Media Tarts

by Julia Baird

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  Alan Ramsey was the most vehement of Stott Despoja’s detractors. He sat alone in an office around the corner from the chief newspaper bureaus, and had worked in the Canberra press gallery since 1966, before Stott Despoja was born. He was an irascible, widely respected columnist whose office was piled ceiling-high with transcripts, and who was legendary for his elephantine memory and fearlessness. Young journalists revered him. He is, along with Laurie Oakes, Michelle Grattan and Paul Kelly, one of the gallery gods, although he hates the term. He operates alone and doesn’t give a stuff what anyone thinks. What struck me when I interviewed him was that he was both deeply angry about the way politics was and passionate about the way it should be. He paced his office, fitfully glowing red as he recounted his fury about various political sins. And Natasha Stott Despoja triggered his alarm bells:

  She was all about herself . . . She paraded herself, it wasn’t about politics, anything she could get herself onto, particularly television . . . She was the leader, and you thought, hang on, what about the Democrats, what about the party, what about policy? You are out there promoting yourself. You never thought in those game shows, all those silly things she was on, you thought what does this do for the Democrats? . . . She was swept up in the glamour of the whole bloody business, about being somebody. But it was about being herself . . . In the same way that Bob Hawke was, for Christ’s sake. Bob Hawke was about being Bob Hawke — ‘I’m the one! Look at my opinion polls! I am the most popular person!’ . . . I detested him for it.

  At the time of her leadership problems, Ramsey dismissed Stott Despoja as ‘a media-created political misfit’, a ‘flibbertigibbet’ with ambitions which ‘exceed her competence but not her ego’, and a ‘young woman far out of her depth who has no business being taken seriously’.28 He also likened her to the glamorous tennis player who reporters celebrated more for her tanned thighs than her ability, Anna Kournikova. He wrote: ‘Each is a beguiling clothes horse with minimum talent in what they do for a living. Kournikova can’t play tennis. Stott Despoja is a complete political and parliamentary dunce. That is not to say they’re not smart. Of course they are. What each does, and superbly, is captivate the media. The media, in turn, titillate sponsors and/or public opinion . . .’ Photographs of the two women were puffed on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. Stott Despoja said later that she was amazed by his comments, because he had never spoken to her in the eight years she had been in politics. ‘He’s never met me, he’s never wanted to interview me, he won’t deal with me on any policy issues, he won’t respond to my press releases . . . as far as I know he’s never done a Hansard search on me. He wouldn’t have a clue what my work is.’

  When I sent Ramsey an email asking him for his response to Stott Despoja’s remarks, he fired back this missive:

  That sort of crap is why Natasha isn’t worth a bumper as an ordinary MP, let alone a party leader. This isn’t undergraduate playtime. I don’t have to ask a politician’s permission to write about him or her, to have an opinion. I write about George Bush and what an appalling US president he is, and I don’t have [to] interview him to think so. I’m a political columnist, a political observer. There are many MPs I don’t interview and don’t personally know who I write about far more often than I ever wrote about Natasha. She was never WORTH interviewing! That’s the whole point. I’ve been observing Natasha in Parlt [sic] since she got here, just as I do every MP . . . This childish view I must interview her, that I have to meet her, before I can decide she is just a piece of selfaggrandising political froth is why she shouldn’t be within a bull’s roar of the business. I mean, how long did she last as leader, ask yourself?

  Just over 16 months.

  Ramsey’s view was significant because so many in the gallery agreed with him.29 The consensus appeared to be that she just did too much of the wrong kind of publicity. The Australian Financial Review’s Tony Walker believes she was ‘undercooked’ for the job, and that she did not have ‘the maturity to take on the demanding reins of leadership, irrespective of age’. ALP pollster Rod Cameron claimed, as few today would, ‘You can’t mix celebrity and political leadership . . .’30 Paul McGeough told me he blamed her demise on the inexperience of the party as well as her youth: ‘I think all of those who really believed in her potential failed her by not giving her the advice and wise counsel she needed as such a young political operator.’

  Under her leadership, the party did lose some ground electorally. In a by-election held three months after she became leader, in the Melbourne seat of Aston, the Democrats increased their vote by a tiny margin: 300 votes. In the November election later that year, held in the wake of September 11 and the Tampa, only four out of five senators were retained, and the lost seat was picked up by the Greens. Their vote in the House of Representatives increased by a fraction, but overall they lost votes to the Greens. The Democrat Senate vote went from 8.5 per cent under Lees in 1998 to 7.25 per cent in 2001. The Greens went from 2.7 to 4.9 per cent. The Democrat vote overall was 5.4 per cent.

  The Democrats could have run a better election campaign in 2001, and they struggled to get the media to report on their policies instead of just photographing Stott Despoja in a crop top at the Barrier Reef (which was worn with pants, not a bikini as was widely believed), a Mambo t-shirt, and grimacing as she held a baby. The personality politics had come back to bite. The Greens poached many of their voters; possibly, wrote Mike Seccombe, because Bob Brown was perceived as ‘the serious minor player; she was the one in cute clothes on the beach’.31 But he also pointed out, Stott Despoja did 32 policy launches, 38 speeches, and more than 80 media interviews and conferences. She addressed the Asia–Australia Institute, the Deakin School of Law, the Sydney Institute, and the National Press Club. With September 11 clouding the political climate, the slogan ‘Change politics’ lost its resonance when voters decided they’d rather not.

  Still, the evidence shows that most of the damage to the party’s standing, and polling, happened on Lees’s watch after she struck the deal on the GST. Democrat defections were not unusual, as three other leaders — John Coulter, Janet Powell and Cheryl Kernot — had left the party for various reasons. Janine Haines also had to deflect abuse from Senators John Siddons and David Vigor when they resigned from the party in the 1980s, under her leadership.32

  *

  After resigning from the leadership, Stott Despoja appeared in the Australian Women’s Weekly talking about her relationship with her fiancé and the ring he’d bought her from Tiffany’s, and was photographed at their home. She also did a fashion shoot for Harper’s Bazaar, choosing to wear a black suit and white shirt. Even in late 2003, she was in the Weekly again, wearing a black dress and talking about her plans to marry over Christmas. It was difficult to work out why. Why give your critics so much ammunition? Why criticise the press for sticking its beaked nose too far into your life, shoo it out, then invite it back in? This was really the only fundamental problem with her media strategy: complaining for something caused, at least in part, by her own actions. But when she did try to keep her wedding private, she was accused of being delusional. Naomi Toy and Fiona Connolly mocked her in the Daily Telegraph:

  The Jennifer Lopez of the Australian Democrats, Natasha Stott Despoja, is today marrying PR boss Ian Smith in Byron Bay. Whoop-de-doo! . . . Tash darling, you need not have gone to all that trouble of keeping the details of the big day such a secret . . . Puh-lease . . . the silly attempts to avoid publicity have raised suspicions that the former media darling is either deluding herself about the real level of public interest, or is worried that there was none.33

  Commentators were wrong to assume Stott Despoja was a lightweight because of a deliberate and effective strategy to maximise her exposure and votes in the broader population. She was at her most effective when she undercut the stereotypes, not when she played to them. But the vast majority of her press appearances were necessary for both herself and her party. Without her stellar profil
e, and obvious ability to communicate through the media, she would never have become leader.

  Politics has always made otherwise sensible people do silly things in the pursuit of publicity but the assumption that this means people are stupid or shallow only seems to apply to women. Many male politicians are photographed exercising — swimming, running, doing aerobics, or posing bare-chested with a surfboard, like Tony Abbott — yet seem to escape ridicule. Peter Costello danced the macarena on daytime television with Kerri-Anne Kennerley, and Cheryl Kernot followed suit with the chacha. Paul Keating appeared on the front cover of Rolling Stone wearing dark sunglasses, and Jeff Kennett also called the ‘rock star of Australian politics’ — modelled suits for Australian Style. He was snapped draped with beautiful young models for the front cover in April 1999, under the headline ‘Model Premier’.34 The then editor of Australian Style, Wendy Squires, said ‘As a woman, I found it quite offensive, because he made it look like, “Here I am, lord of the domain and here are my pets.”’35

  Can you imagine the storm if Stott Despoja had posed for the front cover of FHM in a frock, fondling men who draped her shoulders and knees? Glamour photos and the cult of personality are far more dangerous for women. Does this mean it reflects an unfair, deep-rooted sexism? Absolutely. Should women protest against it? Of course. Should they allow themselves to be made over and pose like models? Only with considerable caution.

  Most of the time what Stott Despoja was criticised for was behaviour considered normal in other politicians. She was not the only MP to appear on mainstream, lightweight television shows. ALP president Barry Jones and National Party MP Ian Sinclair appeared on ‘Good News Week’, for example. Stott Despoja came on ‘The Panel’ twice, but Peter Costello, Kim Beazley, Bob Brown, Mark Latham and Tim Fischer have also been guests. John Howard and wife Janette have appeared on Channel Ten’s ‘Healthy, Wealthy and Wise’, and Kim Beazley also walked television viewers around his garden on Channel Nine’s ‘Burke’s Backyard’. Sports minister Jackie Kelly gave the photos of her wedding day to the Australian Women’s Weekly. Labor leader Mark Latham was on ‘Burke’s Backyard’ and ‘Enough Rope’. Cheryl Kernot — who made her derisive views of what she saw as Stott Despoja’s ‘any publicity is good publicity’ approach publicly known — appeared twice on ‘Good News Week’ and ‘Club Buggery’, as well as on ‘The Panel’. Kernot also took the nation through her garden on ‘Burke’s Backyard’, and featured in the pages of magazines including the Australian Women’s Weekly, Ita, Elle, and New Idea. She ended one show singing a duet of ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’ with Paul McDermott. ‘Anything to gaze into those mischievous baby blues,’ she wrote in Speaking for Myself Again. The difference was that Stott Despoja was courted more, and was better at it than most. Max Walsh, who joined the gallery the same year as Ramsey, 1966, wrote that Stott Despoja had ‘that quality Paul Keating identified as necessary for a leader — the ability to throw the switch to vaudeville’.

  The success of Stott Despoja’s approach as a vote-puller is undeniable. As many recognised, the success of minor parties had always been dependent on charismatic leadership. In the 1996 election, she gained what the Sydney Morning Herald called a ‘near record’ 14.7 per cent of the vote. In 2001, she polled better than any of her Democrats colleagues, with 12.6 per cent of the primary vote. In 1998, she was named the most popular role model for working women in a survey by the NSW Chamber of Commerce, and the nation’s second most influential woman, after Cheryl Kernot.

  Christine Wallace dismisses any suggestion she lacked substance as ‘bullshit’:

  Natasha was brilliant. This publicity seeking is used as a slur; in fact, it was one of the things that made her a great politician. That’s what politics is, it’s about getting space in the public realm, in the media and fighting your corner . . . And she was a very attractive figure, she won votes for the Democrats. At the next election the Democrats are going to disappear, they will be replaced entirely by Greens, all because she was assassinated by her own, by another woman . . . Getting column inches is one of the things politicians have to do. Unless you do it you can’t influence people. If you can’t influence people you can’t get votes, you can’t get your agenda up in policy and in legislation. It’s the currency of politics and Natasha was great at it.

  Even Laurie Oakes, political editor at Channel Nine since 1984, believes she was a ‘terrific performer’ whose celebrity profile was useful: ‘What happened to Natasha is that she got outnumbered.’

  *

  I finally interviewed Natasha Stott Despoja at the Commonwealth parliamentary offices in Elizabeth Street, Sydney, where she sat with her press adviser and clutched a cup of coffee. She was reserved, and her thoughts rambled a little. I had been warned that her charm was disarming. But I was just struck by how normal she was. When I told her I had spent the week reading Cheryl Kernot’s press clippings, and had found it a depressing story, she agreed: ‘I know! I think mine is depressing, but hers is much worse.’

  After an hour of justifying her media strategy and insisting she had no regrets, she finally said perhaps her approach had not been ideal:

  If I was doing it all again, would I do it differently? You bet I would. Because I would want a really nice life where people said nothing but nice things about me. And then on the other hand I think people make mistakes . . . [and] a lot of other women won’t make those same choices because of what I have done. Or maybe they’ll go further and do something completely radical, because they figure, what does it matter . . . When I look back I think if I was an adviser charting the perfect political ascension for a woman in politics today, it would be head down, talk about nothing but your policy work, don’t let them see a human side, don’t be multi-dimensional, definitely don’t be attractive, never dress up in public, try not to pose with any alcohol in your hands, certainly don’t wear any low-cut dresses, never go to any public events with your partner, and basically just talk jargon the whole time and they’ll respect you.

  I interviewed her again a few months later, in December 2003, just after her party had announced that Andrew Bartlett was going to be leading the Democrats to the next election, provided he stayed sober. He had been forced (briefly) to step aside after admitting he had been drunk in parliament when he assaulted a female Liberal senator, and that he had an alcohol problem. All day she had been swatting away accusations that she was being disloyal to a friend — Bartlett — because she believed that his behaviour was inappropriate. She had also just received a phone call from a journalist asking if she had just become eligible for her parliamentary superannuation (she had), and if this was why she had not stood for leader, suggesting that she would not want to lead her party because she could now take off with the loot. There had also been some unfounded rumours circulating that she was not running because she was pregnant. I had just filed a column for the next day’s paper on ten reasons why the Democrats should ask her to be leader again.

  She came out of her office looking pale, exhausted and shaken. ‘Why is it, every time I see you,’ she said, ‘something is happening?’ I had the feeling that there was usually something happening. When we sat down on her couch, I asked if she was okay. Her eyes went red; she blinked quickly and her voice wobbled. The attacks had been vicious that week, she said, and she was thrown by it, and did not understand why she was the focus when she had ruled herself out of running for leadership. She was genuinely perplexed, and sought my thoughts a couple of times during the interview as to why some particular journalists had disliked her, why the press turned in unison sometimes. When I left, we shook hands and she laughed, ‘That was just like therapy!’ She seems so immersed in public life that she genuinely struggles to understand what continually happens to her, to match her view of herself with the celebrity politician in the news pages.

  Stott Despoja’s major problem was her colleagues, of course. But the way she was hyped then trivialised by the press did not help. Her experience with the medi
a has been another cautionary tale. It would be worrying if the message young women — or men — gleaned from her story was that a high profile is a dangerous thing. Because, as all politicians know, this is also a key to success. Stott Despoja has always recognised this, although she assesses the power of the press more soberly now: ‘The level of influence the media has [is] totally extraordinary, just amazing, and certainly was beyond my wildest dreams. I will never underestimate the role of the media in Australian political life . . . I think the media is actually culpable in selecting, electing, producing leaders and determining who stays.’ And Stott Despoja was selected by the media, elected by her party then ousted by her colleagues — who were partly fuelled by the negative articles which dismissed her as a glamour girl. But as soon as she resigned as leader, the party disappeared from view.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Cheryl Kernot: from Wunderfrau to whore

  For a time, journalists worshipped Cheryl Kernot. Almost literally, on one occasion. In the mid-1990s, she invited journalists for evening drinks in an alcove in Parliament House. She played the Beach Boys on her ghetto blaster and chatted until somehow the journalists, drunk and silly, found themselves circling her, bowing down in turn, both mocking and playing to the adulation which then came from many quarters of the press. Hearing the story now, it seems an odd, orgiastic ritual late at night in the shadowed corners of the sprawling office block on the hill in Canberra. Kernot remembers the party, not the incident, but according to one reporter who was there, Margo Kingston: