Week 8: The Fate of the State

"Passive and active framing!" That is what we decided were the two types of framing when my friends and I discussed framing as a concept last week. There is the passive framing, which is our negotiation with the basic living scenarios we are presented with every day and then there is active framing, which is a concerted effort on the part of third parties to shape the way we respond to these scenarios. The more I thought about these ideas that we had come up with the more i realised that rather than being distinct processes they were actually more closely linked than we had originally realised. What does this mean for new structures of participatory government or 'State 2.0'? If we are shown the frames by which political discourse is shaped, is a process that hides campaign and government secrets in plain sight really just duping us?

Considering Bob Ellis’ piece ‘Sleepless in Canberra’ it seems that excessive transparency of frames and the 24hour news cycle is distracting politicians from state administrative and policy matters and forcing them into a never ending process of defending the foundational processes of politics (Ellis, 2010). Take for example the endless refresh of state Labour leaders in New South Wales. While admittedly a political arena rife with corruption, the introduction of fresh blood was still not enough to stifle the unending media barrage, while the states productivity and infrastructure development ground to a halt. The never-ending dissection of private affairs over policy matters meant that any attempt at implementing substantial works was buried. The sole policy concern of media commentators then becomes budgetary blowouts. (there has rarely been a state project that hasn’t seen a budgetary blowout)

I am not trying to suggest that transparency of governments is an unnecessary evil, but it does raise questions of how much of the political process does the public need to know about. Certainly questionable funding contributions are on the list, but maybe transparency should be addressed from a ‘need to know’ not ‘always must know’ basis.  A round the clock media establishment feeds our addiction to transparency and distracts us from what is really important which is policy agenda and implementation.

Ellis, Bob (2010) ʻSleepless in Canberraʼ The ABC, Drum Unleashed <http:// www.abc.net.au/unleashed/35116.html> accessed 18 April 2011