All governments, and all ministers, should be accountable to the public through the media.
The Abbott Government is entitled, and indeed smart, to wind back the media focus. But not to the point where routine scrutiny is almost impossible.
In the meantime, we are seeing examples in the rare interviews that are getting through of why the Abbott Government prefers to limit them.
The Environment Minister Greg Hunt went offshore to the BBC to argue he had verified on Wikipedia that climate change has not caused bushfires.
The reliability of that source was obvious the same day when somebody altered his Wikipedia profile to say: "Since the 2013 election ... he (Hunt) has already proven to be terrible at his job."
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-25/cassidy-how-long-can-the-ministerial-sound-of-silence-last/504...
