This is a good time to relate some history from one of Australia’s most insightful, most remarkable journalists, Warren Denning. In 1939, Denning became the first political correspondent for the ABC in the federal parliamentary press gallery in Old Parliament House. That ended a system imposed by newspapers to preserve their power which allowed the ABC to broadcast only at prescribed times, a few hundred words of copy prepared by AAP which, as it happened, was owned by the newspapers.

Warren Denning,, c. 1940.

Another of Australia’s greatest journalists, Laurie Oakes, wrote in a Hall of Fame tribute to Denning that: “The decision that the ABC should cover federal politics with its own staff was a crucial step towards the public broadcaster going head-to-head with newspapers across the board. The move was driven by government, not ABC management.”

It all sounds horribly familiar. The Murdoch empire continues its mission to emasculate the ABC, at times ably assisted by the ABC, which wilts in the face of pressure from politicians, other media or lobby groups, most recently and shamefully after the attacks on its senior political reporter Laura Tingle.

I am grateful to Oakes for gifting me Denning’s extraordinary book Caucus Crisis, the rise and fall of the Scullin Government, published in 1937, documenting the demise of the Labor prime minister and his government during the Great Depression. The only one-term federal government. So far.

Denning wrote that during James Scullin’s tenure, there were grave fears that massive riots caused by widespread poverty and joblessness would trigger a breakdown of social cohesion.

Denning summed up the dilemma thus: “Newspapermen found the responsibility of telling the people of Australia the story of what was happening at Canberra, so that on the one hand incompetence might not be cloaked and on the other, grave national difficulties not intensified by hysteria or panic, was a heavy one. It was increased by the reticence of the Scullin Government, and its fear or dislike of publicity and criticism.”

Denning concluded everyone had been adrift in a “vast ocean of uncertainty”.

Ignoring the pleas of his MPs to stay, Scullin sailed for England, supposedly to lift investor confidence in Australia. By the time he returned six months later, his government had splintered and collapsed.

Denning believes Scullin was mentally and physically exhausted and was really seeking refuge. Scullin was not the first and certainly not the last leader struggling to cope with the demands of the job during a crisis.

Denning’s words remain pertinent today. He captured perfectly the responsibilities and the burdens of those in public office and those who report on them.

Prime Minister James Scullin in Canberra, circa 1931.Credit: Fairfax

For journalists, it’s to report as accurately as possible the turmoil inside government during a crisis, without inflaming or inciting community tensions.

For others – politicians, public servants, advisers – it’s to accept criticism, to be transparent about the challenges they face as well as the limits to their capacity to solve them.

It’s not as dire today as it was during the Great Depression, but some things haven’t changed.

Governments respond to criticism by clamping down on information, by lying, by forcing people to sign gag orders to discuss politically tricky policy like gambling ad bans, by doubling down on discipline or by pretending everything has gone exactly according to plan when it........

© The Age