The Australian offers a surprise Newspoll with the two-preferred vote exactly where their accurate pre-election poll had it: 50-50. However, both major parties are down on the primary vote – Labor to 34 per cent, compared with 36.4 per cent at the pre-election poll and 38.0 per cent at the election, and the Coalition parties to 41 per cent, compared with 43.4 per cent and 43.6 per cent. The Greens are on 14 per cent, compared with 13.9 per cent and 11.8 per cent. Tony Abbott has dropped three points on preferred prime minister to 34 per cent, with Julia Gillard steady on 50 per cent. If nothing else, two 50-50 polls in 24 hours provide a nice rejoinder to the fresh-election-now lobby.
It’s not just the Senate that will take longer to debate bills in the parliament. The Government will not be able to gag or guillotine debate easily in the House of Representatives so it’ll be much slower there.
The independents should oppose any gag motion on principle so there’ll be a lot more time spent on supsension of standing orders and censure motions.
David,
And a terse coverage it was by their ABC News Online. Three whole sentences, 60 words, no doubt published through gritted teeth.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/17/3014321.htm
The Sydney Morning Herald gave it far deeper coverage – 11 substantial paragraphs – 321 words. That’s more than five times the coverage offered up by the fair and balanced
Fox NewsABC News.http://www.smh.com.au/national/police-drop-investigation-of-election-leak-20100916-15erb.html
Cuppa, the story is given more prominence on the ABC website though. It’s marked as a top story, whereas it’s nowhere to be seen on the SMH front page.
You have clearly been inhabited by the ghost of Arthur Calwell, TSOP!
I’d be surprised if any gags are even attempted, unless the opposition is obviously just filibustering and a gag is planned with the independents beforehand.
Cuppa
what are the Libs going to do now about this criminal leak? They were jumping up and down. What is their next move, investigate themselves?
ABC Online spent hundreds of words before the election running the Coalition talking point about “the dog ate my homework”.
Um, where do you think I came across it? On the front page of the SMH’s National News section. Not sure if it’s still there.
http://www.smh.com.au/national
TSOP and other Croweaters
I’m not impressed with Foley’s death by a thousand cuts budget. Cutting 3700 jobs and expecting the people left behind to do more just doesn’t work. It means more time that police, nurses etc spend doing admin and less time doing their real job. It’s a lazy and inefficient way to make cuts.
And I’m still unconvinced that that a slash and burn budget was necessary. Something isn’t right.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/in-depth/with-economy-growing-why-are-we-cutting-jobs/story-fn6ilknv-1225925085068
A responsible, respectable media would do the investigating themselves. Surely a matter of such significance warrants this. Forlorn hope, though, given their performance over the past year or two.
Of course there was no leaker. It was just a stalling tactic so the opposition could avoid scrutiny of their policy costings. The Liberal party should be asked to pick up the tab for the AFP investigation.
That’s not the front page and it’ll soon be bumped off the list even on that count. But by all means continue the hysterical beat up of bias which is non-existant in this case.
The ABC article is factual and objective. Perhaps you’d be happier if they injected a political slant into the story.
Cuppa
Investigative journalists? What is that?
You tend to take a ‘realist’ type view of things. I am more of a ‘constructivist’.
How long do you think the 60-word story will have top-of-the-page ranking on their ABC? I give it a couple of hours, tops. To be replaced, naturally, by today’s Coalition talking point/beat-up, led in with the phrase:
were very concerned about the leak. They’ve conducted an investigation. We’re waiting to hear back from them about whether it was Wayne Swan, or his office or the Treasury that leaked the document]
I am now firmly of the opinion the Libs leaked the information to avoid treasury seeing the costings and are now liars about it. Time the Feds investigated the Liberals for wasting police time and the Govt and the indies should be screaming about this from rafters
Rod 3004
Arthur Caldwell’s famous White Australia comment :
“Two Wongs don’t make a White”.
Lol, if they were “factual and objective”(not to mention responsible) they’d have taken the Coalition to task when making their “dog ate my homework” allegation. But no, they just ran the Coalition claims verbatim without challenge or due journalistic skepticism.
For longer than on the SMH website given it was never there. I suppose this means the SMH has been infiltrated by Coalition sympathisers and they should be charged for treason.
Well given the current top stories include news of a Kevin Rudd announcement and of an address by Stephen Conroy to the UN on broadband I suppose this is evidence that they’re nothing but a Government mouthpiece.
Alternatively, they could just be presenting the news (funnily enough!).
I have made my ritual complaint to the ABC this morning, citing the all too familiar pattern of bias towards the Coalition.
This morning on ABC News Radio, the ill equiped Marius Benson interviewed a professor from a University in WA (why are all of the academics the ABC digs up now from WA?) about the recent raft of major industry heavyweights calling for a Carbon Tax to be introduced, or at least to be seriously discussed.
As if from the mouths of Liberal Party Headquarters apparatchiks, these two apologists traded smarmy quips, describing the Opposition’s response of circling the wagons around their ‘direct action’ plans as ‘interesting’ but editorialising about Julia Gillard’s statement about ruling nothing in or out as ‘too clever by half’ then moving straight on to sound bites from the Opposition spokesdrone, but no countervailing statement was sought from any Government representative.
This is the current version of a balanced ABC report – apply emotive adjectives, and pejoratives references to Government policies and responses that are reasonable, but softly describe nonsensical and out-of-step-with-Industry Opposition ramblings as merely ‘interesting’ then allow a free kick to the Coalition by playing only their media soundbite of the hour – virtual paid advertising for the Coalition, courtesy of our tax payer funded ABC.
Bring on the Parliamentary Inquiry into these anti-democratic practices within the ABC that are, most insultingly of all, paid for by our citizens.
Ltep,
The fact remains that, regardless of place-of-page ranking (which is a fluid situation in any case) the SMH gave more than five times the coverage of this nationally-important story than the terse 60-word missive from the ABC.
I think you miss the whole point of what factual and objective means. The role of an impartial media organisation should be to objectively present what has happened whilst resisting editorialising. If others make comment its fair to include these comments in the story. If the Government failed to mount a rebuttal of the Coalition’s claims that is their problem, not the ABC’s.
Good old Diogenese, as disingenous as ever. The author of that article actually posted a possible explanation within the article.
“Could it be that it is finding it difficult to secure a private sector partner able to raise the capital to get the new Royal Adelaide Hospital development off the ground. If so then this would be an opportunity to put the State’s AAA credit rating to use. The function of a guilt-edge credit rating is to enable governments to borrow cheaply. This is how the RAH project should be funded”.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/in-depth/with-economy-growing-why-are-we-cutting-jobs/story-fn6ilknv-1225925085068
The whole community is in favour of debt. Listen to your local Libs. They can’t get enough.
Dio, I’m with you there. I have no idea what’s going on. It’s strange because the state ALP isn’t anti-PS. They know the PS is essential to a functioning government, and the PS sitting on his arse behind a desk enjoying a plum job at the taxpayers’ expense is a myth.
I don’t think the budget is that bad, I just think Foley wants to leave a legacy for himself. I was trying to figure out who it was he kind of reminds me of, I remember his name now: John Dawkins. The Keating Treasurer who ended up resigning because he just pushed the neoliberal reforms too far. Maybe it’s a case of that.
Also, I think Foley has an interest in reentering the private sector, maybe he is trying to set up future business interests to fill the void created by gutting the private sector.
Or maybe he’s just gasping for relevency, and looking at any big reform he can think of to prevent himself from being a dead man walking. I dunno. Either way I, and many other Labor supporters to whom I have been speaking have no confidence in him anymore. Hopefully that is reflected in caucus before too long.
Fwiw, I have decided that if I am living in SA for the 2014 election, unless the ALP changes its core attitude and approach to things in the next 4 years, I am going to vote informally for the HoA.
The trouble is, there was a leak. They can say that the police simply didn’t find who did it, therefore there is still a Labor mole in Treasury. The funny thing is that when the black hole emerged there was no attempt by the opposition to blame a Treasury mole for it. What they claimed to be worried about all along came to pass (i.e., disagreement with Treasury on costings), but the reason they were worried suddenly vanished. And I don’t know of a single question from the press to them on this point.
No, just the ghost of bad puns. 🙂
victoria
…and stamp duty was one of the issues of the rebellious colonists in British North America…something else for the teabaggers to vent on…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_Act_1765
No one mentioned editorialising (except you). The role of news is to do more than run spin/talking points from political parties. As Victoria said, where’s the investigative journalism? The Federal Opposition claimed that “the dog ate my homework” in a sheer attempt to get out of releasing costings (shown to be in error) before the election. They were allowed to get away with it virtually unchallenged. In other words, they tried to con their way into office, with the prostrate media doing little but acting as a clearinghouse for their spin. John Menadue is correct: The media have done a disservice to our democracy. I can see why he’s up in arms about it, even if you prefer to cop it sweet and make excuses.
Well, it is still not evident, even if there was leak, that it came from Treasury
Given the manifest love between Hockey and Robb, suspicion could quite easily turn to internal Liberal Party fanctionalism
just looking at the history of opposition leaders’ performances at elections in the past. Tony didn’t really do that much of an impressive job. +7 seats with +~2.5% 2PP is nothing to brag about.
Speaking of treasury leaks, whatever happened to Grech? And Abetz and Turnbull?
I don’t think it matters much what the Herald puts on the front page. It’s all footy in Melbourne.
Tweet
There is a continuing drift to blame and introspection.
BTW, the latest Melbourne radio ratings were released this week. Our right-wing talk station MTR (Steve Price and co) has fallen from an average 8,000 listeners to about 6,000. William’s audience is dwindling.
Has Gillard talked to Kevin Rudd since he became foreign minister?
I find it curious we have a Foreign Minister who has absolutely no communication with our Prime Minister except maybe through faxes.
No one communicates through faxes anymore because Godwin Grech is watching them all.
While I know Townsville is still getting used to the recently introduced “electricity” thing, I can assure you that in the rest of the world, there are far more sophisticated means of communication available than faxes.
And of course she has spoken to him. How was he supposed to know he was FM? Guessing?
*sigh* Where did you get that from?
MTR is also home to Andrew Bolt. He used to have a regular gig on the top rating 3AW but gave it all up to pioneer shock jock conservative radio rantathons in Melbourne. Now he just barks at the moon.
Apparently MT said all policy’s are up for review becuase they were rejected by the electorate.
Has Turnbull talked to Tony Abbott since he became Shadow Minister for Communications?
I find it curious we have a Shadow Comms Minister who has absolutely no communication with our Leader of the Opposition except maybe through carrier pidgeon.
Rob Oakeshott gives it back to the opposition about reneging on parliamentary reform.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/rob-oakeshott-warns-parliamentary-reform-deal-could-collapse/story-fn59niix-1225925194373
And Pebbles, could you just imagine the strut it would develop if it were to become FA Minister?
cyril,
Tony does a good “singing telegram” bike courier.
The Australian has published a short editorial against Rob Oakeshott taking the Speakership with the sub-headline:
Before that (a few years ago) he had a regular gig on ABC 774. Jon Faine seemed offended that he dropped out.
Yes , I agree blue-green. It is a difficult balance. Jo Chandler discusses a similar dilemma very directly when it comes to media coverage in such situations. Her piece is well worth reading.
see http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/medias-crimes-of-omission-leave-disaster-victims-in-the-lurch-20100916-15ekj.html
Itep,
The ABC headlines are not factual or objective.
They are:
The facts are, firstly, the AFP did not ‘drop’ the investigation, they completed it. Secondly, as a result of their completed investigation, the AFP found no evidence that there ever was a ‘leak’ from Treasury. To quote the body of the story:
If a Treasury official ‘leaked’ any information, a Commonwealth offence would have been committed.
The ABC headline is biased and false. It says there was a Treasury leak. There wasn’t. There was an ‘alleged Treasury leak’, the allegation being made by Robb and Hockey, who were desperate to avoid any Treasury evaluation of their incompetent, or deliberately falsified, budget costings. The allegation has been found to have no basis, after an AFP investigation, but the ABC still reports the direct and obvious lie that there was a Treasury leak.
I repeat, the ABC headline is biased and false, and, I would contend, based on the mountain of evidence I have collected of similar biased and/or false headlines, intended to deliberately mislead.
From the SMH story:
were very concerned about the leak. They’ve conducted an investigation. We’re waiting to hear back from them about whether it was Wayne Swan, or his office or the Treasury that leaked the document.”]
Try harder next time.
cheers,
MD
GG, in his budgie smugglers ?
Robb on the AFP’s decision:
Abbott has actually said ‘we lost becuase we didn’t win enough seats.’
He blames the NSW Branch for not pre-selecting candidates early enough.