A decade ago, former Prime Minister Paul Keating made a telling comment on the treatment of speeches in modern politics. ‘If Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address in 1992,’ he said, ‘the chances are the journalists wouldn’t report the speech but the “doorstop” that followed it. And the first question they’d ask is, “How come you’re talking about democracy and freedom when there’s a war going on?” And there’d be learned articles at the weekend about whether it had been a lapse of political judgment for Mr Lincoln to deliver the Gettysburg Address in Gettysburg instead of Philadelphia.’
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