The past fortnight’s face-to-face Morgan polling has Labor’s two-party lead down from 60.5-39.5 to 58-42. Labor is down three points on the primary vote to 47.5 per cent, the Coalition is up 0.5 per cent to 34.5 per cent and the Greens are up one to 9.5 per cent. Apart from that:
• Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports on the state of play after the redistribution proposal abolishing Laurie Ferguson’s Sydney seat of Reid:
There was a rumour he was eyeing Parramatta under a plan which would see the incumbent in that seat, Julie Owens, move to Greenway, a Liberal seat which is assuredly Labor thanks to the redistribution. For various reasons, that scenario is not going to fly. More solid is a plan, backed by Ferguson and his support group in the Left, for him to move to the western suburbs seat of Fowler. It is held by Julia Irwin but it is anticipated she will retire at the election. Irwin belongs to the Right but the Left controls the branches in Fowler and wants the seat back. Ferguson, however, faces resistance to getting any seat at all, and that includes from elements of his own faction. “How do you think we would look in terms of renewal?” said one powerbroker. Left kingmakers are leaning towards the Liverpool Mayor, Wendy Waller, for Fowler. The Right is pushing Ed Husic, who ran for Greenway in 2004 but was the victim of a race-hate letterbox campaign … Ultimately Rudd has the final say, a power the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, could only dream of given the looming preselection fights among NSW Liberals. But it is a power that needs to be used wisely, sparingly and sensitively. “Kevin should not be unfavourable to Laurie,” warned a Ferguson friend, claiming Ferguson had helped Rudd win the leadership.
• Very soon after the previous report appeared, it emerged the NSW Liberal Party was changing its rules to allow, as Imre Salusinszky of The Australian describes it, a three-quarter majority of the state executive to “rapidly endorse a candidate on the recommendation of the state director and with the go-ahead of the state president and the party’s state and federal parliamentary leaders”. The rules are ostensibly designed for by-elections or snap double dissolutions, but can essentially be used at the leaders’ pleasure. This places the party on a similar footing to Labor, whose national executive granted sweeping federal preselection powers to Kevin Rudd and five party powerbrokers earlier this year. The most obvious interpretation of the Liberal move is that it’s an attempt to stymie the influence of the hard right in party branches, and Salusinszky indeed reports the reform is expected to be opposed by “a large part of the Right faction”. However, the Labor parallel demonstrates it can equally be seen as part of a broader trend to centralisation necessitated by the ongoing decline in membership and resulting opportunities for branch-stacking.
• From the previously cited Phillip Coorey article, Nathan Rees’s chief-of-staff Graeme Wedderburn is said to be assured of a winnable position on the Senate ticket at the next election: second if Steve Hutchins retires, third at the expense of incumbent Michael Forshaw if he doesn’t. “Unless, of course, he can be persuaded to enter state politics, which is another option being floated.”
• Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald (again) notes that South Australian Senator Cory Bernardi is causing angst by agreeing to appear at a hard-right fundraiser in Cook, where federal member Scott Morrison continues to battle the forces that initially delivered preselection to factional operative Michael Towke before the 2007 election.
• The ABC reports that Tony Crook, Goldfields pastoralist and candidate for Kalgoorlie at the 2008 state election, has been “recruited” to stand as Nationals candidate against Wilson Tuckey in O’Connor. In response to a reader’s email, I recently had occasion to transpose the state election booth results on the new federal boundaries. In O’Connor, the Nationals would have polled 38.0 per cent to the Liberals’ 25.3 per cent and Labor’s 20.7 per cent. In Durack (successor to Barry Haase’s seat of Kalgoorlie), it was Labor 29.2 per cent, Liberal 29.7 per cent and Nationals 28.5 per cent. It should be noted that these numbers are heavily distorted by the presence of sitting Nationals members at state level, as well as the impact of state issues like Royalties for Regions and one-vote, one-value. The Nationals’ federal campaign in Western Australia will be bankrolled by litigious Queensland mining billionaire Clive Palmer, with the stated objective of gaining a Senate seat.
• There is increasing talk that former NSW Opposition Leader Peter Debnam will vacate his seat of Vaucluse at the next election. He faces multiple preselection challenges in any case, the apparent front-runner being University of NSW deputy chancellor Gabrielle Upton. Local paper the Wentworth Courier has taken aim at Debnam with an article and accompanying vox pop on his parliamentary inactivity during the current term.
• Sonia Byrnes of the Cooma-Monaro Express reports that Queanbeyan councillor John Barilaro will nominate for Nationals preselection in the state seat of Monaro, which the party has won the right to contest without challenge from the Liberals. Labor’s Steve Whan holds the seat by 6.3 per cent.
• Commenter Hamish Coffee relates that a local newspaper has Clover Moore dismissing rumours she won’t seek another term as state member for Sydney.
• Ben Raue at The Tally Room reports that the South Australian Greens are conducting their preselection for the Legislative Council ticket at next year’s state election. The candidates are Carol Vincent, who as SA Farmers Federation chief executive offers an unusual pedigree for a Greens candidate; Tammy Jennings, one-time Democrat and current convenor of the state party; former convenor and unsuccessful 1997 lead candidate Paul Petit; and the apparently little-known Mark Andrew. At stake is a very likely seat for the first candidate, and an outside chance for the second.
• The Sydney Morning Herald has carried a piece from NSW Liberal leader Barry O’Farrell outlining the party’s position on campaign finance reform: caps on spending extending to third parties, caps on donations and bans on donations from other than individual citizens, tighter regulation of lobbyists and extension of Independent Commission Against Corruption powers to cover the nexus between donations and government decisions.
• Mumble man Peter Brent gives the once-over to the recent Essential Research survey on which leader is best equipped to handle “issues of national importance”, noting how much these questions are influenced by incumbency.
Courtesy of the latest Democratic Audit of Australia update:
• Last month’s Audit seminar on campaign finance, Dollars and Democracy: How Best to Regulate Money in Australian Politics, will be the subject of tonight’s episode of The National Interest on Radio National from 6pm. A fortnight ago, Electoral Commissioner Ed Killesteyn appeared on the program discussing enrolment procedures and electoral boundaries.
• The Audit’s submission to the Victorian Electoral Matters Committee inquiry into the Kororoit by-election gets it right on proposals to tighten laws on misleading campaign advertising, namely that the cure would be worse than the disease.
• Brian Costar discusses campaign finance reform on Meet the Press.
• The Queensland Government has published its green paper on “a range of topics including political donations and fundraising, lobbying, whistleblowing and pecuniary interest registers”.
• Norm Kelly argues the merits of a ban on overseas donations in Australian Policy Online.
The Heysen Molotov,
Sorry, but you didn’t read my posts or have no comprehension of what I was saying.
I don’t care whether or not Get-Up is linked to any party and I don’t care what they campaign for or against. Spend a half hour and go back through mo comments and then get back to me.
I bet you come back with a different opinion of what I “DID” say and I will gladly accept an apology!!!
How’s the irony taste?
[“The Government I lead is one where Australia makes decisions on who it issues visas to or not,” Mr Rudd said today. ]
though of course it is a completly different sense than Howard:
[“The Liberal Party is now saying that when it comes to Australia’s visa policy that we’ve got to get a permit slip from another country,” Mr Rudd said. ]
cheers Julie for giving the ALP an issue that will have 99% of the population agreeing with it.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25961235-601,00.html
[Is this the stupidest attack on Rudd ever?]
Geez, tough call… MT sets the bar so high on stupid attacks…
10 News said, “PM confronted by feisty patient” then they show Kev sitting on an older lady’s bed, she’s holding his hand quietly telling him how she had to wait on a trolley when she was admitted because there wasn’t a bed free.
Confronting and feisty it weren’t 😉
It’s OK, your rice bowls are safe, for the moment. Until the man from Shangri-La with the flowing red and saffron robe arrives at our doorstep.
[Australia, China ease the tension
By Peng Kuang (China Daily), Updated: 2009-08-21 07:30
Officials from Australia’s capital yesterday played down recent friction with Beijing, hailing “common interests” shared with China while denying its ambassador to the country has been recalled for emergency talks.
Chinese experts said both sides should be “extremely cautious” in handling rows, and not over-interpret moves by one another at a time when relations continue to sour.
Sino-Australian ties have been strained by the Rio Tinto commercial espionage case, and by Australia’s granting of a visa to Rebiya Kadeer, the alleged mastermind of the July riots in Urumqi in which almost 200 people were killed.]
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-08/21/content_8596883.htm
cheers Julie for giving the ALP an issue that will have 99% of the population agreeing with it.
Ruddock was on the radio this afternoon being nailed by Samantha Horsley (?) for his claim that the visa issuing was a mistake. He continued to obfuscate despite repeated requests for a yes/no to her question of whether he thought the visa issuing was the right thing to do. Typical Howard government lawyerly weasel words: say one thing and hope the listeners interpret something else! Good on Horsley for refusing to allow him to continue to evade. He then tried to claim he’d been misrepresented, words taken out of context.
That is the typical Liberal party response when their dog-whistling and obfuscation is called into account: run to the umpire and claim they’ve been misrepresented. First Julie Bishop in parliament yesterday, now Ruddock. The ghosts of the Howard years simply refuse to die.
[Both these statements are OK in themselves but not in the context where we’ve been told to disregard Green polls which are within the margin of error, as is the case with both those statements.]
Oh LOL. The context for these statements is months of Frank Calabrese and Greensborough Growler swearing on their first born children that The Greens vote would completely collapse if they voted against the CPRS. Most movement has been in the upwards direction although all movement is within the MOE.
Either way, no collapse.
Sincere apologies to everyone for this very long post but it is necessary so that I am not accused of verballing. Here are some excerpts from Scorpio’s post over the last fifteen hours or so.
His comments reveal a pattern of behaviour and thought that make an interesting psychological study imo.
[scorpio
Posted Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 11:39 pm | Permalink
Geez, I’m glad the Greenies have gone to bed. That was some of the most mind-numbing tripe I have seen posted for at least a couple of days.
I believe, many other Labor supporters here, have a reasonable modicum of intelligence but I am having grave doubts about some others who have been flooding this forum with comments that continually leave me shaking my head and wondering why I bother to wast my time even giving them a passing glance!]
[scorpio
Posted Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 11:44 pm | Permalink
Time for me to hit the sack if you’re going to be posting this sort of rubbish!]
[scorpio
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:04 am | Permalink
Geez Tom, you don’t like to put much effort into your posts, do you? You want everyone else to do your work for you.]
[scorpio
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:14 am | Permalink
Tom’s still trying to work out what I said and how to respond to it without saying anything!]
[scorpio
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:20 am | Permalink
He’s like Bob1234, rip a couple of good one’s into them and call them on their rubbish and they quietly disappear!
It cuts it all right. I think your comments are quite unfair. Greens supporters have been making comments like that for days and days and trying to swamp the site with their misguided and blatantly unfair, misleading commentary!]
[scorpio
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:49 am | Permalink
They should give those poor, misled people their money back.]
[scorpio
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 at 11:27 am | Permalink
It’s all fantasy and the repetitious posts along these lines do the Greens supporters no credit and show just how shallow their desire is to achieve a good result for the climate is. I am heartily sick of it.]
[scorpio
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 at 11:38 am | Permalink
It is good that people can exercise their democratic rights but I would prefer that they do so in an intelligent, well thought out fashion.]
[scorpio
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:09 pm | Permalink
All I can see are a downside resulting from this strategy and directing it towards Labor posters in this forum, who mostly wish to see the best ETS that the country can support without collapsing, is stupid and childish and is alienating people who may be able to help.]
[scorpio
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:36 pm
The problem that I have is the strategy being directed to Labor supporters on this blog as though all the Greens supporters have to do is make some sort of magical breakthrough with us and all will be well in the world. We can’t do much, if anything at all but we are sure being alienated at a fast rate of knots.]
[scorpio
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:54 pm | Permalink
You Greens supporters don’t give up easily do you? People don’t follow the comments on the thread, just jump in when they feel like it’s time to have another shot at a post without following the theme that that post has been following and questioning, and hijack the commentary in their preferred direction.]
[scorpio
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:54 pm | Permalink
You Greens supporters don’t give up easily do you? People don’t follow the comments on the thread, just jump in when they feel like it’s time to have another shot at a post without following the theme that that post has been following and questioning, and hijack the commentary in their preferred direction.
OzPol Tragic and Astrobleme, please take the time to go back and read my comments on this matter before taking me to task for questioning your tactics and manner of trying to influence Labor supporters which they are all heartily sick of by now.
I don’t think William or Crikey wish to see the blog taken over by partisan Greenies intent on alienating people who think differently to their narrow view on how to achieve their aims. Many of the posters who have loyally contributed interesting and informative comments on here since 2006 rarely post here now and I for one, miss their varied contributions.
I will certainly be looking for other ways of spending my time as they apparently are, than constantly reading your repetitious attacks. You lot won’t miss me but I am sure you will soon get sick of each of you playing the same tune over and over again in a constant loop!]
[scorpio
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 at 1:20 pm | Permalink
marg, if you go back and read “ALL” my comments on this subject you will see that I don’t have any problem like that at all.
The problem is the manner in which people keep posting arguments along similar lines that go nowhere to addressing the issue and all they achieve is get people off-side and cross.
Virtually everyone who has had a go at me have “NOT” read my posts and thought about the message I intended to convey. They only read them as some sort of attack on their “CAUSE” or at them personally for following a particular political leaning.
Nowhere have I done so and a proper reading of my comments would quickly show that. It’s all to do with not taking the care to read them in context and/or wilfully ignoring that in order to continue their misguided approach to the issue!
I am not going to engage in any more exchange on the issue and it is only recently that I have commented on it at all. The comments I have made on it were not on the ETS issue as such, of which I have expressed “NO” opinion, leaving that to others, but have expressed my strong disquiet about the “manner” in which many Greens supporters have prosecuted their cause.
It does them no credit at all!!!]
[scorpio
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 at 1:28 pm | Permalink
I don’t have a problem with that, it is a democratic country. I do though get heartily sick of Bob1234 and TomTFAB constantly telling us just that in repetitious, single sentence posts.]
[scorpio
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 at 2:01 pm | Permalink
Sorry, I might be a reasonably clever fellow, but I can’t make people understand something that they either don’t want to understand or don’t have the mental capacity to allow them to do so.
I can’t help you with that and would rather exchange views and opinions on issues of substance rather than my opinion of the motives and strategies of Greens posters on this forum, who don’t or can’t, understand why they are alienating others.]
Every day the Australian carries on about Industrial Relations. One day it is the unions, next day penalty rates and the terrible laws Julia has introduced.
The like to be seen as the national paper who cares for us, the paper running the country, and guess what they nearly do because the Labor Party crawls to these wackers who write for this pathetic paper.
Pegasus! While you point out all those comments iam left wondering when will Tom the first and last get around to answering my simple question about what major project or reforms have the Greens supported in the past few decades.
The simple truth is the Greens opposed everything!
Alienating others he says, as they people in glasshouses should not throw stones.
What major reforms are you talking about?
What a super duper weekend of Rugby League bludgers (you know, AFL people, the man’s game where actual body contact is made) 🙂
I’m on Parra to beat the Tigers, the two certainties the Dragons to beat the Droncos and the Panthers to beat the Bunnies easily (sorry vera) 🙂
The value of the week is the Cows to beat the Knights, and the BEST BET OF THE YEAR, the Storm to beat Manly.
Oh Pegasus, it was painful enough the first time.
Centre! AFL has tacklling so i don’t know what you mean by no body contact.
The Greens need to get drastic regarding the CPRS. Time to stop being taken for granted and time to start telling Labor no preferences unless you start doing something fair dinkum about climate change. This weak attitude by the Labor Party is a joke.
Hell, what are you doing continually quoting Scorpio, Pegasus?
Go easy on the stuff you have been smoking will you 😆
Marky Marky! The Greens are taken for granted because they flip flop and will always back the ALP.
He is smoking the stuff you need when watching Rugby League 😉
[Time to stop being taken for granted and time to start telling Labor no preferences unless you start doing something fair dinkum about climate change.]
Labor doesn’t need Green preferences. People who vote Green preference Labor 2/3 to 3/4 of the time irrespective of what the how to vote card says.
At the last election I worked at the biggest voting place in Sturt, yet there wasn’t even a Green representative there to hand out how to vote cards.
When you state something come up with some facts, Mexican. Still waiting for those major reforms. What are these magnificent reforms that they been undertaken?
mexi that is not tackling. The tackling you refer to at 65. Watch channel 9 and you will see some tackling 🙂
Pegasus,
It’s cruel to examine anyone’s comments in such heartless detail. I shudder to think what a lightweight pneu-matic lu-natic I would appear if all of my tuppence worths were collected together like that…
Come on Parra! Go you GOOD thing
A horse flu called hendra???
You know when the Jehover’s come knocking and you say you won’t be converting today thanks and shut the door on them?
I sometimes wish William had a door 😀
Marky Marky!
I did not ask Tom if the reforms or projects were right or wrong, i asked what ones had the Greens actually walked into the Parlianment and supported, i listed several areas of Federal Governemnt policy, again i repeat what have the Australian Greens ever supported.
If i asked ALP and the Liberal Party supporters to list what their parties had supported the reponse would have been wide ranging.
The same applies to what projects have the Greens supported, the answer seems to be non.
centre, they tell me tomorrow is the Bunnies Grand final 😉
Maybe Shows, but they would like every vote and every vote counts. Some members won seats on a handful of votes without the Greens they would not win.
And if Labor does not care about it, then why do get hysterical when it occurs. No doubt they are worried about it, because if Labor preferences elsewhere to the idiots called Family First it could split Labor or result in candidates who will not support Labor on key policy areas… Look at Steve Fielding as an example. Sorry Shows but your argument is not totally true.
That’s ok Pegasus, Should pick up enough votes for the Greens to romp in at the next election. The only problem with what you have posted there is that very little of it is in the context of my main concern of which you just happened to omit those posts which show just how shallow your arguments are.
I don’t know whether or not William would be very happy if I cut and pasted all the Greenies posts that I expressed concern about and followed on with the comments that I posted demonstrating that, but if he is ok about it I don’t have any problem in spending an hour or so doing just that.
I think you people are getting a tad desperate now and sense that I am an opportunity to dodge and cover for the behaviour that I found so regrettable. How about you people coming up with some decent, achievable strategy that doesn’t involve trying to paint the Labor supporters in this forum as somehow complicit in an ALP conspiracy to avoid “any” measures to deal with climate change.
All we are, are concerned people just like yourselves but realise that our expectations have to be based on reason and what is achievable with the current political realities, not wishful, romantic feeling.
marky marky @ 66, what are you suggesting? That the Greens will improve their fortunes by advocating people preference the Nationals? Or the Desperates in the Liberal Party? Consider, as well, how the Labor Party would react to such a naked attempt at blackmail. They could concede to your demands, and be thrown out of office. Or they could set out to win despite you. Either way, the Greens would be placing themselves in jeopardy. Your strategy is basically parasitic and will in the end up alienating Green supporters.
It is very frustrating, visiting Pollbludger over the past few days. Frustrating and tiresome. I can speak only for myself, but the name calling, pointing, blaming rubbish going on between some who post here from both the Greens and ALP perspective is absurd.
Would anyone care to offer some observations as to why Phil Ruddock is now the go to guy on how desperately badly the gov’t is doing on relations with China, and then Turnbull runs away, at a rate of knots on PM, from either disagreeing with Ruddock, but isn’t going to challenge the gov’t on its decision to grant the visa the Ms. Kadeer.
He must want to choke the living s**t out of Mesmerelda.
vera that’s as close to a Grand Final as the Bunnies can get 😀
*watching footy*
I first saw the following when taking the link in his name to Pollbludger poster Peter J. Nichols’ blog:
[If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
Cardinal Richelieu]
Unfortunately, Pegasus, short of inviting the rest of us to hang him, your vague references to a ‘psychological study’ reveal nothing of what you actually think about scorpio’s comments, or his protestations of misrepresentation. Your copying and pasting doesn’t do much to add to what we might generously (perhaps in a genuine act of misrepresentation) term a debate.
It does prove you’ve read them though, so I guess you’ve defused that line. To be accused of verballing, though, you would have had to actually say something, anything, about scorpio’s statements. This would appear out of keeping for someone who has in the past entreated posters to rise above these kinds of shenanigans.
Your asking about their support for things. If you give examples then we be able to understand why they don’t support such things.
Maybe i have not looked hard enough and seen your examples.
HSO, well put!
The Greens supported the same-sex entitlements reforms which were pretty significant for some people.
They supported Fair Work as well, even though they would’ve liked some additional changes.
In the end you can’t ask that any party support reforms just because you imagine them to be ‘major’. If they don’t agree with the principles behind the reforms of course they should oppose them.
[Maybe Shows, but they would like every vote and every vote counts. Some members won seats on a handful of votes without the Greens they would not win.]
Of course every vote counts.
My point is simply that it doesn’t really matter if the Greens print How to Vote cards preference Labor or Liberal, most Green voters ultimately preference Labor.
If the Greens wanted their How to Vote cards to carry more weight, they should try to get optional preferential voting passed so their How to Vote cards could then determine whether or not Labor receives preferences at all from Green voters.
I am not suggesting the Greens preference anyone. It will be unprincipled for them to go to the Nats or Libs. They should have a split ticket. Let the mug voter decide.
The Greens need to understand that Labor is not going to do anything about Climate Change or is offering anything regarding the environment. Time to make a stand and stop helping Labor in marginal seats because in reality their views are not being listened to.
briefly @ 81,
I have been trying to get that point across for two days now and those people just do not want to accept the fact that it is just dreaming.
Instead they look for any chance they can grasp at to gang up on a single poster like myself and try and justify each others position by attacking me.
I know what it was called when I went to school and I believe they know too!!!
ltep!! Thank you.
[His comments reveal a pattern of behaviour and thought that make an interesting psychological study imo.]
f fs . children. I think ABC playschool might have a blog.
[the Labor Party crawls to these wackers who write for this pathetic paper.]
What crap. Both Rudd and Gillard have directly criticised The Australian in recent weeks.
Read this recent comment from Bernard Keane and give us no more of this tosh.
The PM v Chris Mitchell: the feud hots up
Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes
The suspicion that they just make stuff up at /The Australian /has been reinforced over recent days with Saturday’s claim that the Government asked Ken Henry’s tax review to model a capital gains tax on the family home with the aim of, in /The Australian’s /words, “slapping” such a tax on homes worth more than $2m.
Wayne Swan issued a short statement on Saturday morning saying there had been no request, there was no modelling and there would be no recommendation to that effect. Ken Henry went further yesterday and said it was a “fiction”.
Of course it was Henry last October who described as “wrong. That’s /W-R-O-N-G/, exclamation mark” an /Australian /article claiming the Reserve Bank had advised against the Government’s bank guarantee before the Prime Minister took the decision to guarantee deposits and borrowings. Back then, /The Oz/ scrambled to try to claim that discussions between RBA and Treasury officials several days afterward somehow justified the story, which was purportedly based on a leaked email from Treasury.
The AFP, apparently, suspected Godwin Grech of being the source of the leak, which suggests Malcolm Turnbull may not have been the first victim of faked emails.
Then there was /The Oz’s /campaign against the education component of the Government’s stimulus package, which centred on a number of half-baked claims that were demolished by Julia Gillard in Parliament. The campaign eventually morphed into claims that the package was pork-barrelling designed to shore up the Government’s support in crucial seats by attracting the support of tradesmen.
It’s clear that /The Australian’s/ campaign against the Government isn’t slowing — even as it keeps trying to cause trouble for Malcolm Turnbull.
/Crikey/ understands that senior ministers have been trying to patch over what has become straight-out feud between the Prime Minister and erstwhile friend and /Australian/ editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell.
Rudd of course is godfather to Mitchell’s son Riley. /The Australian/ last year announced that Mitchell had separated from Riley’s mother, journalist Christine Jackman, who knew Rudd before he entered politics (to the extent, of course, that Rudd has not been in politics since he left Nambour).
Mitchell copped stick for having such a close relationship with Rudd — especially from /Crikey/ . But the suggestion that Mitchell would take it easy on Rudd because of the relationship has never been borne out. Indeed, /The Oz/ was the last rat to leave the sinking ship that was the Howard Government, spruiking the chances of a Liberal comeback almost until the end of the election campaign.
But according to Government sources the estrangement between Rudd and /The Oz/ really began in October last year, when Matt Franklin of /The Australian/ ran the now-famous account of a conversation between Rudd and George W. Bush in which Bush is alleged to have not known what the G20 was. Mitchell — who declined to return Crikey’s calls for this story — was present at Kirribilli House when Rudd took the call, although not in the room where Rudd spoke to Bush. Rudd, who was deeply embarrassed by the ensuing controversy, was very unhappy about Mitchell’s role.
But it was the faked email affair in June that particularly infuriated the Prime Minister and turned it personal. Rudd is said to believe that News Ltd acted “unconscionably” in its coverage — although it was the News Ltd tabloids, not /The Oz/, that mocked up the faked email as though it was real.
In response, Rudd and Julia Gillard specifically began attacking News Ltd. And /The Australian/, which had launched its assault on Julia Gillard a couple of weeks before, was taken off “the drip”, with stories now being conspicuously placed with other outlets.
Mitchell — no shrinking violet either — hasn’t taken a backward step. Journalists and commentators have fallen into line and ramped up the normally anti-ALP tone of much of their coverage, despite the complete hash the Coalition is making of Opposition.
“It’s like two pugilists letting rip”, one insider said. A number of senior ALP figures are known to be concerned about the feud, figuring there is nothing to be gained from a brawl with News Ltd, and that Rudd should put his personal feelings aside.
The broader context to the feud, however, is that this is a Government which has learnt from and gone well beyond the example John Howard set in his media communication. Howard, who was burnt by the incessantly negative coverage he received from the Press Gallery in his first stint as Opposition Leader, refined the art of going over the heads of the Press Gallery and communicating directly with voters, primarily via AM radio.
Rudd has gone much further, embracing any medium that allows him an unfiltered opportunity to convey a tightly-constructed, and highly repetitive, message. FM radio, long essays and light entertainment programs, as well as regular appearances on AM radio programs like Neil Mitchell, are favoured by Rudd. Rudd and his team are focussed on ensuring they control the content of the handful of seconds’ attention most voters give to politics each day — and shape events when voters are fully tuned in.
There’s also the basic media reality that newspapers carry only a fraction of the significance of commercial television news. /The Australian/ sells around 140,000 copies each weekday. The Seven, Nine and Ten network news bulletins, which all use the same Canberra-generated political content no matter where the licensee is located, can offer audiences many multiples of that each night; in Seven’s case, up to 1.4m people on a weeknight.
It was instructive that on the night of Monday 22 June, after the Grech email had been revealed as a fake, Rudd went live on Nine News, and then /Today Tonight –/ another million-plus audience. It gave him a mass audience platform to get out an unfiltered message attacking Turnbull.
Newspapers are influential with other journalists and “inside the beltway” but are no longer a viable means of mass communication for politicians even if they were disposed to use them. They’re a wide-scale boutique media form, a relic from a more literate and less visually-oriented society.
One of the traditional roles of the media in political journalism — in some ways, the entire /raison d’etre /of the Press Gallery — is to act as intermediaries between politicians and voters. That role is being rendered irrelevant as this Government, even more than its predecessor, pursues a communication strategy in which the Press Gallery is only one of many communication tools and, having a mind of its own, generally not the preferred one.
In that mix, newspapers can offer specific benefits — they can run long-form essays, for example — but don’t even provide a mass audience anymore. Moreover, the audience they deliver, being better-educated and better-informed than most voters, are far less susceptible to spin and propagandising.
It may be that Rudd shares the view of Jeff Blodgett, the Obama campaign director who visited Australia to speak at the ALP National Conference at the end of July. I asked Blodgett about the impact of conservative media. His view was that they simply fulfil their business model, which is to serve a conservative base, and have minimal impact beyond that.
Blodgett had in mind /Fox News/, but the same reality check applies to /The Australian/, whose readership is smaller, older, richer, more white-collar and more male than even other newspapers. The Prime Minister may feel having an ongoing feud with a media outlet like that is never going to hurt him.
And here I thought when Bishop moved from Treasury to Foreign Affairs, she’d have nothing to give the ALP.
So why do people take how to vote cards Shows On?
[They should have a split ticket. Let the mug voter decide.]
If they have a split ticket 2/3 – 3/4 will preference Labor before Liberal, so that is where the vote will ultimately go.
[And here I thought when Bishop moved from Treasury to Foreign Affairs, she’d have nothing to give the ALP.]
We now know she knows as little about international relations as about economics.
[So why do people take how to vote cards Shows On?]
Some voters take no how to vote cards, does that mean they don’t vote?
Some voters take every how to vote card on offer. Does that mean they vote informal?
Harry, I wonder why Ruddock would want to insert himself into the debate at all, certainly if he had no reasonable answer to questions about visas for which he was responsible for so long. Perhaps he was asked to take on that issue by Turnbull, which would then explain why the latter couldn’t subsequently disagree with him.
That and every moderate NSW caucus vote counting, I guess.
Well past time for the Libs to run up the white flag on this one.
If its’ not such a big concern Shows On ( The Labor insider who denies it ) why are you debating me?
The Julie Bishop/ Stephen Smith contest has been all one way for a long time, with Stephen regularly getting media coverage that has cast him in very favourably. I haven’t seen any polling, but I’m sure he would be very well-rated. Bishop, on the other hand, has been completely invisible and certainly suffering from relevance-deficit-syndrome.
The strains on the China relationship must have looked like a tempting place to get some coverage and maybe put a bit of pressure on the urbane and assured Foreign Minister at the same time. But what a cock-up she has made of it. In one step, she has turned the Liberal Party into the quislings of the South Pacific and clearly undermined Australia’s diplomacy with our our largest trading partner. What a complete idiot she is. Stephen was clearly very annoyed and will not let Bishop off the hook.
It is a classic self-wedging by the Opposition. They have a very long way to go.