. #auspol #ausvotes #qanda #abc730 pic.twitter.com/sbd6GWpElR

— C h r i s @chrishehim.bsky.social (@ChrisHeHim1) May 4, 2025

The grind of daily coverage helped expose the lateness of policy releases, the paucity of detail and the lack of preparation for the campaign, let alone for government.

On ABC TV’s Insiders, the Nine Newspapers’ political editor, David Crowe, wondered whether the media has been too soft on Dutton, rather than too hard as some coalition supporters might assume.

He reckoned that if the media had asked more difficult questions months ago, Dutton might have been stress-tested and better prepared before the campaign began.

Instead, the coalition went into the election believing it would be enough to attack Labor without presenting a fully considered alternative vision. Similarly, it would suffice to appear on friendly media outlets such as News Corp, and avoid more searching questions from the Canberra press gallery or on the ABC.

Reporters and commentators across the media did a reasonable job of exposing this and holding the opposition to account. The scrutiny also exposed its increasingly desperate tactics late in the campaign, such as turning on Welcome to Country ceremonies.

If many Australians appear more interested in what their prospective political leaders have to say about housing policy or climate change than the endless culture wars being waged by the coalition, that message did not appear to have been heard by Peta Credlin.

The Sky News Australia presenter and former chief-of-staff to prime minister Tony Abbott said during Saturday night’s election coverage “I’d argue we didn’t do enough of a culture war”.

Dr Matthew Ricketson is professor of communication, Deakin University and Andrew Dodd  is professor of journalism and director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Many different arguments for and against the Voice to Parliament have been heard in the lead-up to this year’s referendum in Australia. This has included some media and politicians drawing comparisons between the Voice and South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Cory Bernardi, a Sky News commentator, argued, for instance, that by implementing the Voice, “we’re effectively announcing an apartheid-type state, where some citizens have more legal rights or more rights in general than others”.

As legal scholar Bede Harris has pointed out, it’s quite clear Bernardi doesn’t understand apartheid. He said,

How the Voice could be described as creating such a system is unfathomable.

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Comparisons to apartheid
Apartheid was a system of racial segregation implemented by the South African government to control and restrict the lives of the non-white populations, and to stop them from voting.

During apartheid, non-white people could not freely visit the same beaches, live in the same neighbourhoods, attend the same schools or queue in the same lines as white people. My wife recalls her white parents being questioned by police after visiting the home of a Black colleague.

The proposed Voice will ensure First Nations peoples have their views heard by Parliament.

It won’t have the power to stop people swimming at the same beaches or living, studying or shopping together. It won’t stop interracial marriages as the apartheid regime did. It doesn’t give anybody extra political rights.

It simply provides First Nations people, who have previously had no say in developing the country’s system of government, with an opportunity to participate in a way that many say is meaningful and respectful.

Apartheid and the Voice are polar opposites. The Voice is a path towards democratic participation, while apartheid eliminated any opportunity for this.

Evoking emotional responses, like Bernardi attempted to do, can inspire people to quickly align with a political cause that moderation and reason might not encourage. This means opinions may be formed from limited understanding and misinformation.

“Whether you vote yes or no in the coming referendum, your choice deserves respect.” #CharlesSturtUni constitutional law expert has challenged claims made by a SKY TV host likening the proposed Voice to Parliament to an apartheid-type state.https://t.co/EePzMcIksO

— Charles Sturt University (@CharlesSturtUni) May 9, 2023

Misinformation doesn’t stop at apartheid comparisons
The Institute of Public Affairs, a conservative lobby group, has published a “research” paper claiming the Voice would be like New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal and be able to veto decisions of the Parliament.

The truth is the tribunal is not a “Maori Voice to Parliament”. It can’t veto Parliament.

The Waitangi Tribunal is a permanent commission of inquiry. It is chaired by a judge and has Māori and non-Māori membership. Its job is to investigate alleged breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi.

The tribunal’s task is an independent search for truth. When it upholds a claim, its recommended remedies become the subject of political negotiation between government and claimants.

The Voice in Australia would make representations to Parliament. This is also not a veto. A veto is to stop Parliament making a law.

We need to raise the quality of debate
Unlike the apartheid and Waitangi arguments, many objections to the Voice are grounded in fact.

Making representations to Parliament and the government is a standard and necessary democratic practice. There are already many ways of doing this, but in the judgment of the First Nations’ people who developed the Voice proposal, a constitutionally enshrined Voice would be a better way of making these representations.

Many people disagree with this judgment. The National Party argues a Voice won’t actually improve people’s lives.

Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe says she speaks for a Black Sovereignty movement when she advocates for a treaty to come first. The argument is that without a treaty, the system of government isn’t morally legitimate.

Other people support the Voice in principle but think it will have too much power; others think it won’t have enough.

Thinking about honest differences of opinion helps us to understand and critique a proposal for what it is, rather than what it is not. Our vote then stands a better chance of reflecting what we really think.

Lies can mask people’s real reasons for holding a particular point of view. When people’s true reasons can’t be scrutinised and tested, it prevents an honest exchange of ideas.

Collective wisdom can’t emerge, and the final decision doesn’t demonstrate each voter’s full reflection on other perspectives.

Altering the Constitution is very serious, and deliberately difficult to do. Whatever the referendum’s outcome, confidence in our collective judgment is more likely when truth and reason inform our debate.

In my recently published book, Indigeneity, Culture and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, I argue the Voice could contribute to a more just and democratic system of government through ensuring decision-making is informed by what First Nations’ people want and why.

Informed, also, by deep knowledge of what works and why.

People may agree or disagree. But one thing is clear: deliberate misinformation doesn’t make a counter argument. It diminishes democracy.

Dr Dominic O’Sullivan,  adjunct professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and professor of political science, Charles Sturt University.  This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

New Zealand’s MediaWorks has confirmed it will sell its television operations to US company Discovery Inc.

The deal includes channels Three and Bravo, streaming service ThreeNow, and multi-platform news and current affairs service Newshub, as well as the further channels Three+1, Bravo+1, The Edge TV and The Breeze TV.

The company says the sale is subject to pre-completion approvals and is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

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MediaWorks has been trying to sell its TV operation since late last year and had already done a deal to sell its central Auckland premises.

In May, it announced 130 staff redundancies in response to a covid-19-driven slump in revenue.

Staff hours and pay were also reduced in April.

Chief executive Michael Anderson, who finishes with the company at the end of the year, said this was the best possible outcome.

‘Best possible outcome’
“We are very pleased to have reached a sales agreement with Discovery and to share this news today,” he said.

“This is the best possible outcome for the future of MediaWorks TV and its passionate and dedicated people who work tirelessly to make it a unique and special business.

“Under the ownership of Discovery, Three, Newshub and Bravo will have a long-term home and continue to play a vital role in New Zealand society.”

“The ongoing success of our radio and out-of-home business demonstrates that MediaWorks has a very bright future and with this unique and powerful combination, our focus now is to accelerate the opportunities that exist for our clients.”

Discovery president for Asia-Pacific Simon Robinson said it was an exciting purchase.

“MediaWorks TV is New Zealand’s leading independent free-to-air commercial broadcaster, with popular shows and great brands,” he said.

Global content creator
“Discovery is a global content creator, a major free-to-air broadcaster across several European markets, including the UK, Germany, Italy, Poland and the Nordics, and has expertise in evolving our linear business to direct-to-consumer.

“With a 26-year heritage in the New Zealand market, we are committed to drive MediaWorks TV’s future growth and success, delivering increased value to audiences and advertisers across all screens in New Zealand.”

Glen Kyne has been appointed general manager of TV, and would report to Simon Robinson once the deal was completed.

Discovery has had a presence in New Zealand since 1994, when it first launched Discovery Channel on Sky.

Two big media-related issues have emerged from the federal election: how opinion polls are reported and the polarisation of the main newspaper groups.

Opinion polls have been part of Australia’s political landscape for 90 years, and for most of that time they have been reliable barometers of public opinion.

As a result, they have acquired considerable credibility. Malcolm Turnbull weaponised this for political purposes when he justified his challenge to Tony Abbott’s prime ministership in 2015 on the basis that Abbott had lost 30 consecutive Newspolls.

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It was a gross lapse of judgment.

Not only did it set up Turnbull to be judged by the same criterion – as duly happened last year when he lost his 31st Newspoll – but he chose precisely the wrong time to elevate public opinion polls to the status of prime ministerial kingmaker.

Public opinion polls have been living on borrowed time since mobile phones began to displace household fixed-line phones, a gradual but inexorable process over a couple of decades.

Without digressing too far into the complexities of sampling, it is now difficult, time-consuming and expensive to generate a genuinely random sample of voters.

Telephone polling
Telephone polling, introduced in the 1980s, originally drew its samples from the Telstra list of fixed-line numbers – in other words, from the White Pages. There is no equivalent available list of mobile phones so, for practical purposes, drawing a genuine random sample has become impossible.

To cope with these realities, polling organisations have adopted somewhat makeshift sampling and interviewing procedures, drawing on various combinations of fixed-line phones, mobile phones, large panels of available respondents, and robo-polling.

This in turn raises questions about the validity of statements about sampling error, something the election results brought home with a thump.

Yet the media have carried on reporting the polls as if nothing has changed.

Poll results still make banner headlines. Stories are still written on the basis that the data are as good as they have always been.

The public, accustomed to the longstanding reliability of Australian polls, do not know and are not told that this is nonsense.

Polls are useful and interesting stories, but the reporting of them needs to change.

Greater transparency
There needs to be greater transparency about how a poll’s sampling and interviewing are done. The way a poll is done – whether it is a human being or a machine asking the questions, for instance – is significant.

The public is also entitled to know that today’s polls have limitations that polls of the past did not have. They are more indicative and less precise, so statements about sampling error need to be qualified accordingly.

And as the main newspapers have become more partisan, so the reporting of polls has shifted from straightforward accounts of the data to stories dominated by analysis, comment or wishful thinking on the part of the writer or the editor.

Partisanship in the media, especially the newspapers, has always been with us, but analyses by Media Watch and The New Daily show it reached extreme levels in this election.

An audit of metropolitan newspaper front pages by Media Watch showed a heavy anti-Labor bias by News Corp papers, and a roughly equivalent – but less strident – pro-Labor bias by the old Fairfax (now Nine) newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

The New Daily analysed three nights of Sky News coverage – April 30, May 1 and 2 – and found gross anti-Labor bias:

News Corp’s unconstrained anti-Labor bias cannot account entirely for Labor’s disastrous showing, but common sense says it accounts for some.

Virulently anti-Labor
For example, the company has a daily newspaper monopoly in Brisbane through The Courier-Mail. It was virulently anti-Labor and Labor did astonishingly badly in Queensland. Coincidence? Possibly, but unlikely.

If Australia had a half-decent system of media accountability, there would be a public inquiry into the increasing polarisation of Australian newspapers and into the conduct of Sky at night.

However, the newspaper industry’s self-regulator, the Australian Press Council, relies on the two big newspaper organisations for nearly all its funding, so the chances of having such an inquiry approach zero.

And the broadcasting regulator, the Australian Media and Communications Authority, has never shown the slightest interest in reviewing the way commercial television and radio cover elections.

So in an age where polarisation is undermining democracies around the world, Australia is stuck with an increasingly polarised media, a highly concentrated media ownership landscape and no apparent way to do anything about it.

• Dr Denis Muller is a senior research fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne.  This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.
• Mounting evidence that the tide is turning on News Corp, and its owner

Vanuatu and other Pacific nations can teach a lesson to the world, says UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

“That lesson is very simple. We absolutely need to save the Pacific, and to save the world, that the temperatures will not rise above 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.”

“And this needs a lot of political will.”

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The UN head arrived in Vanuatu on Saturday with literal as well as metaphorical storm clouds looming on the horizon. An out-of-season cyclone north of Fiji brought low cloud and high winds to Vanuatu, casting a light drizzle on the tarmac as the Guterres disembarked from a Royal Australian Air Force Hercules.

He was welcomed by representatives of the Vaturisu Council of Chiefs and given the high honour of passing under a pair of namele leaves as he entered the airport VIP lounge.

After a brief courtesy visit to the Head of State, where he toasted Vanuatu with a fresh coconut, the SG headed to the Prime Minister’s Office, where a bilateral meeting discussed climate change, as well as other priority matters, including Vanuatu’s continued support for decolonisation the world over.

Lip-service to West Papua
Guterres gave little more than lip-service to West Papua and other concerns, but he spoke passionately about the emerging climate emergency.

“The Pacific,” he said, “has the moral authority to request all countries to be able to abide by what the international community—and the scientific community—now consider essential: that temperatures will not rise more than 1.5 degrees by the end of the century, and for that purpose, that we reach carbon neutrality by 2050.

He insisted “that these objectives are possible. They only depend on political will.”

Later, in an interview with the AFP news agency, he said: “I was in Tuvalu yesterday, and to see the existential risks that Tuvalu is facing really breaks my heart.”

Asked if action was needed in 50 years, 20 years or next year, he said, “No. We have to deal with it immediately. We have the risk of making [climate damage] irreversible, and the targets that were fixed cannot be reached.”

Pacific Islanders have never seen such a high-level endorsement offered in-person and with evident sincerity.

But it is debatable whether that will translate into meaningful international action.

Actual progress?
If he thought there was any chance of finding a receptive audience in Washington, London—or Canberra, for that matter—Guterres would be saying those words there, not here.

And if it meant actual progress, Pacific islanders would be more than content to listen to them on the nightly news broadcast.

But with hardening attitudes among the most resource-rich nations, and the superpowers’ increasing fixation on trade wars and territorial disputes, it’s exceedingly difficult to see Guterres’ fervent entreaties having any impact whatsoever.

Less than a day after his surprise win in the Australian general election, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was being encouraged by Sky News commentators to walk away entirely from the nation’s remaining climate commitments.

The only substantial climate promises Australia has made to the Pacific relate to adaptation, not mitigation.

Australia signed the Boe Declaration along with all the other Pacific Island Forum countries. The declaration emphasises that the damage caused by a rapidly changing climate is the single greatest security threat the region faces.

Boe debate disappeared
But in the ensuing months, no mention whatsoever has been made of this by Australian diplomats or politicians. It has simply disappeared from their vocabulary.

And António Guterres is powerless in the face of this intransigence. His own speeches made no mention of Boe, presumably for fear of giving offence.

Given the opportunity, he refused to encourage Australian voters to think of the environment.

The most pressing global crisis facing the human species today has near-zero traction on the global stage.

There is no more striking evidence of this than the commendable but quixotic decision by António Guterres to use the Pacific as his backdrop in what will most likely be a vain attempt to build momentum for action.

• Dan McGarry is the media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post group. This article is republished with permission.

Ben Bohane’s exclusive interview with the UN Secretary-General António Guterres in Port Vila. Source: Ben Bohane Facebook