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In September 1999 the Victorian State Liberal government lost an election that most
pundits thought was unlosable. Of course a few commentators with 20-20 hindsight have
since said that they knew it was coming, but general agreement has been that it was a
surprise -- a surprise to the media, to metropolitan voters, to the Liberal Party, and to the
ALP. Jeff Kennett, previously referred to as the most successful politician of his
generation (amongst other things), was forced to eat humble pie and pass office to a
somewhat under-prepared Labor government.
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One of the defining features of the 1999 Victorian campaign was the use of the Internet,
firstly as a promotional tool for the incumbent Premier and then, more successfully, as a
vehicle for independent criticism.
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Jeff Kennett kicked off the Internet campaign by launching http://www.jeff.com.au, a site
dedicated, as its name suggested, to the cult of personality surrounding "Jeff". It's
somewhat ironic that at the time of writing the URL still links to the Victorian Liberal
Party site, Jeff.com.au having been taken down immediately after the election defeat. Jeff's
site was a central part of the campaign. The address was plastered on the side of trams, it
was the subject of talkback radio. The message was: Jeff's cool, he knows where it's at,
listen to the man and don't worry about the rest of the Party.
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For a while it seemed to work. The ALP barely had a handle on the Internet so Jeff's
initiative grabbed the media's attention and helped contribute to his lead in the polls. Here
was a leader who knew how to move with the times, unlike the almost invisible
Opposition.
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Australian politics had entered the new media age with a splash and Jeff.com.au established
that the timing was right to introduce Internet campaigning to an Australian electorate.
Despite the fact that other politicians and political parties had Web sites before his Jeff's
site appealed to the public's imagination.
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The slick looking site included a game that visitors could play, as well as lists of Jeff's
achievements and updates of his daily itinerary. But, not surprisingly, the hype outweighed
the substance and once the novelty wore off it became clear that Jeff.com.au was
symptomatic of wider problems with the Kennett government -- clear, that is, to all but the
conservative and largely Net-ignorant Victorian media.
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Enter the alternative media and smaller political parties. One of the first on the scene were
the Democratic Socialists with their now defunct
Kickout Jeff site. This was a basic political site arguing the Democratic Socialists' position
on the Kennett government and urging support for DS candidate Jorge Jorquera. There
was nothing particularly wrong with it, but there was nothing special about it. It suffered
from the same problem as other political sites in that it failed to stand out as a straight
critique or a satire on either Kennett or Jeff.com.au in its own right, and consequently failed
to attract much attention beyond Democratic Socialist supporters.
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A couple of satirical sites did, however, stand out. The most prominent of these was
http://www.realjeff.com. Realjeff's anonymous authors displayed a fine talent for satire
and a clear sense of Web aesthetics. The site, which is currently archived in the National
Library at http://pandora.nla.gov.au/nla/pandora/realjeff.html, used the Jeff.com.au
design as a template, manipulating the official Liberal Party logo and using Jeff.com.au's
pages as departure points for their satire. One indicator of its success was the mysterious
removal of the site from its host server on 7 September 1999. The authors were never
able to establish who removed the site or the exact reasons why, or indeed how the
censors were able to convince a US Internet Service Provider to take down Realjeff. The
ABC's Media Watch asked these questions in an episode that, coincidentally, was not
shown in Victoria in its usual timeslot because the Premier's policy speech was scheduled
against it. (The episode was instead aired in the early afternoon.) Nevertheless, Realjeff
was back in business almost immediately with a new server and a number of remote
mirrored sites. Realjeff walked a fine line between satire and libel in its short life and
gained a cult-like status through word of mouth as well as the publicity of Media Watch
and JJJ.
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A second satirical site was Jeff Kennett -- The Official Unofficial Web Site. The Official Unofficial Web Site failed to
gain the recognition of Realjeff, which is perhaps testimony to the perspicacity of Realjeff's
authors as well as a reflection of the current uncertainties of political and media strategies
for the Web. |
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But the site that probably had the most influence on the campaign, certainly received the
most coverage in the mainstream press, and whose author still claims to have played a role
in defeating the Kennett government, was Stephen Mayne's http://www.jeffed.com.au.
"Jeffed.com" succeeded in breaking a number of stories courtesy of Mayne's connections
as a one-time advisor to Kennett and Treasurer Stockdale as well as his dedication to the
cause of public-spirited journalism.
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Visitors to Jeffed.com.au were treated to a manifesto that by mid-September was 18,500
words long, outlining Mayne's background in politics and the media as well as his failed
bid to run for Kennett's seat of Burwood. In a highly readable but rambling style Mayne
described his reasons for joining the Kennett media unit, his stints at the Age, the Herald-Sun and the Australian Financial Review, his experiences as a media advisor to the
Treasurer and his concerns with Kennett's share dealings and vendettas against sections of
the media, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Auditor-General. He criticised the
media's capitulation to Kennett and provided details about state deals with Hudson
Conway, Transurban, Ron Walker and others. His professional ostracism was guaranteed
following his "tell-all" interview with Four Corners in June 1997 of which only forty
percent was aired after pressure from the Premier's office.
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Mayne's insider status with the Kennett government and his experience as a journalist had
convinced him that the Melbourne media was incapable of putting any real pressure on the
Premier. The treatise that outlined this operated as a statement of intent for Jeffed.com.au. It
contextualised other articles on the site dealing with such topics as the 1999 AGM season,
Paul Keating's relationship with Kerry Packer, Alan Stockdale's prospects on leaving
politics, Senator Stephen Conroy's parliamentary pursuit of John Elliot and the general
lack of accountability of the Kennett government.
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Jeffed.com.au was a serious, critical publication by an award-winning journalist well aware of
the implications his stance would have for his career. His answer to this has been to
embrace the Internet. Jeffed.com.au was taken down in December 1999 and in February this
year Mayne launched Crikey. Crikey is a weekly publication
with a wider brief than Jeffed.com.au. It aims to critically examine the relationship between
politics, big business and big media interests and by its seventh issue is already gaining a
reputation in the overlapping circles of politics and media. It is still a small-scale operation,
but Mayne is attracting contributions from influential quarters. He plans to archive the
Jeffed.com.au site at Crikey for subscribers. And, as a reminder of the glory days of
Jeffed.com.au, the flashing banner at the top of each Crikey page proclaims "Bringing
Governments down since September '99".
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Citation
reference for this article
MLA style:
Hugh Martin. "Bringing Governments Down: The 1999 Victorian Election Campaign and the Net" M/C Reviews 12 Apr. 2000. [your
date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/features/politics/victoria.html>.
Chicago style:
Hugh Martin, "Bringing Governments Down: The 1999 Victorian Election Campaign and the Net," M/C Reviews 12 Apr. 2000, <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/features/politics/victoria.html>
([your date of access]).
APA style:
Hugh Martin. (2000) Bringing governments down: the 1999 Victorian election campaign and the Net. M/C Reviews 12 Apr. 2000.
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/features/politics/victoria.html>
([your date of access]).
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![[image]](http://pandora.nla.gov.au/parchive/1999/Z1999-Sep-24/realjeff.stnservices.com/images/ribbon2.gif)