For a week, Jeremy Cordeaux noted on this Garage edition of the Court of Public Opinion, the nation talked about melons. “Melon-gate” was everywhere, the cartoonists, the front pages, the whole shebang. And that, he argued, was exactly the point, a media distraction that let far weightier questions slip by unexamined.
A Storm About Nothing Much
Jeremy did not pretend to be scandalised by the affair itself. His frustration was with the sense of proportion. The Prime Minister, he argued, has a great deal more to answer for than a trivial melon story, yet the melon dominated for days.
Let’s move on, was his verdict. When a minor story swallows the front pages while genuinely consequential matters go unremarked, something has gone askew in the national conversation.
Smokescreen Or Coincidence?
Jeremy’s sharper suggestion was that the wall-to-wall coverage worked as a smokescreen. Whether by design or simply through the media’s habit of seizing an easy story, the effect was identical: attention was pulled away from harder subjects.
He keeps a long list of those harder subjects. The NDIS racing toward $100 billion with no minister taking responsibility. An excise regime that has handed the tobacco trade to the black market. A building code swollen to 2,000 pages. Beside any of these, a row about melons is a triviality, and yet it won the week.
How The Media Latches On
Part of Jeremy’s critique was aimed at the media itself. It is funny, he said, how the media latches onto things, running hard with a simple, colourful story while more complex and important matters, harder to squeeze into a headline or a cartoon, are quietly left alone.
That tendency, in his view, is not always a conspiracy. A melon story is easy, visual and shareable in a way a $50 billion budget problem is not. But the result is a public conversation tilted toward the trivial, whatever the motive behind it.
Keep Your Eye On The Ball
For Jeremy, the melon saga was a lesson in political attention. The stories that get the coverage are not always the stories that matter, and a government facing hard questions is rarely sorry to see the cameras chasing something harmless instead.
His advice to listeners was the one he offers often: keep your eye on the ball. Notice what is being talked about, but notice too what is not, because the issues that quietly vanish from the front pages are often the ones that will cost the public most in the end.
Listen To The Full Episode
Catch the complete Garage edition of The Court of Public Opinion, recorded live around the dining room table.
Watch The Full Episode
The Court of Public Opinion streams live every Friday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. (ACST), right here at jeremycordeaux.com. Download the podcast anytime on your favourite podcast app, and join the conversation with your calls and comments.
