Australia is just like North Korea. Except exactly the opposite.
Australia has the world's most stable economy, the most promising future and the government most lauded by outside observers.
Yet a significant proportion of the population hates the current administration with a passion and is scathing of its economic management. Hostile newspapers are backing calls for an early election. Even its most ardent supporters are pessimistic about its re-election chances.
North Korea is a mirror image. It has one of the lowest income levels in the world, in negative growth, and has a controlled economy that no-one believes will ever feed and clothe its population. Yet the people of North Korea admire their glorious leader and his visionary ministers.
How can this be? The simple answer is News Corporation. But it is a bit more complicated than that. A way to a more balanced national psyche in both nations may, however, actually be quite simple.
Outside observers look at Australia's economic management with awe. No other western country has Australia's combination of high and stable employment, low inflation, steady economic growth, low taxation, moderate interest rates, low debt, efficient delivery of medical and welfare services and effective superannuation.
Few other countries have the assured future of mineral trade, international tourism, international education, sheep and cattle exports (when the industry resolves its current problems) plus wheat and wool, and the chance to lead the world in green technologies.
Australia alone among western economies averted disaster when the global financial crisis hit in 2008. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote that the Rudd Government 'put in place one of the best-designed Keynesian stimulus packages of any country in the world ... Australia had the shortest and shallowest of recessions of the advanced industrial countries.'
'For an American,' the Columbia University professor added, 'there is a certain amusement in Australian worries about the deficit and debt: their deficit as a percentage of GDP is less than half that of the US; their gross national debt is less than a third.'
So why do Australians want to eject the world's best economic managers, while the North Koreans worship and adore their hapless regime?
Consider recent headlines from the one national daily newspaper, Korean News:
Kim Jong Il's Great Feats Praised Abroad
Kim Jong Il Inspects KPA Unit Command
Worthwhile Life under Care of Great Leader
Kim Jong Il's Work Carried in Bangladeshi Newspaper
Kim Jong Il's Visit to China Hailed by Indonesian Organization.
Compare these with the headlines from Australia's one national daily:
Tax, not Gillard, is ALP's problem: Tony Abbott,
Public Entitled to Carbon Anger — Tony Abbott,
Tony Abbott Rejects Need for Media Probe,
Abbott Warns Gillard on Carbon Tax, and
Abbott Demands Equal Airtime on Tax.
See the difference? News in North Korea is the government praising the government. News in Australia is the opposition bagging the government.
My first freelance article submitted to a major journal in the 1970s included a pertinent comment from an opposition MP with years of relevant experience. The editor immediately crossed out the quote with a sharp, 'That's not news. He's a politician. That's what you'd expect him to say.'
It was a lesson journos of that generation in all liberal democracies learned as cadets. The opposition criticising the government is party politics. It is not news. Like a government praising itself.
In Australia today, most newspapers run 'news' comprised solely of opposition rants. Several such articles can appear in one issue. Refer any edition of The Australian in the run up to the federal election last August. Even ABC News now carries items consisting only of opposition attacks.
Much of the Australian media openly joins these mindless assaults. A current example is the carbon tax issue where objective analysis is overwhelmed by vicious partisan attacks. Before this, the democratic process was subverted in the coverage of the Government's home insulation scheme.
A fair analysis of that project should have reported the outlays, the houses destroyed, the industrial accidents, and the failures of the contractors, supervisors and state government inspectors. These should have been compared with data from the industry — already a major one — prior to the stimulus package.
It should also have covered the scheme's intent to maintain economic growth and secure jobs. And it should have reported on the projected energy cost savings over the next 150 or so years.
Instead, the media focused almost entirely on the first set of issues, virtually ignoring the latter two. Blame was placed on federal Labor and the culpability of others overlooked. It was a relentless campaign and it continues.
Yet, as Sydney University's Rodney Tiffin observed, 'the stimulus played a central role in making sure that Australia suffered less of a downturn than most other developed countries'.
Professor Tiffin noted that ceiling insulation in 2.2 million homes saves as much energy as taking a million cars off the road. He claimed that insulation cuts household energy use by up to 45 per cent. 'Whatever the actual figures, the environmental benefits are clearly substantial.'
For those who regard Truth as one aspect of the Divine or simply as vital for freedom, resisting such distortions of genuine information is not an option. It is an obligation. Fortunately there are actions Australians can take. Unlike North Koreans.
Alan Austin is an Australian religious affairs journalist currently based in Nîmes, France.