A big week of polling, with Newspoll, Morgan and ReachTEL joining the usual weekly Essential Research, has added to the drift back to the Coalition on the BludgerTrack poll aggregate. The aggregate concurs with the headline figures of Newspoll and ReachTEL in having the Labor two-party lead at 51.0-49.0, which sees Labor’s seat projection dip below absolute majority status for the first time since the beginning of May. Labor is down one seat on last week in New South Wales, and two in Queensland. Newspoll provides new figures on the leadership ratings, which sadly have less to go on now the monthly Nielsen is removed from the equation. The Newspoll numbers were good for Bill Shorten, which is reflected in the trendline, whereas Tony Abbott’s recovery has tapered off. However, Abbott still has his nose in front as preferred prime minister.
Agree with bbp on Abbott’s defining moment remark.
Defiling moment more like it.
Abbot included the publication of The Australian in his defining moments list. He does not know when to shut up and let the Organisers have the Stage.
@GuardianAus: Tony Abbott’s white settlement remarks offend Indigenous leaders http://t.co/t0U629lAod
[Abbot included the publication of The Australian in his defining moments list.]
Tony channelling Rupert there …
Building of the Overland telegraph as a Category 2 defining moment but not the advent of the Oz.
[The arrival of the First Fleet was the defining moment in Australian history – how can it be otherwise? Everything since 1788 – indeed the whole concept of Australia relates back to that event. For Indigenous Australians, it was also the defining moment but not in a positive sense – the moment when their way of life was inextricably changed forever. As a stand alone fact – yes it was the defining moment -whether it be positive or negative is the matter for debate.]
Quite so. The establishment of The Australian on the other hand …
Here is the list of the AM defining moments, proving what a simplistic tosser Abbott is.
http://www.nma.gov.au/online_features/defining_moments
Quite so. The establishment of The Australian on the other hand …
A defining moment in the corruption of political debate in this country…
OMG
[Mr Abbott also nominated the birth of Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper The Australian in 1964 as another defining moment.]
Really, what can you say..
From the Guardian
See? Tony “framed it wrongly”. He just can’t get things right, can he. And his photo in the SMH hugging Mundine looks as if he would rather be anywhere else.
[Six historians helped compile the list of 100 defining moments, including historian Professor John Maynard, who is also Indigenous.
“We were a little bit disturbed, to say the least, by that particular comment, the way that it was framed. But as I said, I mean, he’s open to have his opinion,” he said.]
There is no doubt 1788 was a defining moment. Regarding The Australian being a defining moment well it wouldn’t make my list.
The Australian used to be a reasonably good rag, up to about 40 years ago.
But lately it has just been the “Bad Cop” to Abbott’s “Good Cop”.
What Abbott thinks, but will not say publicly, he gets The Australian to publish. Examples are their vendettas against Gillard and Palmer, but there are literally hundreds of them.
The Australian pontificates about “Free Speech” but is quick to sue for defamation if they suffer the slightest criticism.
The Daily Telegraph is worse. What Abbott will not say in public, the Daily Telegraph takes, twists it and then hits the prisoner over the head with a brick. Take its recent treatment of the Muslim community, for example. Tim Blair’s stuff has been a disgrace. Ditto for Disability pensioners, the unemployed and anyone else who is Abbott’s target for the day.
I know, the Murdoch papers will use sham “independence” from politics to defend itself. They will cite the number of mastheads they have as proving view are diversified within the Murdooch empire. It’s all crap. If Abbott wants to get a message out, he waters it down when he, himself intones it, but get the Murdoch papers to foghorn it o’er hill and dale.
My own working assumption (i.e. “guilty until proven innocent”) is that whatever is in either The Australian or the Daily Telegraph is the Abbott government’s true message, and that anyone attacked by any of the Murdoch newspapers would be justified in assuming it is coming straight from Abbott.
Abbott is a divider, not a uniter. He has always worked this way, and always will. He has always had others to do his dirty work for him, protect his back and take the blame for his sins.
Why they say his overriding virtue is “loyalty” is a mystery to me.
As one of Tony’s “Britishers”, I am also very embarrassed at the way he ignores all the other settlers who have contributed to modern Australia.
Re Ruawake @1057: an interesting list. Some would include other events and drop some from the list, but on no such list would one find the founding of The Australian newspaper, possibly unless it was expanded to a couple of thousand. Just Abbott being sycophant in chief again.
Sad that the start of Auto Manufacturing in 1949 will be booked by its end in 2016-7.
Having 100 defining moments really does cheapen the concept of the ‘defining’ moments.
My list of 6 would be:
– first human settlement in Australia (approx 60,000 years ago)
– 1788
– discovery of gold in 1851
– Federation
– advent of the post war immigration program
– 1967 referendum.
BBS 1967 would be high in my list.
bbp
[My list of 6 would be:
– first human settlement in Australia (approx 60,000 years ago)
– 1788
– discovery of gold in 1851
– Federation
– advent of the post war immigration program
– 1967 referendum.]
You missed the Crows back-to-back premierships in 1997-8.
BB
Even ten years ago the Australian employed journalists who went out and researched stories. Children overboard was persued by journalists from the Ausralian until the truth was finaly layed out.
Those days are gone.
If the major ‘reforms’ sprung on us by the 2014 Budget pass and the Coalition Government stays in power for as long as, say, Malcolm Fraser did (seven and a bit years), then the 2014 budget will be another defining moment, which is what the Government intends it to be. The beginning of the end of the old, egalitarian Australia and the Australian Fair Go. We will be on the way to becoming a third rate copy of the USA.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-under-fire-for-calling-first-fleet-australias-defining-moment-20140830-10actp.html
The photo in this story makes my stomach turn.
What a bloody opportunist Mundine is. A bloody disgrace of a man!
The Australian did the AWB as well.
That would never happen now.
Diogs
As a St Kilda supporter, 1997 was not defining!!
Dio, that fades in comparison to St George 1956 to 1966 !!!
[The Australian did the AWB as well.
That would never happen now.]
The Oz were not too kind to Howard towards the end. They did not support the general national love fest with Kevin Rudd but did report stories that others were ignoring. It was during the last term that they got really feral and they have continued the same way since when there is a lot to be feral about agin this government.
Arguably watery isolation was crucial to the formation and maintenance of Indigenous cultures.
‘Girt by sea’, same same for the rest of us, since 1978.
That would make the breakup of Pangea as Australia’s most important single defining moment.
Bushfire Bill@1062
As a teacher, whenever a principal has stressed the importance of loyalty, my alarm bells started ringing loudly. It meant they were as conniving and deceitful and disloyal as it is possible to be.
… what is this nonsense about “Shorten is a poor leader”. I voted for Albo in the leadership ballot. But frankly, this is EXACTLY how I’d want an Opposition Leader to act with a Government this terrible. Calm and collected… I think hell-for-leather risked being overplayed.
And Bill Shorten cannot be an Opposition Leader like Tony Abbott, even if that were desirable, because he doesn’t have the Murdoch Megahorns campaigning for him. Come election time, they’ll be campaigning long and loud against him and boosting Abbott (or his replacement) with all the force they can muster.
[The Oz were not too kind to Howard towards the end. They did not support the general national love fest with Kevin Rudd but did report stories that others were ignoring. ]
They fell out of love with Rudd as soon as the FTTP NBN was invented.
Direct challenge to Foxtel, which Murdoch was looking to as a redoubt after the News/Fox Entertainment corporate split-up.
You don’t invest hundreds of millions in the BBC suite of programs just to see it pissed up against the wall because the nation needs a better broadband system. We’ll stick with outdated, 1990s-vintage set-top boxes, smart cards and shit programming until Rupert’s got his money back.
And then he’ll buy the NBN (or whatever is left of it).
Abbott is excellent at verbal stunts.
While the rest of us are still fulminating, vindicating or ignoring, according to taste, Abbott moves right along to the next verbal sally.
It is like someone hopping from one small ice floe to another small ice floe. Because no single floe would keep Abbott afloat, he has to keep leaping, keep skittering, hoping desperately that his feet will never get wet.
Scottish independence was foolish, remember? He was going to send the troops into the Ukraine, remember? He was going to hang, draw and quarter Putin, remember?
His ‘defining moment’ is the latest example.
It is what Abbott is rather good at: government by fifteen second sound bite stunts. The MSMsters duly swallow the verbal stunts, masticate them until they are dry of 24/7 drama, spit them out while waiting for Abbott’s next episode of essentially meaningless verbal diarrohea.
And not one of them has spotted his game or the way he is cleverly moving them across his board according to his rules.
I mean to say.
Imagine we had a land border of several thousand kilometres with around 5,000 JI folk, enthused by the success of ISIL, on the jungle side of the line?
I agree with this.
Albo is a great bloke and all that, but I can’t help but feel that Abbott would be a lot more comfortable with Albo as opposition leader because it would come down to a street brawl between them shouting at each other, and Abbott thrives on that level of contest.
And, quite frankly, Albo doesn’t have the charisma to come off well in a shouting match.
I don’t think the ALP should try to fight Abbott at his level, and Shorten is doing an ok job at keeping a measured reasonable tone.
Abbott and co may have clawed back some of the people they lost over the appalling budget (because the Senate appears to be saving the government from itself on some of the more egregiously bad parts – fancy that!), and the polling has been tightening, but the times favour the LNP in terms of being able to play on security themes. That the ALP still has a nose in front only a year after the fiasco of last year is a damn good position to be in.
Fundamentally I still think the next election will come down to the economy. I’ve started to throw global security in as being almost as important. If the economy turns to custard the LNP will be out on their ear. If the economy looks rosy (whether due to temporary external factors or not), then the LNP will get a 2nd term.
If the economy just muddles along then a ‘good’ security crisis will play into the LNP’s hands and could well see them re-elected.
So, Abbott is using Hockey simultaneously as a budget stalking horse and sacrificial goat.
Loyalty is as loyalty does… but not in Abbott’s case.
Not everyone gets it in time, but Abbott is girt by expendables.
Just went to local fish and chips shop to get some paper, news agents next door had the Saturday paper on the window with “Politics’ hidden millions in party favors” headline.
http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2014/08/30/politics-hidden-millions-party-favours/1409320800
Bushfire Bill
Rudd was also the main man when it came to getting Uncle Rupert the Australia Network contract. He earnt a zillion black marks from Newscorp when he failed to deliver. However PMJG and Conroy(?) earnt about two million each though for their part.
Some dinner not paper @ 1084.
I was under the impression that the Oz switched allegience to Oz just so that they continue to get sales after a landslide of love for Rudd.
Plainly, if one regards Australia’s core identity to be that of a western industrial state, it’s hard to ignore 1788. Occupation by Britain and the victory over indigenous people clearly did become the foundation for modern Australia. That’s a matter of record however uncomfortable we of the 21st century may be with that.
The problem of course is with the language, which presses down hard on another truth — dispossession and wholesale killing and of course the attempt to extinguish even the cultural memory of the indigenous, and to submerge them into the vision of Australia held by the British. That surely hurts, and is a step back from inclusive society.
Had Abbott merely noted that 1788, while a key to Australia’s current identity, was associated with terrible deeds against the indigenous peoples and that this memory too ought to be seen as key to the Australia of the future, then there would surely have been far less distress.
don
my experience too. The boss who warned us about speaking outside of the office was the one who was going around Melbourne bad mouthing us.
FB
‘The problem of course is with the language…’
Has Abbott ever used the term ‘racism’?
PUP targeting LNP/ALP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c2_S0yQaqU
[Scottish independence was foolish, remember? He was going to send the troops into the Ukraine, remember? He was going to hang, draw and quarter Putin, remember?
His ‘defining moment’ is the latest example.
It is what Abbott is rather good at: government by fifteen second sound bite stunts. The MSMsters duly swallow the verbal stunts, masticate them until they are dry of 24/7 drama, spit them out while waiting for Abbott’s next episode of essentially meaningless verbal diarrohea.]
… culminating in Hartcher’s embarrassing bum-lick this morning: “international statesman”.
For Christ’s sake! Enough!
Asylum Seekers doing jobs that Australian’s won’t do:
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/08/28/asylum-seekers-fill-jobs-australians-refuse-do
BW @1080
I think you have it in a nutshell there.
To be filed under ‘Oh Shit, Oh Dear’:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-30/schapelle-corby-boyfriend-reportedly-arrested/5707804
BW @ 1095
To be filed under ‘Who Cares?’
[ Bushfire Bill
Posted Saturday, August 30, 2014 at 6:26 pm | Permalink
… culminating in Hartcher’s embarrassing bum-lick this morning: “international statesman”.
For Christ’s sake! Enough! ]
I regard hartcher’s latest nonsense as comforting in a contrary way.
….how may of his ‘calls’ does he get right?
Wow, did Fred Nile invoke the “God’s forces vs Devil’s force” line?
[Wow, did Fred Nile invoke the “God’s forces vs Devil’s force” line?]
Dunno, but according to someone on twitter, one of the speakers at the WCF declared that 90% of world poverty was caused by a breakdown in the family unit.
@Confessions/1099
So basically agreeing with Kevin Andrews nutty world views?