Prior to the leaders debate at the 2004 election, I went to the trouble of unearthing poll results on the previous debates going back to 1984. The Hawke versus Peacock debate of that year was the first, as it was previously a well established item of conventional wisdom that debates had little to offer an incumbent. However, Bob Hawke could hardly refuse in 1984 as Labor had run television ads during the 1983 campaign mocking Malcolm Fraser for his refusal to play ball. The record since makes clear that Fraser’s reticence had been well founded, as incumbents have only managed two wins from nine starts. In fewer than half of the nine cases did the winner of a debate go on to win the election.
1984, November 26: Peacock 50, Hawke 37 (Spectrum poll).
1987: Once bitten, Bob Hawke chickens out, leaving John Howard’s supposed debating shortcomings unexposed for another decade.
1990, February 25: Hawke 46, Peacock 36 (Newspoll).
1993, February 14: Hewson 45, Keating 31 (Newspoll).
1993, March 7: Keating 44, Hewson 38 (Newspoll).
1996, February 11: Howard 50, Keating 36 (Newspoll).
1996, February 25: Howard 54, Keating 36 (Newspoll).
1998, September 13: No poll located, but reports of the worm suggest Beazley narrowly defeated Howard.
2001, October 14: Beazley 55, Howard 35 (Newspoll).
2004, September 13: Two-thirds of Nine’s studio audience gave it to Latham over Howard.
It should be noted that Channel Nine clearly botched the job of assembling an audience of undecided voters at the 2004 debate, as the behaviour of the worm made clear. Particular notice was taken of a green-haired young gentleman in the audience who looked like nobody’s idea of a person who was considering a vote for Howard. Nonetheless, the overwhelming weight of published opinion, including my own, was that Latham had indeed put in the more confident performance.
re 94
so who had to leave the room after my announcement ?
😀
Update on the Portlandbet and Centrebet (odds seat by seat).
Portlandbet: ALP: 76
Lib/Nat: 72
Ind 2
Centrebet: ALP:75
Lib/Nat:72
Ind: 2
Centrebet isn’t listing Forrest (WA) for some reason.
Blacklight. Well, there goes the gene pool in that neck of the woods. Take cheer, poor sod: all mutants will be equal under the Sun of Kevin.
Forrest has a conservative independant candidate who is the fly in the ointment
Glen is definately Piers Ackerman. Poorly written, spelling mistakes, constantly banging on about irrelevancies and oh so sure that he is some kind of intellectual messiah for the Liberal Party.
The question I would have asked Costello on Insiders was – ‘why did Costello refuse to release details of bracket creep when requested under FOI by the GG?”. This is the same issue that he was prattling on about today when criticising Labor’s tax policy.
I am actually Sharran Burrow. I blog whilst on overseas trips.
I am Peter Reith and i do love workchoices and my Telstra phone card!
63
Howard Hater Says:
October 21st, 2007 at 11:19 am
I’d love to see a Captain Smirk vs Swan debate: I think Swanny would surprise a lot of pundits and wipe the floor with Smirky.
I watched the QLD Swan on channel Eddy today under reasonably soft questions from Laurie Oakes.
I thought even Laurie was pleasantly surprised with the way Swan presented himself and answered his questions without appearing to be just trotting out Labor Party script writers pet themes ‘fresh ideas-new leadership-no Howard plan for the future.
I would like to see a debate between Swand Costello: after that performance by Swan on Sunday and Costello’s lamentable effort on Insiders, I think Swan would hold his own and make Costello look pathetic.
You see Glen, that’s why Rudd is the smartest politcion in the country. He will not be wedged. You blokes have to resort to utter crap to try and criticise it.
ESJ,
For someone who has been dead for 15 years, you blog vey well.
Thank you, GG, its amazing what a regular intake of vitamins can do for one’s health.
I love youse all.
ANY appearance by Costello would inevitably bring on the Dr. Strangelove smirk. The man can’t help himself. He MUST have been told a thousand times to keep it under control, but it’s clear that tdespite the warnings, he can’t.
He is one of Labor’s greatest assets. Let’s see more of Costello, I say.
I am the love child of John Howard and Kevin Rudd: my name is Christopher Pyne: I love youse all.
Rudd should go JHW tonight on this union thing – get him to admit that there is nothing wrong with unions (as he has already had to do due to Hockey) and then make a farce of the argument that 70% is too much – too much? why you say they’re a good thing. How many shold there be? 50%? 40% So you advocate a quota system? Should we then have 50% women on the front bench? How about a quota of lawyers?
I really think Rudd has to be a bit aggressive on this. If JWH mentions Combet or Shorten, Rudd should ask him about James Hardie and Beaconsfield etc.
This arguement about union control is bottom feeder IQ stuff. Yes he can bring out his line about having teachers, rockstars etc, but don’t just say that, he should also say “ok we have men and women who once worked for a union. So what? They are not union representatives, they will be members elected by the Australian public answerable to the Australian public and to say that because your former job involved defending the rights of ordinary working Australians somehow disqualifies you from being a Minster is offensive”.
So long as he keeps his cool and doesn’t get shrill, I think he needs to get the blood flowing in what he says. If he just issues the standard Rudd speak of “out the back door” “economic conservative” I’m going to spit!!!
He needs to surprise Howard (and the public).
On topic, I don’t think the debate will be terribly relevant unless one of them does something incredibly stupid. I figure it won’t get the highest viewer figures so the only parts of importance will be what’s played on the recaps in the news.
Rudd’s good at getting soundbites in the news which is what I think has helped him all year. Tease him all you want for his slogans, I think they’re very effective on the people they’re targetted at. The trick is coming up with enough new slogans every now and then to make yourself seem fresh.
I honestly can’t imagine what they’ll talk about in 90 minutes. One side will exhaust cliches on ‘plans for the future’ within 10 minutes and the other will exhaust all the cliches on union bosses within 5 minutes.
ESJ,
I thought it might have been the preservative effect of all that Brandy you consumed.
Then again I thought Rudd should have attacked Howard over the Mersey side hospital, so what do I know!
Retracts statements re LTEP and trolling. I apologise.
See, even us lefties can admit when we are wrong about somethin; why can’t JWH do that, it would win him back alittle more credibility before he goes bush.
If you saw Tony Burke debate Andrew Robb on Sky yesterday you’d see clearly how to handle the union issue. It was magnificent.
Rudd should announce that Liberal Party major donor Richard Pratt’s $36 million fine will be passed on to subsidizing tuck shop milk for school kids.
Milk of course comes in CARDBOARD CARTONS no doubt manufactured under licence from a Pratt-controlled company.
Maybe the last half hour will be worth watching when they both run out of scripted material and junk slogans to toss at each other.
Grog, email that off to ’em. I totally agree.
Bluebottle you should retract statements made about right wing posters being trolls we dont call left wingers trolls it is offensive and belittles our opinions and it is disrespectful to say the least….
Who will be taping the broadcast i will tape ABC because the feeble worm wont be there we shouldnt have a worm to decide who won or who they like because i dont care who you get you cannot get completely uncommitted people to a debate everybody is bias so that is why i am avoiding channel eddy….
GB – what did Tony Burke say?
The Liberals are the masters when it comes to chanting slogans. Remember “Cut and run”. They were all saying it loud and often. I’m sure you can list more.
Should be a very interesting debate tonight – we’ll see if the Piping Shrike is correct about Mr. Howard being the one most likely to explode in this campaign.
My feeling is that Howard will have to go out hard – try to dominate the proceeding _totally_, he’ll be butting in and talking over as much as he can – it’ll be interesting to see how much freedom is given to Howard. My guess is he’ll be given a lot of freedom – which is why he asked for some period where direct discussion and argument will be allowed. He’ll be aiming to show Mr. Rudd’s alleged weakness to the Australian people.
Mr. Rudd should be prepared for the belligerant Howard. Hopefully, he’ll have a couple of not so cool, calm and collected lines prepared for when Howard tries to dominate.
We’ll also get to see if ‘Order 66’ is still operating amongst the journalists of Australia. By god, even Fran Kelly is obeying!
I cant wait for Rudd to get to a high pitched shrill about how evil Howard is and how good he is it will be funny watching him go red in the face…oh and Malcolm Farr brought up on Insiders the ear wax thing with Rudd priceless!
Sean, well you might’ve been. Sure Barry had him at the start of the Union issue but Costello had him by the finish of it. And also the finish of the entire interview.
On the issue of detail – Barry had him. On the issue of public perception – Costello had it.
It was obvious from the costello interview that additional to having one of the most welfare dependant private school sectors in the world, the taxpayer is now going to be picking up a big slab of the school fees as well through tax subsidies. Fees that have already been growing at a massive rate and will now no doubt get more obscene as they feed off the parents taxsubsidy. Ah, Howards australia
Glen let me just say that I have never accused anyone of being a troll except LTEP as a possible one and that was yesterday.
What I have said about you specifically is that you are hypocritical to the extent that you frequently fall back on insulting and offensive remarks about Kevin Rudd [using polite language of course] which are often unsubstantiated and appear to be coming from the Liberal Party Handbook.
Can we BOTH keep on topic and leave the offensive commentary aside ?
Your views on things political have much more bite when you avoid your tendency to bile and spittle when the chips are down. Toughen up mate !!
Any chance Howard may try to surprise by using one of the answers to announce a new policy – eg ratify Kyoto? (which I suspect he will do before the election – couched in the terms of “oh well we are meeting the commitments anyway, and Malcolm has finally won me over that symbolically it is the rightt hing to do…”)
Glen, better earwax than blood on your hands. I will never forgive Howard for the Iraq war.
What about afghanistan Megan?
Sean you’re right, I’m betting the Libs will announce subsidy/rebate of private school fees.
Andy @ 39 mentioned Howard’s “slip” at the apple festival when it became a bit rowdy. “Mr Speaker …”
I suspect this might prove to be a telling point in the campaign. Was it an attempt at a joke? Or was it something elese? I don’t know – I wasn’t there. Any more of this sort of thing will lead to questions on Howard’s ability to cope.
Glen,
[ Who will be taping the broadcast i will tape ABC ]
Taping the debate? Glen, what a sad life you have.
[ because i dont care ]
By the way “i” should be typed as “I”. And these ,,,,,,,, are called commas.
That just about sums up the intelligence of Malcolm Farr, Glen.
Hopinf for a Howard win tonite. Every time he’s lost from government he’s won the election.
Forgive the descent to personal observations … SNIP. No – PB
Paul whenever you resort to personal attacks you show how sad and pathetic you really are…i pity the fool.
Tony explained his background, which included law. He also mentioned how he helped someone through a legal problem as part of his union duties. He went on to say that according to the government it’s ok for him to charge someone high fees after consulting with them in a plush office but not if working for them for free within a union.
I thought Mike Bailey handled it well too. He went through the list of shadow cabinet members, explaining how some used to practise law, were teachers etc and asked the question does having a union membership make you any less of a person?
Glen you must have more to say that is politically relevant than a referral to ear wax…that is the bile and spittle rubbish that you revert to too often. Try again with logical, rational reasons why you think Rudd is not going to make a good PM or why he ought to lose this debate.
Mr. Costello has got a bad case of the crazies… worst interview since Lateline earlier in the year. His problem is he gets confused… he’s in an interview and he thinks he’s in Parliament. He hasn’t had a broad enough political education. He will never be PM… the only question is: what can he do to stop Mr. Howard becoming PM again and will he have the balls to do it?
C/T should do some new focus groups:
“Would you vote for Rudd if you knew he ate his own ear wax”
Meanwhile the rest of Australia will be concerning themselves with less trivial matters…
[Paul whenever you resort to personal attacks you show how sad and pathetic you really are…i pity the fool.]
Um, why did you need to resort to a personal attack?
We all know Howard is going to lose the debate he always does but then he usually goes on to win the election…id be worried if he won the debate lol! It is a long format 90mins so im not sure who this will favour but granted Rudd has never done a debate like this Howard has 5 times so this should help him…you’d think so anyway.
It will probably descend into a slanging match so i have no clue who will win but Rudd will try hard to because he needs the momentum he lost in week 1.
Glen,
I know you really don’t like using commas because the word comma sounds too much like communist to your ear, but they are part of good punctuation. Try to use them and ignore the fact that the comma stroke goes to the left instead of the right. You can’t expect people to consider you intelligent if you can’t even obey the simplest rules of writing.
Anyway it’s a beautiful day in Melbourne. I’m going outside. You should get off the computer and do the same.
I wish Barry this morning had responded to Costello’s comments about Howard being the one who will make the decision to leave by asking “So you want the Prime Ministership handed to you without even a party vote let alone a vote by the Australian public?”
http://www.liberal.org.au/documents/RuddsDebateBingo.pdf
“A must-have for tonight’s election debate, the official Rudd’s Debate Bingo card has 38 of Kevin Rudd’s favourite clichés and focus group tested answers.
Viewers can download the bingo card and mark off each attempt by Kevin Rudd to avoid providing answers with substance or detail.”