Bolt from the blue

Conservative pundit Andrew Bolt has shut up shop on his prolific Herald Sun blogging activities with a cryptic “announcement from the seat of Higgins”:

Stephen Mayne has been onto this story for a while, and for once he’s close to the truth (from the linked article, written in 2006: “Maybe Bolt’s main chance will be in Higgins if Costello ultimately decided to spit the dummy and walk”). Given that I’m told he’s planning to write about this again, probably as soon as this morning, I want to say something here first before he does. This is it for the blog, at least for now. I can’t pre-empt the announcement that my local member and friend, Peter Costello, is about to make, but it would clearly be a conflict of interest for me to continue to write about politics here if I’ve privately agreed to become a player.

An April Fools’ Day joke would, of course, be highly out of character.

UPDATE: On the stroke of noon, Bolt reveals himself to be more fond of a jape than I had realised. He is however Still Not Sorry, at least with respect to me (see the third update on his post).

Other news: The chances of a rematch in McEwen have surely been greatly boosted by the disclosure that eight people in the electorate voted twice, although the case does not return to the Federal Court until May. And for those whose interest runs in that direction, Antony Green offers a post on contentious changes to electoral legislation in the ACT, which will make like difficult for independents wishing to run group tickets.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

360 comments on “Bolt from the blue”

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  1. From the Bolt Vault.

    “Congratulations to reader Ivan Denisovich for being the first to alert readers to the date. Apologies to all those who wrote, rang and posted on my site and their own offering best wishes and help. It’s appreciated, but not yet needed. Less sorry to the Canberra Times, Tree of Knowledge, and Poll Bludger.”

    😛

  2. “All generalisations are dangerous, including this one” – Alexandre Dumas

    While it is certainly true that one who generalises from experience is not guaranteed to provide a correct answer, I thought the observations of Chris from Edgecliff (40) but more particularly his final paragraph and his perspective on those who aspire to enter parliament, were uncontroversial.

  4. David Charles

    In a way you are right, but its often the sentiments that you know that lurk behind that people pick up on –

    Its the simplistic and one dimensional stuff about the individual that people object to – its the reason why the Liberal party lost the election

  5. Maxine McKew was no more biased as an ABC journalist than Pru Goward was. Both were excellent, fair journalists, with a deep understanding of politics.

    You could have guessed their personal politics by their spouses, but not by their reporting or interviewing.

  9. And the weekly award for the greatest number of empty ideologically driven clichés in a single comment goes to…

    Chris from Edgecliff (#41)

  11. Comment on Bolt’s thread:

    Who runs Poll Bludger? The Friends of the ABC perhaps? Anyway, I had a read through the posts there and it is the spiritual home of Halberstram, Barry Bones and their ilk (and displays the same level of intellectual rigour)

    Formerly of Toowoomba (Reply)
    Tue 01 Apr 08 (01:00pm)

  13. http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s2204074.htm

    “If the Prime Minister were to visit Japan he’s planning to do so twice later this year apparently there’s a question mark over who’s actually in charge. A political stalemate between the nation’s upper and Lower Houses of Parliament has placed the government at the mercy of Opposition parties. As a result, the Prime Minister Yasuo has been unable to appoint a new head for Japan’s Central Bank and looks set to lose $25 billion in revenue after the lapse of a special tax on petrol at midnight tonight.”

    The article says Fukuda a 72 yr old son of a former leader was only given the PM job to try and get some stability after the last PM Shinzo Abe turned out to be a disaster and suddenly resigned after 1 yr.
    another quote from the article
    “It’s not just the Prime Minister who’s weak, but the whole party is weak and lacking a sense of leadership.”

  17. Sorry Just Me @59, where are all the “ideologically-driven cliches”? The truth is champ, I wouldn’t even make the short-list for that award given the barrage of postings on here that read something like “all right-wingers are racist and/or greedy and/or selfish and/or lack compassion etc”.

    Fulvio @ 49, if 200,000 voters went back to the Liberals at the last election, we’d be talking about another Howard landslide. However, to say it again, the point I was making related to people aspiring to be in parliament, not the ordinary voter. If the point is too difficult for you to grasp, pity you

  18. With due respect to those here who are real Unionist, my experiance is that certain Unions only care about themselves and don’t give a stuff for the workers for they would rather be all smug in a rug with management.

  19. 67 “if 200,000 voters went back to the Liberals at the last election, we’d be talking about another Howard landslide.”

    Sorry Labor recieved 881,911 more primary votes than the Liberals at the last election. A bit of intellectual rigour please. 🙂

    Or did you mean to say if 200,000 voters in certain electorates went back … ?

  20. Anthony Albanese appears to be the designated stirrer in the new government. Today he’s had a go at McGauran and Nelson. It looks like Labor might have finally decided that when their opponent is scoring points any way they can then Labor should score a few themselves. They can’t play nice all of the time.

  21. Chris from Edgecliff I cannot help but respond to your claim that ‘schoolteachers, nurses, social workers, journalists, academics’ could not ‘cut it in the real world’.

    Firstly, what is this so-called real world? Is it so hard to believe that people could choose these occupations due to their genuine desire to work in these areas. Not everyone wants to be a ‘successful’ business person you know.

    Your further comment that these people are people ‘almost all of whom are earning under $80,000’ just leads wonder why that even needs to be pointed out. Is the worth of someone’s opinion seriously in any way related to the job they hold or the money they earn?

    If your original comment was meant to be taken to be relating to people wishing to enter politics (which doesn’t really seem open on a close reading of the comment) its still without base as far as I’m concerned. Who’s to say teachers, nurses, social workers and academics have any less merit as policy makers and representatives of the people in our democratic chambers than lawyers, doctors and business people (of which there are plenty in both parties in any case).

    People go into politics for a number of reasons. Whilst some, if not most, obviously are attracted by the perks and the power I think if you talk and get to know a few politicians you will see they are genuinely interested in promoting what they view as the best interests of the country. In the end this is all we can ask for.

  22. CfE @41 says

    “… the typical ALP voter are schoolteachers, nurses, social workers, journalists, academics who cannot cut it in the real world”

    You’ve given the game away with “who cannot cut it in the real world”.

    Same old, tired old, pathetic old belittling of “elites”. Same old, boring old, predictable old division of the workplace into real professions (e.g. blue sky financial research?) and unreal professions (e.g. photovoltaic technology development?).

    Yawn.

  23. Ruawake @ 69, anyone applying intellectual rigour would:

    (1) read between lines and realise I meant IF 200,000 votes were apportioned to certain electorates, namely those lost to the ALP;

    (2) note that the Nationals were in coalition with the Liberals;

    (3) therefore would not even waste their time doing the math to work out the number of votes between Liberal and ALP nationally – its a pointless stat

    When you add Liberal + National together, I would suspect the total votes cast are about 130,000 to 150,000 less than the ALP…but I don’t have time to check as I am too busy with a job that contributes to the “real needs of our society”, to borrow a line from Fulvio’s rocket science post @ 49

  24. Workers of the world, if you want to attack me, that’s fine. But at least read my posts properly. If you do (did) this, you will note that my post @ 41 was referring to ACADEMICS who cannot cut it in the real world. Nurses, schoolteachers and social workers are most certainly part of what I consider the ‘real world’, and to say it again, I think these professions are grossly underpaid, given the dedication, skill, demands and service provided to the community. But geez, don’t let an correctly-placed comma stop you from portraying me as some idiot from the NSW Right.

  26. The argument at 73 reminds me of the Pies conga line, dreaming they only need a small swing at the next election to get the coalition back in power.

    As I pointed out there, the new ALP MPs are busy building up personal followings, the ALP govt controls the porkbarrel and they need more like a 6% swing. So as not to give them indigestion I did not mention the 65:35 polls and to save them from having to think did not mention the inevitable redistribution.

    Since I made that post have not seen any of the conga line mention they just need a small swing back

  29. 78 Rx, I think you will find it is very easy to find 300 people who would love to see Bolt move on- even at the cost of having to pretend to congratulate him for whatever his latest madness might be.

  30. Maybe, Steve (#79), but I can’t help recalling Possum’s observation at #64:

    You know it’s April 1st when that peanut gallery over at The Hun starts complaining about the lack of others intellectual rigour.

    LOL

  32. “On the other hand, the typical ALP voter are schoolteachers, nurses, social workers, journalists, academics who cannot cut it in the real world”

    Has to be one of the more grimly amusing comments I’ve read here. What world ARE they cutting it in then? Discworld? Is that where you go for your education and medical care?

    Good grief.

  33. Steve Dickson is having a flirtation with all the conservative parties, first One Nation, then the Libs, then the Nats and now the Borgs.

    He really would be right at home with the NSW Libs.

  34. Tassieannie, heard on the radio at lunch time that the ‘young Liberals’ have started an intimidation campaign against academics. Looks like a few of the ringleaders want to denigrate academics here. Just lost in space and turned up on orders of Liberal HQ, I’d imagine.

  35. Sadly, CfE @74, a misplaced comma can reek great tragedy. I’m curious, though, about the reference to academics. Nurses, school teachers and social workers by your list have real jobs (as indeed they do), but is it that academics do not? What is then necessarily wrong with academics (not all of whom are “lefties” I would add) – their realm is, by the nature of academia, social inquiry, which necessitates a viewpoint that emphasises society as a collective construction, not an individualist pursuit.

    Your original post @41 also did referred to “ALP voters” not ALP aspirant MP’s, although we can forgive the slip as it has now been clarified – but what about others who occupations you have not noted, such as solicitor/barrister which comes up all too frequently as prospective MP’s occupations? Potentially they do not fall into the “under $80,000” salary bracket, yet seem willing to be elected as parliamentary representatives.

    Trying to divine why the Opposition benches seems low in talent from the occupations of the respective benches is a little thin on backing I would suggest. Perhaps it is more likely that the Opposition appears to have less talent because a certain element of parliamentary service is based in the notion of working for the public good (the ubiquitous “public service”). Running a business for profit does not necessarily encompass this notion, as it is to maximise profit returns to shareholders and individuals. If you’re raison d’etre in life is to maximise personal gain then parliament might seem to be anathematic to this, both on a personal and societal level.

    I do, though, think there appears to be a dearth of talent on the Opposition benches because of a conservative individualistic ideology, but not as result of its superiority/inferiority.

  36. ruawake, I was led to believe that Steve Dickson was a born again, man of his word, good upstanding Christian fundamentalist, who if he said he was going to do something would be as good as his word.

  39. Chris from Edgecliff I have followed your post today & you remind me of ESJ. Your just a poorer version! By the way where is ESJ??? 😮

  40. Comment from the Sunny Coast Daily.

    “Steve’s staying in the Liberals.
    Now there is a surprise.
    Phew! He really had me worried there for a while!
    He’s obviously staying in the Liberals to continue to learn from other well known local achievers, Peter Slipper and Alex Somlyay.

    He should have actually only threatened to threaten to quit.
    His talent could not be lost to the Liberal Party or to the State of Queensland.
    Thankfully we can all sleep soundly tonight.
    Thanks Steve!

    DS on Buderim. ”

    http://www.thedaily.com.au/news/2008/apr/01/aap-liberal-mp-wont-quit-over-merger-issue/

  41. Chris from Edgecliff

    Most of the academics I know do live in the real world – involved in their area of expertise.

    For example, I have 2 IR academic friends – both come from union backgrounds, both have done other things – both involved inconsulting with businesses etc..about the cut and thrust of industrial relations

    Another example, are some academics from UNSW – it took them 13 years of international activism to get rape considered as a war crime – yes, this came from the left hand side of politics, so you could not be more wrong – they are actually at the cutting edge of social change and many years of thankless work is involved to achieve outcomes which you probably are not aware of

  42. Bird – they teach the teachers, nurses and social workers, and are obviously not living in the real world. Like Julian Burnside.

    Oh wait – he’s a barrister. Also a human rights activist, trade union sympathiser, author, and supporter of the arts. What a misfit!

  43. Saying public servents are slack is nearly as honest as saying that all bankers can’t add up.

    Nurses are grossly underpayed considering the actual job they do.

    Teachers generally are underpayed and undervalued.

    The problem is for a Government to correct the pay of nurses you will have the rest of the Union movement demand higher pay and conditions.

    A Nurse should be paid atleast three quarters of what we pay doctors

  46. suckers. but then a little andrew bolt might bring some dewy eyed lefties back to earth – you know, the place where reason rules and not the wish to simply be holier than thou. for example i wonder how long a basic right wing lecturer might last in most of our universities – not long when the tribal heavies get after them. you people bark the same tune at every turn because you dont understand the concept of real debate – to you guys it’s like ‘how dare you go against us”. how about listening to a contra-view, make it more interesting than the nonsense on this blog. facts not fiction makes for better interdiction.

  47. Hi all. This place looks like fun for one of Andrew Bolt’s so called ‘sycophants’.

    Got a question for you. Two actually. Relates to the fact that people in the private sector were being ‘done over’ by AWAs, as mentioned in one of the posts above.

    Curious if anyone here can actually prove that. That is, show statistical evidence that Australians on AWAs were, on the whole, worse off than people on other forms of agreements.

    Or, were we lied to and did the Government just make a major policy decision affecting a large number of Australians without any solid data to guide them?

    Good luck.

  48. Wow, so much verbiage, so little comprehension. Leaving aside the comments which completely fail to understand the basic points made by CfE, we have Stewart J @85 having a stab. Firstly Stewart:

    “Nurses, school teachers and social workers by your list have real jobs (as indeed they do), but is it that academics do not?”

    Chris from Edgecliff explicitly wrote ‘academics who can’t cut it’. It’s obvious he is referring not to all academics, but to those particular academics whose livelihood depends on the sheltered workshops existing in ‘disciplines’ like cultural studies, post-modernism, or the human rights (aka ‘human flights’ given the amount of gratuituous travel involved) gravy train in Law faculties for example. What follows is the inherent gravy train of politics, which is that much more pronounced in the ALP, where unionism, protectionism and a hand-out mentality to special interests rule the day.

    Secondly:

    “Their realm is, by the nature of academia, social inquiry, which necessitates a viewpoint that emphasises society as a collective construction, not an individualist pursuit.”

    Nice entry from the Rudd school of filling out vacuousness with redundant verbiage. In short, what a crock.

    The hilarious thing here is that despite all the ALP loving going on, most of you are oblivious to the extent to which the direction of policy in Australia and Western democracies follows conservative principles. Privatisation – who started the ball rolling by selling Qantas? Why, it was your beloved ALP! Where is the tariff-raising protectionism that the Left would have us believe is in our collective interest? What happened to the howls of protest at the GST (That which Rudd called a ‘Fundamental Injustice’)? What exactly has the ALP done with mandatory detention of people-smuggled illegal immigrants? Welcomed them back in? Has the Northern Territory Intervention been scrapped?

    Face it, if you want to live in a capitalist world, then as George Michael once said, ‘If you’re going to do it, do it right’. The fact is that those people who understand conservative principles are the ones who are generally more competent and successful, and less in need of the type of mollycoddling the ALP has thrived on. A mollycoddling which incidentally costs society at large the number one thing which is for the common good – jobs.

  50. Welcome Bolters 🙂

    Carl.

    AWA Data the Liberals Claimed Never Existed
    The Workplace Authority has provided the Government with data compiled and analysed from a sample of over 1700 Australian Workplace Agreements lodged between April and October 2006, data the previous Liberal government claimed didn’t exist.

    The analysis of the 1748 AWAs shows that 89 per cent removed at least one so-called protected award condition:

    89 per cent excluded one or more so-called protected award conditions
    83 per cent excluded two or more so-called protected award conditions
    78 per cent excluded three or more so-called protected award conditions
    71 per cent excluded four or more so-called protected award conditions
    61 per cent excluded five or more so-called protected award conditions
    52 per cent excluded six or more so-called protected award conditions
    40 per cent excluded seven or more so-called protected award conditions
    30 per cent excluded eight or more so-called protected award conditions
    16 per cent excluded nine or more so-called protected award conditions
    8 per cent excluded ten or more so-called protected award conditions
    2 per cent excluded all eleven so-called protected award conditions
    The analysis also revealed the so-called protected award conditions that were most frequently removed:

    70 per cent removed shift work loadings
    68 per cent removed annual leave loadings
    65 per cent removed penalty rates
    63 per cent removed incentive based payments and bonuses
    61 per cent removed days to be substituted for public holidays
    56 per cent removed monetary allowances
    50 per cent removed public holidays payment
    49 per cent removed overtime loadings
    31 per cent removed rest breaks
    25 per cent removed declared public holidays

    The limited data revealed that 75 per cent of the 1487 AWAs sampled did not provide for a guaranteed wage increase.

    These are the statistics the former Liberal government didn’t want to tell the Australian people about. These are the individual statutory agreements that the Liberal Party brought to Australian working families.

    Good Luck 😛

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