On where to start rebuilding the ABC:
Peter Blackwell writes: I enjoy Guy Rundle’s columns and appreciate the challenges he frequently dispenses, but I can make neither head nor tail of his potpourri of ideas to “improve” Radio National.
I have been devoted to RN for longer than Phillip Adams ran Late Night Live. I have despaired of the pairing of “radical” content from Offspring and then Life Matters, to become a relatively insipid self-help and talk-fest program. Great programs like Asia Pacific have vanished, as RN was told by an increasingly conservative board to serve a lower common denominator audience and cease to challenge the nation.
Nevertheless, I have learned so much more from listening to RN than I ever did at university. My life is entirely designed around ensuring that I get to hear all my preferred RN programs when they go to air (i.e. on the radio) despite the fact that I work 50 hours a week! I share lots of the best bits by forwarding the website links with people unlikely to have otherwise heard them.
There is definitely room to improve RN, but it does not help to put more politicians on Breakfast and PM. We want to hear frank and constructive debate of the issues from people who know what they are talking about — happy to hear all sides, but keep a sense of proportion. Politicians are only worth hearing if seriously questioned. Patricia Karvelas often does a reasonably good job of interviewing politicians, certainly better than any interview I have ever heard on a commercial station.
I digress, but I would be appalled if Guy Rundle’s basket of ideas for RN were taken seriously. I presume he was having a lend of us.
Ray Armstrong writes: Funnily enough I listen to Radio National more so than “the other” ABC. I don’t want it changed… they might stuff it up like the ABC Listen App, which doesn’t work at all now on my device.
Kerry Grant writes: I have stopped listening to Radio National. The morning shows and segments were just a load of tripe. Nothing informative or interesting, just people with American accents talking rot about “cool TV programs” — I couldn’t even make it to the news headlines. Even stopped listening to my beloved Phillip Adams, and yet to hear David Marr.
We need some decent journalism, not opinion pieces!
Megan Stoyles writes: Christopher Warren hopes for “fewer car crashes clogging up the 7pm news”. But it’s not just the 7pm news, it starts when I wake up to it at 7am. There could be WWIII in the Middle East, but we get the carjacking in Cranbourne. Sometimes there are two or three items in a row from the police rounds media list before we get to the war. And then it’s repeated all day, usually with no update.
You can pick the items that will feature on the 7pm TV news, regardless of timeliness or relevance. And there’s the increasing cross-promo of 7.30 and Four Corners.
I could go on — happy to, Kim — but there’s a lot to fix.
On improving behavioural standards in Parliament:
Gayle Davies writes: Here’s an idea, how about forming a parliamentary choir? There’s nothing like a choir for teaching essential skills: paying attention and respecting the conductor; mutual respect between all voice parts, male and female; each part singing their line and coming in at the right time, rather than shouting and interrupting; quietly listening while the other parts practise their bits; and, finally, blending the parts to produce a thing of beauty.
On the original ‘teal’ independent:
Margaret Callinan writes: Rachel Withers might ponder if Zali Steggall or Kerryn Phelps should be called the original “teal”, but if you’re talking about this new wave of independent women politicians surely the honour of first must go to Cathy McGowan?
McGowan took the seat of a prominent, if not much loved, Liberal and held it at the subsequent election. Upon her retirement from Parliament, after serving two terms, she was followed in the seat of Indi by another independent, Helen Haines.
It is McGowan’s playbook that most if not all “teals” have followed (seat-winners or not, with more in the pipeline), and others not wearing teal. McGowan’s kitchen table conversations have been held around the country generating not only an interest in politics that I’ve not seen before in my lifetime, but also a strong appetite to be actively involved. All ages, all genders, all ethnicities, those with religious persuasions or none.
Doing politics differently works. Its originator should not be forgotten simply because her colour did not become prominent.
