No FuelWatch effect from Morgan either: indeed, their face-to-face poll conducted last weekend shows Labor’s lead up to 63-37 from 61-39 the previous week. Labor’s primary vote is down slightly from 53 per cent to 52.5 per cent, but the Coalition’s has fallen further – from 34 per cent to 31.5 per cent, their worst result since mid-March.
Andrew @ 481 – I think the reaction is partly because of Neale’s reputation, and the political dynasty angle. They were ready to pounce. It may not be of interest in the rest of Australia, but you can be assured it has fed into a local festering dislike of Neal, which is abroad because not only because of her execrable personality and also because she is a political waste of space who everyone knows was shoe-horned into the seat after previous failures only because of Della. The widely read local paper had the headline screaming across yesterday’s edition “Iguana-gate!!” with an unflattering photo. She could well be a one-termer if the Libs get a reasonable candidate to stand, and deservedly so.
With the Murdoch press so negative on anything non-Liberal party, the ABC become a promotional arm of the Liberal party, a few TV stations tending toward the negative, a batch of spiteful anti-Labor radio stations – there is a whole empty niche there for the taking – the positive MSM.
I reckon a media outlet that undertook the optimistic route may win itself a niche that is now under catered for. Positive and Optimistic also sells.
#500 well, that’s the local meeja for ya – an msm equivalent?
I thought Neale had a bit more credibility than her hubby pulling strings?
497
B.S.Fairman @ 497 –
If one was going invade the country maybe they should get the Dalai Lama to lead the charge? There wouldn’t be a pollie left.
Oh, goodie. We might have a chance then! 😉
News ltd have been spruking a poll showing 87% want Rudd to take legal action over whaling.
This is from the article
“The Government has recently backed away from taking the legal route, despite gathering evidence from the Japanese fleet’s summer hunt in Antarctic waters for such a purpose”
I think msm are hoping like hell that Kev doesn’t mention whaling so they can accuse him of weakness etc. But they are going to be dissappointed, going by Kev’s comments that his opinion hasn’t changed and if diplomacy fails he’ll follow other options.
Also from this article dated 10th June
“The poll also saw Labor’s lead over the Coalition widening by four points to 58-42 on a two-party preferred basis.
The online survey of more than 1000 respondents was conducted between June 4 and yesterday. ”
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23842104-29277,00.html
“Consumer confidence drop shows Govt ‘impotence'”
another ABC headline which is in fact a quote from Allbull (or is his new name Invisabull)
498 – Well, Next election when you want to go to local Shopping Centre and want to live in peace, take yourself the Dalai Lama.
We can all rant and rage and rage and rant about the MSM, ABC, et al till the cows come home – what is going to make a difference? How to change it?
Does anyone know anything about this Essential Research mob?
I don’t think the Japanese PM with his domestic political problems would enjoy very much Rudd raising Whaling or would they be in a position to offer anything – on the contrary they would want to seem strong on the position. Depending of course on Japanese public opinion on the issue.
So probably not very strategic to make too much out of it on this trip.
cille, It’s my view you can forget about the OO and their ilk, however, I’ve taken to emailing Conroy and my local member, who admittedly might be a bit busy with Health (bastard portfolio, though love her latest setting the cat among the pigeons with primary health care reform; has got right up the noses of the “business” type GPs and got the support of the more sensible) to tell him I’m most displeased with specifically, the Online News and quoting examples, and requesting they get on with their pre-election promise to have independent appointments to statutory boards, such as the ABC, and that while, I can understand they can’t do everything at once, it’s getting really annoying and it might just be in their interests to have something other than Heather Ewart interviewing Greg Sheridan on the 7.30 Report.
Just keep hammering away.
#506 B. S Fairman – I asked what your point was, not some dribble about a shopping centre and peace – in ancient times you’re ancestors may have been considered to be a fair man – “Fairman”.
Well, Kina, as long as Fukuda offers Rudd an Iced Vovo and not some whale sashimi, Rudd will probably, it’ll probably go O.K.. Well, that’s if Fukuda can focus.
#510 Snapper – you’ve got Roxon as your local?
Sorry, Kina, got distracted by listening to Nicola on the 7.30 Report and didn’t complete the sentence properly. Aplologies also to William for wasting bandwidth. Meant to say Rudd will probably use a more strategic approach in terms of topics addressed and that it will probably go O.K. if Fukuda can focus on anything other than his own political survival.
cille, Yep. She, like Julia, is impressing me more and more. These people are seriously, seriously smart and intelligent.
So The Morongraph will run with more negatives on Neale. They’ll overplay it as usual.
snapper, I know – she is one helluva force – give her a couple of years – do you know about her background and her aunt (I think) powerful stuff
Cillie – Clearly you’re too thick to see the point. Did you get out of the wrong side of bed or something?
Now, now fairy don’t get all contrary on me – tis ok – what’s the point?
What’s the point of what? The fact that most members of the Rudd government run for the hills if there’s a chance of offending the Chinese in any way? I don’t know what the point of that is; they’re still going to buy our resources even if we call them nasty names or meet with their moral enemies. It is bloody hard to fridge without Iron Ore.
Fairy and those (most) members names are??
B.S., will remind you that Rudd was criticised for raising the Tibetan issue when visiting China – several commentators thought it ‘poor form’.
As for meeting with the D.L. – what would be the point to it? He has no political power and is a religious leader of a very small sect. It’s not as if he is leading the resistance in Tibet (he’s more a ‘government in exile’ type).
Do you think Rudd should meet with the Basque separatists, Sinn Fein, the leader of the Tamil Tigers, Hamas, the Taliban (all of the above would portray themselves as a persecuted group fighting for the freedom of their people against a powerful oppressor) —- or just with religious cult leaders?
Raising Tibet whilst in China was far more important.
Rudd is in Japan, Gillard took off to NZ and Swan has pissed off to Europe. It does seem they’re a gutless bunch sometimes. And I know it is probably not deliberate but it does look fishy to some.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/11/2271708.htm
When the Government is being accused of being too focused on China, doing something to displease the Chinese Government would help to counter that charge.
523 – No. But by playing so conservatively he is still risking the losing ground to the left. But I reckon Rudd is pretty safe at the moment as it is not going to happen whilst the Greens are “the left” as Bob Brown is actually a really weak leader. But with the Liberals in state of being a joke, it is the left flank where an upstart might be able to make ground against the ALP.
The coverage of Belinda Neal is another episode of voyeurism politics by the media and the public. The type of saturation highlighted by Mark Latham in his book.
Nonetheless Neal is a dud, and should never have been preselected and why was she because her husband had a say and helped.
The Labor Party is continuing to preselect dills or factional mates and the New South Wales party is likely to be full of mates or likely corrupt factional bullies.
Which faction are Neal and Bosca in? I assuming the Right on the grounds of his stature and the fact it is NSW but I could be wrong.
And the Liberal Party is full of them, too.
Sophie Mirabella was accused (and denied it in much the same way Neal has) of biting a fellow member of Parliament during an altercation. Although this story appears to be totally apocrophal, it was reported as factual by both the Fin Review and Crikey at the time…but she wasn’t asked to have counselling.
She later referred to fellow Liberal party members as ‘political terrorists’ and in her local electorate has engaged in behaviour which would shock Mr Nelson.
Wilson Tuckey is called ‘Iron Bar’ for a reason; Abbott abused Roxon on national television; Heffernan dodgied up a case against Michael Kirby, using Parliamentary priviledge, and called Gillard ‘intentionally barren’; and Downer, Vaile, Howard et al were either grossly irresponsible or corrupt or lying about AWB.
In any political party, of any hue (and I include the Greens), people are going to seek power for its own sake rather than because they are adornments to public life. The nature of political parties means that more people than we would like end up in Parliament (and alas, too often in safe seats; they don’t dare run for anything else).
The world has its fair share of dills, incompetents and bullies; you would expect that, in a representative democracy, there’d be a proportion of these in Parliament.
Oh dear, the highly scientific poll on ninemsn:
Should Belinda Neal be sacked?51101 Yes
8329 No
It appears our dear voters can tolerate being lied to and misled on children overboard, WMDs, AWD, Hicks, Haneef etc etc but not a backbencher with a temper
I say tolerate because, whilst the Howard govt was of course eventually thrown out, these issues were tolerated at the time by the electorate
Channel Nine could have a poll on if Nelson should be made to eat cockroaches and probably 40% would say yes. Probably the most useless polls run – probably used to gauge how many people read their stories and what interests people most.
Sack a backbencher? Sack from what? The best Rudd can do is ask her to leave the party. Even then he can’t force her to go, that’s up to the party and if they got rid of everyone with a temper then the ALP would be badly depleted.
Parliament can expell a member but I think the only single time it every did so was in ’20s.
Nine and Sky polls always favour libs 80/20. Sky polls had Rodent a dead cert to be re-elected with bloomin’ big increased majority to boot! LOL
530
I certainly would
Funny ain’t it? how this weeks Essential Research online poll which shows Labor stretching the gap to 58/42 TPP has been ignored where as the last one which had libs gaining ground was the main story on all the TV nightly news’ and msm Shamman Toad and Dwarf were shouting “THE HONEYMOON IS OVER” from the rooftops!
Never mind, a few more polls like this and the buggers might jump of the rooftops. One can only hope LOL
Yes Vera, a fortnight ago, Essential Research went from obscurity to THE poll that mattered. When it suited the MSM of course
Again with the Neal issue, Nelson has overplayed his hand. He could have handled it in a more mature fashion, and shown the compassion he wants everyone to believe he has. He cant help himself, he just jumps onto everything.
“msm Shamman, Toad and Dwarf ” The fellowship of bath-ring
Nothing to be done about the bias of the MSM – too many of them all singing from the same song sheet. SO if you can’t change them change the people’s understanding of them. As I said before if it were possible for people to be made alert that the majority of the MSM is working at every opportunity to have the Liberal party elected by smearing the Labor government then it wouldn’t matter what the media said, people,s incredulity would be in operation at all times.
Smear a persons character then they lose credibility – likewise the media.
The question then becomes how do you get the message into the minds of the general public without spending a lot of money.
For those of us that remember the joy of an unchanged Newspoll/Morgan or AC Neilson from the time Mr Rudd became Opposition Leader and during the election campaign, we know the TV polls are a joke.
I’m sure both parties have people with a specific job of dialling in and to register a vote. Unlike the polls mentioned above in which most people are selected at random by the polling organisation.
As Sir Humphrey Appleby in “Yes Minister ” so aptly put it, you can get a poll to say exactly what you want. You just have to have the right questions. And so it is with TV or Radio or even online polls.
536- What about O’Farrell over playing it with his “As big as Watergate”. Somewhat different I would suggest.
Sorry if I implied that the MSM poll had any worth as a measure of public opinion. Of course it doesnt.
And Kina, there isnt anything you can do, but I find it amazing that there appears to be a real lack of awareness in the community about the bias. The former government did well as painting the ABC as biased (until it stacked its board) and I wonder how long Rudd will bite his tongue
Remember last year when Shanahan took a pasting on the blogs over his Liberal interpretation of Newspoll. This made some impact because of the size of the protest. If enough people target a news organisation and hound them on bias something will eventually be done. If the pensioners can make their case known so can those who find the conduct of the media deplorable at the moment. It’s a matter of numbers and will.
The only thing against taking action I suppose is that this bias is having no effect on the government’s popularity. Maybe it is helping them.
I wonder if Labor have decided to in effect sacrifice Neal (knowing the Feds can absorb such bad publicity at this stage) in an effort to distract the media from Della Bosca.
And while we’re on about ABC bias, check out the bias about the Gippsland by-election at http://www.abc.net.au/elections.
In 32 of the 34 elections listed, the National Party is listed first. I don’t care if the Nationals had the highest primary vote in those 32 elections, the listing of parties in descending order of primary vote is obviously another sign of bullying by the ABC. Fairness should respect failure as well as success. I think anger management is recommended.
And if I can’t write a piece myself and then have the right to be the first to accuse myself of bias, then what sort of democracy are we living in!
Groan, stray full stop again
http://www.abc.net.au/elections
Gary @ 542: And the Australian Editor openly attacked the blogosphere in his editorial. Poor Dennis had to shut down his blog replies because his reporting of the poll findings was biased and was shown up for the sham it was.
” Possum ” proved that you don’t have to work for a news organisation to give some of the best unbiased, well documented poll commentary you could find anywhere, and his deconstruction and analysis of the Crosby Textor documents showed all how Howard used advertising, spending in marginals and dog whistling on specific subjects to win elections.
What these journo’s don’t realise is that most people are more intelligent then they give them credit for.
Antony Green @ 545
Got it in one.
In Victorian Politics: Les Twentyman is going to stand as an independent in the Kororoit by-election. I would expect a decent showing from him given he does have a fairly high profile and the ETU is backing him. I wouldn’t suggest a win however, but again it is the left flank which could be a nasty thorn in the ALP’s side.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/youth-worker-to-challenge-labor-in-byelection-20080611-2p0g.html