Last month’s eulogising of the late Australian “shock jock” John Laws has been revealing on the state of health of what is laughably left of the Fourth Estate.  It’s a telling, sociological reading about those in Australian media who tend to be impressionable and provincial, and the members of a deferential political class keen to keep on the right side of an airwave babbler so superficial and bullying he came to be celebrated as “Golden Tonsils”.  

Instead of steely, firm analysis of demagogy and corrupt conduct on the airways, a production line of clichés befitting a gouty monarch or mafia don was in the offing.  It was uncritical and mawkish, sinister in showing that everyone in the business of broadcasting and news have reputations soiled and nourished in equal measure.  No journalist or official interviewed could be trusted with anything other than proffering such woolly and weak formulations as “John Laws changed my life” or “John Laws changed Australia”.    

In the absence of anything original, every other hack, associate or acquaintance had to reference Australia’s pugilist Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating, who did sense the political value of keeping such a man in the tent.  Out of it, he would have irritably pissed into it.  But it seemed Keating had Laws’ number, aware of his vast audience.  “Forget the Press Gallery,” Keating dismissively remarked at one point, “educate John Laws and you educate Australia.”  It was not a savoury thing to do, but politics is the art, not so much of the possible as the unappetising.........

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