I love an election party, as long as nobody attempts to turn off the television.
This year’s combination of a July election (meaning too cold to go outside) and tiny children to wrangle (too exhausted to leave the house) mean I’ll probably skip the parties and opt for a night on the couch instead, remote in hand, channel flicking to see how the ‘experts’ are calling it. Along with which networks can produce the most visual over-the-top-aids to graphically depict the results.
Politics is my sport, and election night is the big grand final that only comes once every three years – aside from a bonus leadership spill or two to test the major parties.
And just like in sport, there’s one trend that’s usually the same on election night: a lack of women analyzing the results as they come in. The women, who’ve usually featured heavily as reporters during election campaigns, disappear when it comes to the final game. They’re replaced with the usual assortment of former polies and hacks, wheeled out again for the big, final show.
This Saturday night will be much like every other election night when it comes to diversity on our television sets. No doubt there will be more lights, more screens, and more swipes of large iPad-like television sets, but there won’t be a whole lot of women, again.
Over at Junkee, Osman Faruqi has summed up just how many women we’ll see, finding the commercial networks are presenting panels that are 70% men. Meanwhile, of the 34 panellists he found across the ABC, Seven, Nine and Sky, all of them are white. “Good stuff Australia,” Faruqi jokingly tweeted yesterday afternoon.
And just for good measure, Mark Latham will be making an election night appearance, because we haven’t seen enough of him over the last 12 months.
It seems the networks of hoping for a little more buy-in from the Australian public on Saturday night, with The Australian reporting the election campaign has failed to give much of a lift to news and current affairs programs. Seven’s director of news is confident viewers will “come for the grand final”.
On Seven, they’ll also come – or possibly switch off altogether – for Latham, who joins Mark Riley, Mark Ferguson, Alan Jones, Chris Reason and Marija Jovanovic.
Yep, there are three times as many ‘marks’ on the Seven panel as there are women.
The ABC is the only network to feature an equal gender split, with Leigh Sales, Annabel Crabb, Sabra Lane and Senator Penny Wong all joining the coverage.
Over on Nine, Lisa Wilkinson is the lone female host, but will be joined by female guests including Amanda Vanstone and Maxine McKew. And on Sky News, Laura Jayes, Kristina Keneally and Peta Credlin will join a large line-up of male commentators, including Alan Jones.
If you love getting as many opinions and information as you can on election nights, with a diverse range of ideas and people sharing what they think, you might want to switch off the TV election panels and stick with social media. You can still stay on the couch; you can even watch Series 4 of Netflix’s Orange is the New Black in the background.