Twitter has had another conniption, this time about what it thought was maladministration by a government minister in relation to water buybacks on the Murray-Darling river system. This new cause celebre was labelled, naturally enough, “watergate”, following the pattern that demands that every government scandal has to have “gate” in the label used to refer to it in pubic. In response many people put a water droplet icon on their Twitter profiles to show they were angry. The Guardian picked up on the story after it had initially been covered by some members of the ragtag collection of "indie" media outlets that are available online.
The first Guardian story I read on the issue showed that the federal Dept of Agriculture responded to journalists (even though we are now in the caretaker period due to the upcoming federal election) and the minister involved, as well as former National Party leader (and former Deputy Prime Minister) Barnaby Joyce, commented on the record. In the story, South Australian senator Rex Patrick was quoted asking for a royal commission. People might remember that this is the guy who wants to shut down the cotton industry with a blanket ban on growing the crop.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media copped a flogging (even though the ABC News channel carried the story on Monday morning and other news outlets later picked up on it, including the Herald Sun and the SMH). Journalist Michael West, who runs a blog where he publishes stories he has worked on, followed the money trail and got a lot of support online from people in the community. This kind of comment is typical (it went up in the #auspol hashtag on Monday 22 April at 9.45am): “Brilliant, thank you Michael for your unwavering courage and stand for the truth.. Sadly, it is a rarity, amongst so many others in your profession. We are with you..”
The main thing that seems to have incensed people was that the company behind the scheme to sell water allocations to the government had its base at the time in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven. The other thing exercising people’s imaginations in this case was the intrinsic link between the buybacks and the Murray-Darling river system, a part of the world that had been so visible in the news earlier in the year when, due to the drought in the eastern states, fish started dying in the Darling River near the NSW town of Menindee. The Caymans link was the smoking gun the mob needed in order to see a conspiracy requiring prosecution, like a criminal trial. It was like the night of the long knives all over again.
People like Patrick and the Greens leader Richard Di Natale are opportunists who see a mob assembling and then see a benefit for themselves. If they can get in the good books of this disparate collection of voters, they think to themselves, their political prospects might improve. So they start talking to the media and getting their names into tweets and into stories. The Guardian sees potential paying subscribers in the mob so they set up a live blog to cover the unfolding drama. In this case they put Gabrielle Chan, a reputable journalist who wrote a book about rural Australia that appeared last year, in charge of the feed. One or two reliable journalists put the water droplet icon in their Twitter profiles, but I didn’t see any journalists who are part of the mainstream media who did.
Over the course of the day on Monday I had conversations on Twitter with three different people who displayed different levels of outrage about the “scandal” but none of them was able to show me that there was anything untoward in the purchase of the water allocations from farmers that were at its core. A second Guardian article on the same day, in the afternoon, also contained no new news as to whether anything wrong had been done. After Barnaby Joyce appeared in an interview with Patricia Karvelas on the ABC’s Radio National channel in the evening, the Guardian ran another story which, as before, failed to make any case of wrongdoing. Melbourne’s Herald Sun ran a story late in the evening but I don’t have a subscription so I couldn’t read it.
On Tuesday morning the Guardian ran another story, and the SMH ran one too in which the following appeared: “Critics say the government paid too much for the water and that it will not produce environmental gains.” The new Guardian story found no evidence that this was true but it said on the other hand that the deal between the department and the company that sold the water rights was tainted by the use of ministerial fiat (Barnaby Joyce was the minister at the time).
So instead of maladministration the media has uncovered, completely by accident, a case of corruption (potentially so, in any case). A suspicion that Angus Taylor, who is now a government minister, profited from the sale because he might have been associated with the company that sold the water rights, was not substantiated but there might be more revelations because there will be an enquiry by the federal auditor-general that has been ordered by the current agriculture minister. This move takes some of the heat off the government because the enquiry will doubtless be held after the federal election, which will take place on 18 May.
This particular case reminds me of the way that the Paladin “scandal” played itself out on social media earlier in the year. But where Paladin was not pursued by the mainstream media, they gave a lot of attention to events in the watergate case. The Paladin case centred on a company that had provided services to the government on Manus Island, where Australia used to operate a refugee camp and where a number of refugees the country has so far refused to accommodate are still living (in the general community). As in the present case, the mainstream media picked up on the story but they showed that there was nothing untoward happening that would require a minister to step down or anything as dramatic as that.
The main point to take away from all this is that many people don’t trust the mainstream media to cater to their needs, and prefer less reliable outlets that have proliferated in recent years, outlets that they personally identify with because these outlets are not in the mainstream. They read (and sometimes pay for) the stories these outlets publish on the web and promote links to them in their tweets, retweets, and with likes and comments.
The water buybacks case was very personal for a lot of people furthermore because of what happened to a person named Ronni Salt, a Twitter user with the handle @MsVeruca who had her account suspended due to legal action initiated by Angus Taylor. Another person on Twitter who had a letter sent to her by Taylor’s lawyers was Margo Kingston, a freelance journalist who is working to get a number of independent candidates elected in Coalition-held seats at the upcoming federal poll. Kingston posted the letter she had received on Twitter and people rallied behind her as they had rallied behind Salt. Salt’s account being reinstated was cause for general celebration.
What you see in operation on social media in fact is the same dynamic that led to the emergence as a political force of One Nation, a party that attracts the protest vote, a segment of society constituted of people who feel disenfranchised and left out of “the system”, and who are looking for a champion to take up their cause and to give them a voice. The progression of events – from a few tweets by an individual on Twitter, to a steady flow of stories in the mainstream media that are embarrassing for the government, to an official enquiry – has been instructive to watch because in the current case (unlike in earlier cases) the sustained attention has unearthed something that deserves to be remarked on.
Most of the time, the mob is left baying at the moon. The watergate case proves that consistency works. If you cry wolf often enough, eventually a wolf will appear. In fact the case, which saw people explode with outrage time after time as each new nugget of information appeared in the public sphere, showed Twitter behaving just like a stopped watch, which of course we all know is correct once a day. But for each case like watergate there are 720 others that are like Paladin where all the chatter produces a lot of heat and little light. It was notable also that in the end the biggest revelations in watergate arrived via the mainstream media, where they could actually have an impact on the broader community. That is to say, an impact in the lives of people who do not use social media all the time.
The first Guardian story I read on the issue showed that the federal Dept of Agriculture responded to journalists (even though we are now in the caretaker period due to the upcoming federal election) and the minister involved, as well as former National Party leader (and former Deputy Prime Minister) Barnaby Joyce, commented on the record. In the story, South Australian senator Rex Patrick was quoted asking for a royal commission. People might remember that this is the guy who wants to shut down the cotton industry with a blanket ban on growing the crop.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media copped a flogging (even though the ABC News channel carried the story on Monday morning and other news outlets later picked up on it, including the Herald Sun and the SMH). Journalist Michael West, who runs a blog where he publishes stories he has worked on, followed the money trail and got a lot of support online from people in the community. This kind of comment is typical (it went up in the #auspol hashtag on Monday 22 April at 9.45am): “Brilliant, thank you Michael for your unwavering courage and stand for the truth.. Sadly, it is a rarity, amongst so many others in your profession. We are with you..”
The main thing that seems to have incensed people was that the company behind the scheme to sell water allocations to the government had its base at the time in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven. The other thing exercising people’s imaginations in this case was the intrinsic link between the buybacks and the Murray-Darling river system, a part of the world that had been so visible in the news earlier in the year when, due to the drought in the eastern states, fish started dying in the Darling River near the NSW town of Menindee. The Caymans link was the smoking gun the mob needed in order to see a conspiracy requiring prosecution, like a criminal trial. It was like the night of the long knives all over again.
People like Patrick and the Greens leader Richard Di Natale are opportunists who see a mob assembling and then see a benefit for themselves. If they can get in the good books of this disparate collection of voters, they think to themselves, their political prospects might improve. So they start talking to the media and getting their names into tweets and into stories. The Guardian sees potential paying subscribers in the mob so they set up a live blog to cover the unfolding drama. In this case they put Gabrielle Chan, a reputable journalist who wrote a book about rural Australia that appeared last year, in charge of the feed. One or two reliable journalists put the water droplet icon in their Twitter profiles, but I didn’t see any journalists who are part of the mainstream media who did.
Over the course of the day on Monday I had conversations on Twitter with three different people who displayed different levels of outrage about the “scandal” but none of them was able to show me that there was anything untoward in the purchase of the water allocations from farmers that were at its core. A second Guardian article on the same day, in the afternoon, also contained no new news as to whether anything wrong had been done. After Barnaby Joyce appeared in an interview with Patricia Karvelas on the ABC’s Radio National channel in the evening, the Guardian ran another story which, as before, failed to make any case of wrongdoing. Melbourne’s Herald Sun ran a story late in the evening but I don’t have a subscription so I couldn’t read it.
On Tuesday morning the Guardian ran another story, and the SMH ran one too in which the following appeared: “Critics say the government paid too much for the water and that it will not produce environmental gains.” The new Guardian story found no evidence that this was true but it said on the other hand that the deal between the department and the company that sold the water rights was tainted by the use of ministerial fiat (Barnaby Joyce was the minister at the time).
So instead of maladministration the media has uncovered, completely by accident, a case of corruption (potentially so, in any case). A suspicion that Angus Taylor, who is now a government minister, profited from the sale because he might have been associated with the company that sold the water rights, was not substantiated but there might be more revelations because there will be an enquiry by the federal auditor-general that has been ordered by the current agriculture minister. This move takes some of the heat off the government because the enquiry will doubtless be held after the federal election, which will take place on 18 May.
This particular case reminds me of the way that the Paladin “scandal” played itself out on social media earlier in the year. But where Paladin was not pursued by the mainstream media, they gave a lot of attention to events in the watergate case. The Paladin case centred on a company that had provided services to the government on Manus Island, where Australia used to operate a refugee camp and where a number of refugees the country has so far refused to accommodate are still living (in the general community). As in the present case, the mainstream media picked up on the story but they showed that there was nothing untoward happening that would require a minister to step down or anything as dramatic as that.
The main point to take away from all this is that many people don’t trust the mainstream media to cater to their needs, and prefer less reliable outlets that have proliferated in recent years, outlets that they personally identify with because these outlets are not in the mainstream. They read (and sometimes pay for) the stories these outlets publish on the web and promote links to them in their tweets, retweets, and with likes and comments.
The water buybacks case was very personal for a lot of people furthermore because of what happened to a person named Ronni Salt, a Twitter user with the handle @MsVeruca who had her account suspended due to legal action initiated by Angus Taylor. Another person on Twitter who had a letter sent to her by Taylor’s lawyers was Margo Kingston, a freelance journalist who is working to get a number of independent candidates elected in Coalition-held seats at the upcoming federal poll. Kingston posted the letter she had received on Twitter and people rallied behind her as they had rallied behind Salt. Salt’s account being reinstated was cause for general celebration.
What you see in operation on social media in fact is the same dynamic that led to the emergence as a political force of One Nation, a party that attracts the protest vote, a segment of society constituted of people who feel disenfranchised and left out of “the system”, and who are looking for a champion to take up their cause and to give them a voice. The progression of events – from a few tweets by an individual on Twitter, to a steady flow of stories in the mainstream media that are embarrassing for the government, to an official enquiry – has been instructive to watch because in the current case (unlike in earlier cases) the sustained attention has unearthed something that deserves to be remarked on.
Most of the time, the mob is left baying at the moon. The watergate case proves that consistency works. If you cry wolf often enough, eventually a wolf will appear. In fact the case, which saw people explode with outrage time after time as each new nugget of information appeared in the public sphere, showed Twitter behaving just like a stopped watch, which of course we all know is correct once a day. But for each case like watergate there are 720 others that are like Paladin where all the chatter produces a lot of heat and little light. It was notable also that in the end the biggest revelations in watergate arrived via the mainstream media, where they could actually have an impact on the broader community. That is to say, an impact in the lives of people who do not use social media all the time.
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