Last weekend’s Morgan face-to-face survey echoed other polls conducted at the time in showing little change on earlier polling despite Labor’s leadership turmoil, though as always it failed to echo other polls in having Labor’s primary vote several points higher. In this case Labor’s primary vote was up half a point on the previous week to 37.5 per cent, with the Coalition also up a point to 42.5 per cent and the Greens down 3.5 per cent from an anomalous 14.5 per cent last time. As usual with Morgan (though not Nielsen), there was a substantial difference between the two-party preferred results as derived by respondent allocation (52-48 to the Coalition) and using preference flows from the previous election (50-50).
NOTE: Due to server upgrades which will hopefully put an end to Crikey’s notorious technical gremlins, comments will be closed through the entirety of Sunday morning (i.e. about midnight to about noon).
Thanks to those who responded to my question about the rainfall in Brisbane.
DavidWH, you seem to know a bit about Albion Park, so you would probably be aware of the plans to move harness racing out of there this year. Do you have any thoughts on whether the likely change of government up there this month will have any impact on that decision?
Win for people power? Pyne interview transcript up:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3444912.htm
OzPol
[Maybe he’s not old enough to remember 1951-58 as clearly as I do, or maybe he’s from a state that didn’t split (eg NSW), or, like Abbott, he’s a Latter Day Santamarian.]
Thank you for your post you have a great grasp of political history.
Seems a long time ago now but I know exactly of what you speak. My grandfather was our Federal Member elected 1949 and though we were pre-school age when he was elected we were enrolled in the local Catholic School in 1951. I well remember sitting in Mass while the Parish Priest vilified our grandfather because he was not one of the groupers.
It was raised over and over again and pretty hard for two little kids to try and understand why the grandfather they loved was being spoken of in such terms.
Darn the LNP has said they will look at fixing the problems with QLD racing but didn’t give any details. It would be a tragedy if they moved the trotts from AP.
jenauthor,
He got the Persians themselves onside. Many of the other peoples of the former Persian Empire, however, he was very nasty indeed to. The Kossaioi of the Zagros (also called the Kassites), for example, were his summer punching bags (Babylon got very hot in the summer; the Zagros mountains were much more comfortable).
Mind you, he did suspect them of nicking some of his new Nisaian horses…
http://eventmechanics.net.au/media/news-media-independent-media-inquiry/
[March 2, 2012
What is ‘news media’? Independent Media Inquiry
The Federal Government’s Independent Media Inquiry published its report today by Mr Ray Finkelstein QC assisted by Professor Matthew Ricketson. It is a massive report and will take some time to work through. This hasn’t stopped Tim from mUmbrella already getting stuck into the report around the issue of what sorts of ‘online media enterprises’ (as the Convergence Review calls them) will be classified as ‘news media’ for the purposes of any posssible regulation.]
Good response to some people’s misreading of the report
What have the Greeks ever done for us besides giving us Nana Moussaka?
[ Apparently, Carr’s appointment to FM was widely speculated on all this week and confirmed yesterday. Funny that, I could have sworn it had been completely written off by Wednesday morning. I must have misread everything. ]
You’ve obviously not picked up how this is now being reported by our wonderful journalists (who are never actually wrong, by the way … if it ever seems that way, then it is just that the PM is so tricky that they can’t possibly be expected to simply report what she actually said!)
Oh no! This is now a double fail by Gillard!
First, she wanted Bob Carr and got overruled by those big bad “faceless men” (all of whom seem to have both names and faces, by the way – I think being a “faceless man” must actually an honorary position of some kind. I wonder if they are elected or just appointed?).
Then, when her whole government was on the very verge of collapsing in absolute disarray, she was miraculously rescued … by Bob Carr!
Get it? This had nothing at all to do with Julia, who is still a weak, dithering, untrustworthy disgrace of a PM , and everything to do with forceful, wise, intelligent and trustworthy ex-premier of NSW!
I reckon by next week we’ll start seeing headlines about “Is Carr undermining the PM? Is being FM enough? Does he want the top job?”
Thanks David. My thoughts too. Although if they insist on building a 1400 metre track at another location up there – as I’ve heard they might – I think I can cope with it now, having had a couple of years to observe the racing on the large track at Menangle in NSW. Hated it at first, but I think I’ve got the hang of it now.
Fins they have given us Greek Tragedies.
They are talking about Degan I think which has had training tracks for many years. I guess the real estate around has become too valuable for development. We managed to get over it when they moved the dogs from the Gabba to AP so if they close AP we will survive. But still sad.
Agree with Bushfire Bill and Rod Hagen upthread that there is circumstantial evidence, following the press gallery debacle of this past week, to suggest that there is/was a serious leaker within the cabinet, and/or there is phone-tapping going on.
My money has always been on Robert McClelland as the main leaker out of cabinet and the one most likely to be causing Gillard grief. He is a low-grade potato-head whose only claim to fame is his safe seat and his family name. He was never ministerial talent and he was a hopeless Attorney-General.
Witness his various cock-ups, including the Assange response and the Malaysian Solution case in the High Court. In both those instances Gillard ran with his situation brief and legal advice and hit a wall (and in both instances Rudd surfaced with an opposing and better view on the subject, what a coincidence).
Maybe McClelland’s advice to the PM was just repeatedly stupid and wrong, but maybe he was running interference for Rudd, who we know was waiting for Gillard to accumulate enough “stumbles” before launching his bid for the leadership.
We may well have witnessed a sting operation from the PM last week, involving the press gallery as unwitting stooges. Gillard tried to dump McClelland late last year, and this week delivered him to the backbench, with no threat of a by-election. Sounds to me like she played a crafty two-step game to finally heave his lard-arse out of cabinet, with the only penalty being his boring and self-serving dissertations on his stellar career each time he is bumped.
Arbib might have been unexpected collateral damage, but his replacement was relatively swift and seemed to have some real deliberation behind it. Perhaps part of a longer stealth campaign by the PM to gradually replace the “faceless men” and party hacks lounging around in the Senate with the elder statesmen and women that the government sorely needs in dealing with a rabid press gallery and a disconnected and confused electorate.
As for phone-tapping, I too have been amazed at the detailed word-for-word descriptions by some journalists of what was apparently said in private phone calls by various players in the Carr for FM saga. That level of detail could only have been gained by listening in (or with a verbatim recording), it seems. We know that News Ltd has a track record in phone-tapping in the UK, and there is no direct evidence (yet) that the disease has entered Australia, but there is no need to dismiss the possibility out of hand either. However, in the Carr for FM saga, it has been Fairfax leading the way, not News Ltd, which suggests that either McClelland was talking directly to his Fairfax friends, with News Ltd coat-tailing, or there is another Gordon Gretch in the PMO…
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Tony Abbott is looking pale and drained, wonder why?
I just saw Emma destroy poor widdle Prissy.
Great stuff!
Should be more of it.
[I reckon by next week we’ll start seeing headlines about “Is Carr undermining the PM? Is being FM enough? Does he want the top job?”]
Already started. Topic of the hour yesterday between 1pm and 2pm on 2GB (in between Carr-Slagging, that is).
Re. Alexander, my comment was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, a reference to the current Liberals blaming everything bad on Rudd/Gillard, and then taking all the credit for anything good.
Why do I bother?
My comments were TIC as well BB. 🙂
Agree Bk,
Just watched it myself. Good stuff! we need more of it.
In the HOR, the pollies are protected by parl privilege, but hw far can they go outside? JulieB and Pyne seem to get pretty close to the bone. Unfortunately making an issue of it would only result in more forensic study of he said, she said.
Gets up my nose, tho.
Bills update:
282 bills passed in HoR:
. 277 government bills
. 1 Wilkie – enacted
. 1 Oakeshott – enacted
. 1 Bob Brown – enacted
. 1 Adam Bandt – enacted
. 1 Luke Hartsuyker (not being proceeded with in the Senate)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/02/police-privatisation-security-firms-crime
[Revealed: government plans for police privatisation
West Midlands and Surrey police offer £1.5bn contract under which private firms may investigate crime and detain suspects
Alan Travis and Zoe Williams
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 March 2012 18.09 GMT
Private companies could take responsibility for investigating crimes, patrolling neighbourhoods and even detaining suspects under a radical privatisation plan being put forward by two of the largest police forces in the country.
West Midlands and Surrey have invited bids from G4S and other major security companies on behalf of all forces across England and Wales to take over the delivery of a wide range of services previously carried out by the police.]
[282 bills passed in HoR:]
ducky, thanks. just in time for my new BISONs that i am working on now.
alexander created the first true cross fertilisation of cultures/peoples
the learning and knowledge shared was quite astonishing
one book i read stated that if he had taken india,there would have been a much much earlier industrial revolution
(Ancient Inventions)
Darn
Lost of rain in the west good hours soaking. Stopped now
It was oly a matter of time before “gate” was attached to this…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/9119702/Horsegate-David-Cameron-knew-he-was-riding-a-police-horse-Downing-Street-says.html
[Horsegate: David Cameron knew he was riding a police horse, Downing Street says
David Cameron knew more than two years ago that former tabloid editor Rebekah Brooks had been loaned an ex-police horse by the Metropolitan Police, Downing Street has admitted.
By Christopher Hope, Senior Political Correspondent
10:00PM GMT 02 Mar 2012
The news will raise further questions about how much the Prime Minister knew about the links between Mrs Brooks, who quit as chief executive of News International at the height of the phone hacking scandal last summer and senior Scotland Yard detectives.
Mr Cameron also finally admitted, after three days of speculation, that he had ridden the retired police mount, called Raisa, when it was looked after by Mrs Brooks between 2008 and 2010. ]
Darn
I will not swear to it but I think the LNP may be inclined to protect Albion park – Unless someone of their friends want to develop it- prime water front land and very close to the CBD
Leroy,
Given Cameron’s track record I assume the police tender will be won by either Murdoch or the Mafia.
[Horsegate: David Cameron knew he was riding a police horse, Downing Street says]
We have our own Horseygate here
UK Media must be reading PB blog.
Pretty good report summarising reshuffle in The New Zealand Herald
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10789456
[Carr key face in Gillard Cabinet
By Greg Ansley
5:30 AM Saturday Mar 3, 2012
On Monday Governor-General Quentin Bryce, back from a state visit to New Zealand, will swear in a new Cabinet that defies claims Prime Minister Julia Gillard had been rolled by her ministers within days of her leadership victory.
Her key appointment is former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr as Foreign Minister to replace Kevin Rudd, who was relegated to the backbenches after failing to oust Gillard in Monday’s caucus ballot.]
Susan @1962
Cant agree with you at all about McClelland as likely source of leaks. I know him, have done for years, how about you? I would swear unhesitatingly to him being an honourable man utterly incapable of treachery like that.
I did say last night (in the heat of discussion, as Tony Abbott would say) that he wasn’t in the front rank of great AGs (Evatt deserves a row of his own for one thing as another Member for Barton) but Macca does not deserve accusations like this.
And as for the Malaysian solution case, let me see, was he according to you a hopeless AG (he wasnt) and yet somehow secretly foresaw the result – (involving a complete reversal of previous Federal Court decisions, fair enough but as the PM pointed out HC members had been party to/authors of those decisions) – and then he was author or participant in a cunning plan by Rudd who knew or foresaw the result too?
And how many other participants in this cunning plan would there have had to be? If you think for a moment about the AG as head of a department full of lawyers, not as a sole practitioner or an ordinary barrister. Was the Solicitor-General for example just pretending to be caught off guard when Gummow J opened up on him with very aggressive questioning along the lines which the Court ended up taking in its decision?
Back to leaks, my money’s on the hacking theory, I agree about the possibility of a sting on the media by the PM but at least as likely is they were just stung by their own vanity and refusal to attend to what the PM was and was not saying.
282 bills passed so far is a fantastic achievement for the minority govt and the crossbenchers concerned.
I really get the feeling the govt has just commenced the downhill run to the next election with the hard uphill slog behind it.
Good things ahead I feel.
Zoomster #1701
Liked your story. I don’t talk politics at work, but the general attitude I pick up is that the country’s doing pretty well & in consequence Gillard & Labor have to be voted out but nothing will change because of that. Plus I recently met someone who thinks Gillard’s a communist.
PvO’s take on it…
http://tinyurl.com/77wjsjz (click google link)
[Choosing Bob Carr will build momentum for Julia Gillard
by: Peter van Onselen From: The Australian March 03, 2012 12:00AM
ONCE you get past the fact that our Prime Minister deliberately misled earlier this week with her “completely untrue” answer to questions about a report in this paper speculating on Bob Carr’s appointment as foreign minister, Julia Gillard’s appointment of Bob Carr as foreign minister is an excellent one
It gets a little messy when you put it all in one sentence like that, doesn’t it?]
Finns …. Ouzo !!
Good blog post
http://prestoninstitute.wordpress.com/2012/03/03/mrcarrgoestowashington/
[Posted on March 3, 2012
Mr Carr Goes to Washington… and Barnaby
I should like Bob Carr. He possesses a great intellect and is able to absorb ideas that are beyond almost all of Australia’s politicians, with perhaps Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd being his equal. I should like him because he has the even less patience than I do with old style “nostalgic left Trots” firing up abuse and aggression at rallies. Yet when he was the NSW Premier for 10 years, I never liked him.]
A fair length, covers off on a few arising issues
[zoomster
Posted Saturday, March 3, 2012 at 2:15 pm | Permalink
Dangerous ground, surely, for J Bishop to be pushing the line that Carr was recruited from outside because no one in the current parliamentary Labor party was good enough to be FA, when Tony Abbott has said much the same about his….]
And there goes Arthur Sinodinos’ chance for a Ministry.
Can’t have him thinking he’s better than any other member of the Coalition caucus.
Tlbd the Greens bill that passed the reps was actually a Bob Brown bill, only sponsored in the House by Bandt.
From van Onselens story
[Partially untrue, not the full story, a yarn which got a little ahead of itself, maybe? Blemishes along the way, perhaps? Each of these form of words would have been far better descriptions. The PM’s “completely untrue” rhetoric was not a stretch, it was a downright lie.]
Burn her at the stake Peter, you know you want to.
[I agree about the possibility of a sting on the media by the PM but at least as likely is they were just stung by their own vanity and refusal to attend to what the PM was and was not saying.]
As much as i’d like to think the media were “stung” i suspect that “their own vanity and refusal to attend to what the PM was and was not saying.” is more likely. 🙂
rishane,
Thanks for sharing Colbert’s quote – Terrific!
—————————————————————
Some books of a political bent that I am currently reading and might be of interest to some here:
1. Noam Chomsky. Making the future: occupations, interventions, empires and resistance. 2012
2. Geoffrey Stokes, Roderic Pitty & Gary Smith (eds). Global citizens Australian activists for change. 2008
Features nine prominent Australians including Bob Brown.
3. Gelber, Katharine. Speech matters: getting free speech right. 2011
Gelber is currently an associate professor of politics in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. In this book she explores how many of Australia’s laws and policies are damaging our democratic ideals.
4. Masterman-Smith & Pocock, Barbara. Living low paid: the dark side of prosperous Australia. 2008
[Mr Denmore @MrDenmore
Critics of #Finkelstein say regulation leaves journalism at the mercy of bad government; but who defends the public from bad journalism?]
MM@1979, my opinion of McClelland is based on personal experience, about a decade ago, when I witnessed him reduce an innocent man to a quivering wreck with the most horrendous spray of abuse. I will say no more than this.
As to the rest, I cannot say, and neither can you. I am speculating on the basis of the curcumstantial evidence as I see it. Feel free to disagree.
There is an old saying that goes: when there is a complete SNAFU, it could be a conspiracy or it could be a cock-up. Ninety percent of the time, its the latter. But that does not absolve the fool in charge.
imacca
Perhaps in future they might study her actual words more carefully?
(As they always should with any report, of course) 😉
Mr Denmore’s right. Cite any other activity & the fourth estate will agree that excesses, nefarious goings on & abuses should be rigorously examined & exposed but when it comes to them the wagons are circled quicker than you can say “News Of The World”.
The need for some sort of policing is self evident & with the media’s reluctance to do anything meaningful itself someone has to.
SW
I am of the view that it is either some who cannot themselves blabbing to the press, or they were strategic leaks. The PM did not seem at all frazzled by them all week. It was the msm and the coalition who were all in a lather.
With respect to Abbott, all is not well. Rumour is not all is well on the home front, but have no real idea
“help”
Been off-air (study calls) today, but manged a peek this morning.
BB, wow … your stuff is usually a good read, but gee, this was superb. You really need a space of your own. You are wasted here. I’d rather read your missives any day, in prefernce to the MSM hacks.
Same goes for a few others (don’t be offended because I didn’t mention youse – quite a number!).
I hope you found the Lateline interview at last.
[We know that News Ltd has a track record in phone-tapping in the UK, and there is no direct evidence (yet) that the disease has entered Australia, but there is no need to dismiss the possibility out of hand either.]
It’s their own fault. They ran a corrupt organization in the UK and in the US, yet require proof all over again that this was confined to those countries. Unfortunately, the template for the rest of News Ltd’s style was set here, so it’s a natural conclusiong that eavesdropping and phone hacking originated, or is at least prevalent here too.
What is it about Australia – the birthplace of Murdochism – that’s so different from the other countries where we know corruption – paid off police, politicians and the employment of shady PIs – did occur?
All the other hallmarks are here, and originated here: the bullying, the arrogance, the obsession with destroying critics, the phoney ethics, the bootstrapping campaigns, the made-up stories, the nasty tendency to resort to the courts in order to ruin their critics, the sensitiveness to that criticism, the hypocracy and the hate-mongering.
IF all of these started and continue here, why should we not assume the local News Ltd hasn’t stepped across across the other boundary, that of corruption of public officials.
Remember, during the Grech affair Steve Lewis of the DT was prepared to suggest to readers (by way of employing the document in a graphic) that he had a genuine copy of a printout of the original Grech email. The only problem was that it was addressed to “Godwin Grant”, a silly typo, an amalgamation of the two names involved that gave the whole game away as a fake. This was ready to go on the Friday night, at 11pm – but the whole scandal had only broken that afternoon in the Senate Committee hearing, 8 hours before.
OK, so of course having a “copy” of a fake email tends to indicate that they didn’t have access to the original document (because there wasn’t one!), but it indicates a desire on their part to claim they had a special access to government computers. If Rudd had gone down, as planned, and the typo had not occurred, all this would have been forgotten in the frenzy surrounding a Prime Ministeral scalp being lifted from its head.
A complicated point I know, so let’s take an easier one: News Ltd was prepared to construct a fake document in order to implicate the Prime Minister, his Treasurer, and perhaps the government, in a fatal political scandal. In order to do this they were prepared to brag that only they had a copy of the original email. The typo screwed that up, and the whole thing fell in a heap.
Sure, the police also found evidence of a fraud, but what would the public have thought – a claim of forgery made by the PM (with support from a “friendly” AFP) on the one hand, versus incontrovertible pictorial “proof” that the document did really exist? DT readers are not known for their ability to get much past the headlines and the pictures presented to them. In short, it was an attempted stitch-up that very nearly worked. Days later many of their commenters were still claiming Rudd had nobbled the AFP, and corrupted them. Forget commenters, Joe Hockey was doing the same thing until he was pulled off his feet and told that the “scandal” was blown.
Then there was the O’Farrell case, where the same newspaper colluded with O’Farrell’s office to sex up a story on electricity price increases under the Carbon Tax. There was the AFP Terrorism raid, for which an AFP officer is on trial for leaking information to News Ltd. There was a case last year of confidential details surround the driving record of the SA Roads & Traffic Minister, and many more.
How fine a line do we have to draw before 2+2=4?
I’m not talking about proof-positive here (why should I when the Murdoch papers themselves don’t seem to mind what they print, as long as it’s “Exclusive”?), but more of a presumption of guilt on their behalf.
Same company, interchangeable senior management between countries, overall ownership by the same family, same pro-Tory agenda, same bullying tactics used, same ferocious response to criticism, same tendency to massage or outright manufacture stories and pursue agendas, the mold was made here and exported to other countries.
I think the question should be: why wouldn’t News Ltd in Australia be the same as its sister companies overseas, with the onus on those who think it innocent of corrupt practices to prove that innocence, not the other way around.
Interesting
[hughriminton
@hughriminton
@abcmarkscott ?RT @SteveGibbonsMP: An ABC presenter makes #cpyne look a tool #lateline and the ABC pulls the interview from their website.]
[Mark Scott
@abcmarkscott
.@hughriminton @SteveGibbonsMP.Lateline interview: am told a tech problem with the file. Should be on the site later. But on iView now.
2 hours ago via Echofon]
[ hughriminton
@hughriminton
@abcmarkscott appreciate the personalized service – and on a weekend too. #myeightcentsworth]
[
Some positive, uplifting and healing words from Martin Luther King:
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
victoria
I bet the technical problem was that Pyne or the Lib staffers demanded to vet it before it was allowed to stay online.