• Mark Scott
• ABC

Image: Mark Scott / Cordell

03 September 2010The 2010 election campaign was the journalistic gift that just keeps on giving, says Mark Scott in this speech for the Melbourne Writers Festival.

I HAD INTENDED to draft these remarks once the result was known. But remembering that I was speaking at the Melbourne Writers' Festival rather than Improv Night at the Comedy Festival, I couldn't wait for the white smoke.

This election has changed how we think of "politics as usual" in this country. It has also triggered significant debate about the practice of political reporting.

And I can‟t let the opportunity of this speech go by without wading into these murky waters.

So let me make some muddied observations about the campaign and how it was handled by the fourth estate and then make some tentative suggestions about implications for the media and the nature of news coverage. Then - following the proud traditions of these events - it will be time for questions, where you can tear into me. The toughest Senate Estimates sessions are merely training for encounters like this.

I want to break with the curmudgeons who talked about a boring election campaign, saved only by a thrilling election night and the epic drama that followed.

The long-standing, predictable narrative train of the election, pre-destined when the Government soared twenty points ahead in the polls, was derailed in the dead of a Canberra winter's night.

Now, for the first time since 1993, we had two new leaders in the top jobs fighting their first election. The most inexperienced Prime Minister to ever face an election. A dangerously honest Opposition Leader with – to use Annabel Crabb's memorable phrase – a truth parrot squawking on his shoulder. Polls in flux, strategies in disarray. An electorate polarised, idiosyncratic, unpredictable.

And important matters in play: the economy, the environment, national infrastructure. A nation at war.
Rare ingredients for journalists and journalism. A remarkable opportunity to use old tools and new tools to bring the story to the Australian people.

Read the full speech here

This speech was given as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival 2 September 2010