Verdicts on the debate in today’s papers divide neatly along organisational lines, with News Limited observers saying it was close and Fairfax giving a clear win to Rudd. The commentator who comes closest to calling it for Howard is Sid Marris: speaking with colleague Dennis Shanahan on a video at The Australian’s website, he judges that “John Howard was stronger, but Kevin Rudd didn’t suffer a loss”. Shanahan decries the “Rudd-centric” worm, and says only that the Opposition Leader “won because he didn’t lose”. Also on the video are Paul Kelly, who says Howard was “very much on top at the start but I think Rudd finished better”, and Sky News man-of-the-hour David Speers who gives the debate to Rudd “on points”. In the newspaper itself, Matthew Franklin gives Kevin Rudd a “narrow victory” in the face of a “well above par” performance by the Prime Minister. Doug Conway of the Courier-Mail calls it a draw, offering the wearily familiar assessment that “neither Mr Howard nor Mr Rudd made a disastrous blunder, nor did they land a lethal body blow on their opponent”. Only Mark Kenny of The Advertiser breaks ranks, saying Rudd “unquestionably had the better of it”, while echoing the customary caution that “the longer term political significance is unlikely to be great”.
By contrast, the headline in The Age tells us of “Rudd’s decisive win”. Michelle Grattan declares Rudd “the clear winner”, “sounding confident and convincing against an opponent whose energy flagged and temper flared”, while Tony Wright rates it “Rudd’s night on most fronts”. Similarly, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher reckons Rudd the “clear winner”, and says he has “cemented his claim as frontrunner”. The assessment of the Canberra Times is that Rudd won “because he didn’t debate. He had a plan to sell and he came, he saw and he sold”. In the other non-News Limited paper available to hand, The West Australian, a report by Chris Johnson and Shane Wright talks of Rudd “clearly getting the better of the Prime Minister”. Political editor Andrew Probyn also gives it to Rudd, saying the Prime Minister was “on the back foot … over WorkChoices, climate change, leadership and interest rates”.
14 and 20 – derek and grumblebum: howard looked like he was having petit mals at one stage – either that or Parkinsonism. he has a very strange gait, too….
Howard = whiney old man. Dud
Rudd = younger, fresh, strong arguments. Winner.
Nuff said.
The debate merely confirmed what everyone has been saying (except for the Lib staffers) for 12 months. ie that Howard has looked like someone trying to convert, via the ancient art of alchemy, a sows ear into a silk purse, a task he has failed dismally in.
To ‘passthe popcorn’ 51
Tony Abbott has the same silly walk.
#46 – There’s a reply on Sky at 1:30 I believe.
probably the most stunning thing for me last night was howard’s “education revolution” – reading, writing, spelling, and sums; more trade training; and his Australia narrative. i nearly fell off the lounge.
I noticed the gait about 6 months ago – a very painful right hip -presumably Osteoarthritis. It has improved in the last few weeks and I suspect he has had a steroid injection.
In any case, when he goes into retirement, he can have his hip replacement. If he goes on the public list (yeh, right) he will benefit from Mr Rudd’s tax cuts.
I’m glad I could come here and not have to watch it.
Howard’s questions to Rudd at the end were so stupid… he was asking for it. Especially the one about climate change and George Bush.
But by far the dumbest thing Howard said though was about his own ‘education revolution’. What was it? Something along the lines of going back to the three R’s, and a stronger focus on Australian history.
What a joke. I cannot believe this guy has been PM for 11 years. It’s a disgrace.
observer: yes, well young tony has his own set of problems but there’s something definitely neurological about howard’s walk…i think he’s got Parkinsons.
passthepopcorn @51
Had never heard of petit mals and looked it up. Mmmm.
passthepopcorn @ 55
Snap. His education stuff was laughable. Couldn’t believe it.
passthepopcorn – Howard’s education revolution was great! ‘adding up’, ‘substance’ and ‘a narrative’! That will win him Qld marginals…
He’s just so bad on his feet. He obviously expected to be dragged by Rudd onto education for the entire debate and wrote his conclusion based on this. When he was (again) outmanuevered, he had nowhere to go, and trotted out his bizarre conclusion. He was the one with a confused narrative.
And the continual lizard tongue on the dentures was pretty annoying.
I think Abbott’s atalgic gait comes from his cilice.
Julie @ 32
I now have a new found respect for 9 for having the guts to do what they did.
kudos too to Mr Martin.
Ha. I kept noticing the lizard tongue too. What was with that?
Rudd was the winner but the most concerning thing about the debate was the way the Libs tried to shut down CH9 over the worm. The way the ABC and the Press Club kow-towed to Howard over the structure of the debate and then, worse, following Liberal Party directions to pull CH9s feed, was a sad day for Austrlian democracy. I never thought I would see such blatant censorship in this country.
You can bet that channel 9 turned on Howard when they got shafted as official debate broadcaster. Don’t mess with Ray!!
Just had a look at odds movements. Maxine paying $2.90 in Bennelong? Is this a really good bet, or does someone know something I don’t?
Take Heart Alex. There will be no censorship on Nov 24!
The sleeping giant that is Ray Martin has been stirred.
Howard last night resembled a hyperactive lizard: the Liberals will be trying to get people to forget this one. I bet they rush out another supposedly big policy announcement today.
Every bit of Howard’s tactics confound me. If he is so uncomfortable in debates, why did he set it up in such an intimidating forum?
I live in Higgins and the candidate Barbara Norman has been running a very good grass roots campaign.
The word is funny enough that the electorate (well the Lib voters) are sick of Howard and would have much preffered Costello. Maybe it’s the someone from Victoria for a change thing.
I know that the candidate was worried that he would have taken over the leadership and her vote might have gone south.
Expect a 3% swing here and the seat then being on 5% in the next election
Ray Martin has been persona non grata since it was reported he was thinking of attending an ALP fund raiser. Martin in the end didn’t go but the Rodent and Liberal Party HQ nevertheless put him on the black list, along with Kerry O’Brien and Tony Jones. David Speers is now the favoured one, and watching last night I could see why, the hack from Sky News was doing his best to help out Howard.
pancho, what’s howard paying in bennelong?
http://www.smh.com.au/news/federalelection2007news/libs-cut-worm-nine/2007/10/22/1192940939550.html
“The National Press Club was controlling the broadcast but clearly the sabotaging instructions came from the Liberal Party,” Martin told the Nine Network this morning.
I didn’t see that at all Howard Hater. Speers wasn’t particularly biased.
$1.36 I think it was.
Betting odds on Labor have dropped from 1.71 (WTF?) on Sunday down to 1.58 off the back of the leader’s debate. That’s a big move.
Speers was ok, but he did need a kick once or twice from Rudd to stop Howard rabbitting on. I haven’t seen any breakdown, but would be pretty confident that Howard had more floor-time.
Any chance the movement in the betting markets could be due to rumblings about the newspoll to be released tomorrow?
Yes Pancho, Howard definately seemed to have a lot more talking time. It didn’t do him any favours though.
Personally I think Rudd performed reasonably but it was more Howard losing than Rudd winning. it was not so much what he said but the way he seemed to lose his temper at the end that will hurt him most. That sort of reaction will go down like a lead balloon with female voters for one thing.
Will anyone reputable be polling today or shortly after the debate?
Yes Howard was “much ado about nothing” and took longer to say nothing. I remember some blog about empty vessels. Here’s one before us possing as an fj holden.
Howard just talks slower. So he spends more time on screen saying less. That’s one of the main reasons he kept being cut-off.
Spears also let Rudd have a few extra seconds when talking about the Unions and James-Hardie… So you can’t be too hard on him.
Ray Martin says Liberal Party cut worm, but also the ABC’s CEO threatened Nine because of the showing of the worm.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22626285-29277,00.html
Not that I like Nine, but good on them for showing the worm. The worm may not be the best indicator, but it gives excitement to an otherwise dull talk fest that isn’t a real debate.
This will give Howard some bad publicity for a day, but it won’t have any legs (just like worms).
I’m with Speers and Kelly. I think Howard did well at the start with
“Labor party would have us believe our prosperity is because of the mining boom, I believe it is the hard work of many individual Australians”
But later into the debate it went Rudd’s way.
I would prefer not to have someone telling me what they think as the debate is on. As someone pointed out, the worm rose or dived before a sentence started, this would seem to indicate that the impression rather than the words are more important. It would be interesting for someone to examine the worm movement in the first 2 or 3 seconds as an indication of bias.
Sometimes people remember the little things and even though it drops out of the pubilc eye the voters remember. Ask Meg Lees about the GST….
If it is true that the LIbs were responsible for pulling the worm, that’s just the sort of megalomania that makes voters hesitiate in the ballot box.
Given that Howard is behind and needs the media to turn things around, it is interesting to reflect how much weaker he is in that respect now than in the past. With Alan Jones and John Laws already retired and Stan Zemanyk departed, many of his past “go-to” right wing spruikers are absent. If he has managed to put Ray Martin off side as well, then even his TV promotional vehicle of choice is lost. At this stage it looks like only Denis Shanahan is remaining “loyal and true”.
I’m not suggesting by this comment that the media are suddenly pro-Rudd. The point is he doesn’t need them to be. If the influence of the media and the campaign is neutral and hence no change, then Rudd stays in front and wins.
ifonly, politics is all about impressions. Poltiicians trade on this.
Also, someone else has stated that the started point of the worm depends on where it ended the last time they were speaking. There were times when it automatically went up for Howard too, not just Rudd.
Yeah I think Spears was ok. He really didn’t have much room to interfere so his presence was minimal. Alison Carabine is one strange looking lady.
Clear win to Rudd, very prime ministerial in his performance whilst Howard looked like a desperate old man, which I suppose he is.
I had thought Howard was having a spasm at one stage – I literally thought they were going to have to stop the debate and give him medical assistance at one stage there.
Rates Analyst, I agree. Why not just let nine go, and at the end claim the moral highground along the lines of ‘we wanted people to focus on substance’? It just reinforces the bullying idea to try to pull the feed and provides another little negative story to feed into the bigger picture.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/22/2065647.htm?site=elections/federal/2007
Wiill @ 85
That has been corrected. Apparently it was someone from the National Press Club doing the screaming if I heard correctly.
It would rally suck if the opinion of the people who make the number one rated news bulletin in Australia soured over this worm thing. It would be bad news for the people who watch Nine News, whcih has got to have a pretty decent following in [insert name of city marginal here].
All the rest of it is spin. Why is the debate a marginal? Nothing else in this election’s marginal. I agree with the mumble line: it won’t be close. And I further posit that, you can have media support for a while, but if your wheels fall off, they are going to film the crash, not pass you a wrench.
Interesting, because, we have five more weeks of this, and if the long campaign turns into a Liberal meltdown, then we’re looking at one of those not-very-common-but-surprisingly-delightful-for-a-psephologist nights, like in britain in 1997, like New Zealand in 1990, probably not that much like Canada in 1993.
Socrates: Howard still has Alan Jones and everyone else on radio station 2GB in his corner. But yes, Laws in particular seems to like Rudd as well.
I did think that Uhlmann’s last question was a bit stoogy.
Beautiful:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/federalelection2007news/libs-cut-worm-nine/2007/10/22/1192940939550.html
whoops: I mean, it would be bad news if you rely on the support of the people who watch nine news in [electorate].
and, proof readers. bad news for proofreaders.
And: nobody mentioned the bush, except as a scramble for broadband.
Uhlmann is a tool, another in a long line of unimpressive ABC radio political correspondents. He was easily the worst of the 5 journos. I got the impression Hartcher and Kelly weren’t happy with Howard.
I thought Rudd was the winner on points, but overall I didn’t think that Howard had such a bad time of it. The old man has a poor record at these debates, and for mine I thought he did OK. But JWH needed better than that – he needed to blow Rudd out of the water. On that basis, Rudd was the clear winner, the candidate who came out of the debate with his status enhanced.
Rudd’s assured performance wil make a second (or third) debate that much less likely. I think the government were hoping that the extended format might highlight Rudd’s alleged “bumper sticker” sloganeering, but the Labor man spoke at great length about a range of topics. Rudd has considerably more substance than the government gives him credit for.
Those tax cuts now seem like a long way away.