Hats off to Rachelle Miller, Alan Tudge’s former media adviser, who successfully hosed down attempts to reveal the Coalition government’s cruel robodebt scheme. Miller played the media for mugs, and guess what: the media played right along.
The top order issue at the robodebt royal commission is how vulnerable Australians were done over by a government that appeared to care little about the impact of its scheme — including leading to a number of reported suicides — as long as the message it sent of cracking down on welfare cheats played well in key seats.
But Miller’s evidence at the royal commission this week cast a glaring light on the critical enabling role of journalists and the government’s media machine in this cruel game of perception management. You could sense the cockroaches scuttling as the light was switched on.
Journalists should hang their heads in shame. Their mastheads and programs should apologise. Also, pigs might fly. There is never a day of reckoning for some in the media — despite this week’s de facto whistleblowing performance by Miller, who had occupied a place deep in the machine for several years.
The first thing to know about Miller (beyond the $650,000 she received in a settlement with the federal government following her claims of bullying and discrimination) is that she has never actually been a journalist. Traditionally this has mattered if you want to be a media adviser because working in the media at least gives you an understanding of what it is to work in the media, and the role it plays in holding government to account. (OK, no more jokes, I promise.)
After graduating from Sydney exclusive private school SCEGGS, Miller was off to Monash Uni and completed a BA in Graphic Design. She then plied her trade as a graphic designer for several years. From around 2009 she took up with the Victorian Liberals, beginning as a media adviser to then-member for Wannon David Hawker, before working with his successor Dan Tehan.
Then it was on to George Brandis during his stint as attorney-general in the Abbott government. (This turned out to be a slow gig because Brandis very rarely did media interviews.) Miller then moved to Senator Richard Colbeck’s ministerial office before landing as Tudge’s media adviser in 2016 when he was minister for human services.
Her rise from graphic designer to media adviser was typical of the Coalition government and a firm pointer to its low regard for the media. When journalists made inquiries they more often than not dealt with a party operative.
Miller’s evidence this week showed that for the Coalition the media was something to be manipulated for the government’s own ends. It also showed very clearly the transactional nature of its relationship with the Murdoch media in particular.
Miller gave chapter and verse on how this was done.
There were the exclusive “drops” to favoured media and journalists — a technique more effective than the general media release and one more likely to guarantee a favourable front-page story. An exclusive would then “set the media narrative”, she told the royal commission.
There was the “crisis media strategy” devised to “shut down” a proliferation of critical stories on robodebt.
This was done by placing stories with “the more friendly media”. This, of course, went to the nub of the government’s media strategy and its spinning of the counter-narrative.
The government divided the media world into left and right and didn’t give a toss what the lefties thought. Who needs social media and its silly algorithms to divide us when the government is engineering it all along?
The right, of course, was the Murdoch media plus tabloid television. The Australian‘s political editor Simon Benson gained a special seal of approval from Tudge because his stories always worked so well.
The rest — everything to the left of Genghis Khan — were not worth worrying about. This included the ABC, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This much we pretty well knew from close to a decade under the yoke of a Coalition government which despised accountability and fairness.
However, Miller revealed a couple of flourishes.
There was the terrific idea of calling an “independent” investigation into questions about robodebt, thus giving Tudge cover not to answer journalists’ questions. It was, Miller said, “a really good holding line for a minister”. In this case, inquiries were carried out by the fearless folk from consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has been a donor to the Coalition.
On Miller’s evidence, Tudge had been keen to see his name in the right newspapers and to see his face on the right news programs. He was known as a bit of a “media tart”, she told the royal commission.
And why the craving for publicity? Because it would bring the ambitious junior minister to the attention of his colleagues and increase his chances of gaining a cabinet position.
This is the twist few of us saw coming — a little like an uppercut after a flurry of blows to the body. Tudge was not just pushing a flawed government programme, he was using public money and the services of a taxpayer-funded media adviser to advance his personal political ambitions. He was also insisting the department ferret out stories he could present as “wins”.
In all this, of course, Miller was a more-than-willing collaborator. Trapped in the bubble of Liberal politics for a decade it barely penetrated her world that robodebt was unfair and dangerous.
When The Saturday Paper reported the scheme as much, Tudge’s lieutenant was onto it in a flash. The paper’s report was “one of the most disgraceful pieces of reporting I have ever seen”, she wailed in an email to her boss and the inner coterie. “Unfortunately The Saturday Paper has left me with this impression before.”
Miller’s evidence to the royal commission adds to the strange conundrum of her political journey. She was in it up to her eyeballs, not as some starry-eyed young student thrilled by the proximity to power but as a mature woman who was, by the time of her work with Tudge, some 15 years and more in the workforce.
At some point Miller did a 180, and when she did she turned to the leftie media she once disdained, telling the story of her allegedly toxic and abusive affair with Tudge to the ABC. (Tudge has denied all allegations of abuse, but has admitted to the consensual affair.)
She ended up with the well-connected Labor lawyer Peter Gordon to represent her claim against the government, alleging workplace bullying, harassment and discrimination during her time as a staffer.
The claim was lobbed just before the last election when the Morrison government was reeling from a series of allegations involving female Liberal staffers. Peter Gordon had earlier run a class action against the government on behalf of robodebt victims and secured a $1.8 billion settlement.
Whatever else happens, this week Miller shed some serious light on the full, ugly cynicism which underpinned the Coalition government’s media management.
