Partly because of the sorts of pressures discussed in this article (about which I was going to blog but I don’t have enough time to do so), I’m coming to this one a day late. Still, it’s worth noting, I think.
It’s clear that (irony beyond irony) Howard and co have decided to make Kevin Rudd’s “character” an election issue. The orchestrated mud-slinging has commenced and will continue. Apparently the same Liberal hack who dug dirt on Keating’s piggery has been given the Rudd-mud task and it looks like the results are being distributed to the nation’s opinion mouthpieces columnists, one of whom is now Tony Abbott.
Abbott’s column on Rudd is a masterpiece. Truly brilliant. I’d dissect it at length if I had the time. I don’t (see above). I’ll just list all the words with which Abbott encircles Rudd — “ambitous”, “on the make”, “real character almost completely unknown”, “hard to read”, “soiled”, “driven careerist working to undermine”, “incriminating detail”, “advertent inaccuracy”, “hardly the candour”, “all is not quite as it seems”, “slippery”, “self-serving”.
Then comes this astounding statement: “Of course, the Government’s main task is not to blast away at Rudd’s credibility but to keep delivering better outcomes…”
And just when you’ve got your chin back up off the floor, he delivers the piece de resistance of self-serving slipperiness: “Politicians can’t win holiness contests and shouldn’t try.”
It’s almost as if Abbott thinks that by disavowing the mud-flinging of his first seven paragraphs, his hands have been cleansed — but they look spectacularly dirty to me.
Indeed. Why the SMH gives him a pedestal to shriek this sort of tripe from is beyond me.
“Course I’m the Minister for Health, silly. Minister for the Health of the Liberal Party!”
The tactic worked on Latham (Liverpool council, the taxi driver incident, his ex-wife). He cracked under the pressure.
Latham was widely thought to be flakey even before he was leader and so it proved. Rudd is made of sterner stuff. And the Labor party appears to be prepared on thos occasion. As an instinctive street fighter, Latham tried to defend himself against the dirt and only succeeded in digging a hole for himself.
Rudd’s tactic is not to stoop to the level of the attackers and instead get his underlings to defned him (Gillard in particular). And even there the tone is more in sadness than in anger – the exact opposite of the Latham approach.
Unless there is real dirt on Rudd, not the manufactured sort being slung at present, the tactic will fail. And what are the chances oif there being real dirt? Rudd is the quintessential boring man who has led an ultra-straight life. Just like John Winsston Howard.
The Herald gives Tanya Plibersek a column every other week, so I suppose the question of balance is a factor. Mind you, if I was a Liberal strategist I would be worried about the jarringly awful and obvious contrast between the quality of Tanya’s columns and the merde that Abbott comes out with.
Balance, nuthin’. Did you catch the rosy family man feature piece on Peter Debnam in the News Review a couple of weekends ago? Poor Peter, having to watch nasty political ads while spending time with his family… give me a break.
I also notice the Herald has, quite a few times, blocked a story in such a way that they manage to get all the Liberal talking points on the front page, but the refutation by Labor gets pushed back deeper into the paper. This ususally happens with those “SHOCK HORROR STATE LABOR IS IMPLODING AND HOPELESS” stories. Far be it from me to imply that State Labor aren’t hopeless, but it seems a bit framed against the State Govt.
Still a damn sight better than the Terrorgraph.
I would forgo the Plibersek if we could get rid of the Abbott. Good to see a stream of letters in the SMH today complaining about the Abbott gig. It’s disgraceful.
Beautiful to see, Amanda. I’m regretting not buying the Herald this morning! (though I must say “Ruddslide” is quickly becoming one of my least-liked political neologisms)
Maybe the people out in that fabled Maintream ‘Straya are finally realising not everything they read in the opinion column is necessarily true…
Strategists? The Abbott horse has well and truly bolted, out of the yard, ran last in the No 6 at Flemington April 1998 and is now working as Mr Dumpy, the friendly kiddies ride at Luddenham Childrens Farm. Though I hear he’s taken to biting.
Though mind you, given that his political master seems to like lunching with “violent criminal porn stars” – oh why does that bring visions to mind I so do not want – I’ll never look at Janine in quite the same way. Abbott’s a bloody idiot – he’s just popped on RN saying this latest bit of flying shite has no import – why he’s just had a meeting with 60 drug dealers – pause – pharmacists apparently. I’m sure they’d be pleased with the comparison.
Now that we’ve flowed past the gutter and into the sewers, what will the aforementioned strategists do next? And who said Ozzie drama was dead?
Swiftboating. But this time the origins are obvious. This tactic practically turned a US war hero and Vietnam vet into a draft dodging peacenik and deserter. Disgusting.
Talk about Abbott.
Torqueamda yourselves. This is just a load of garotte. Nobody expects a sort of Spanish Inquisition about their faith, core beliefs and experiences when they were 11. This patriachal hierachical regimes chief weapons are suprise.
That and a fanatical devotion to the POTUS. ( So long as he sanctions torture)
We Maroons might Raleigh now. Burn Amardas I say – not dissidents. I’m going bowling now…be back in a heretic. No Smoking!
suz says:
You’d need to swallow a boulder of salt to get suz’s post down. Holier-than-thou moral sensitivity at LN/P mud-slinging has a hollow, phoney ring. Think of the ocean of Howard-hating bile that has been spewed out by the Left over the past decade. Rudd-mud slinging pot meet Howard-hating kettle.
And lets not forget the never ending tendentious comparisons with the Third Reich. This coming from a crew that have put out the welcome mat to any form of pre-modern barbarianism that is lobbied-up enough to claim victim-hood, when not otherwise busy with gangterism and low-level pogroming.
Howard has bent the truth here or there, usually in the national interest. But claims that his ministers have engaged in criminal activity have not been seriously entertained, let alone been sustained.
Rudd seems like a nice man. But his party is seriously compromised by factional association with various special interest lobby groups. Thats why people like Burke exist, to negotiate deals between the warring factions so that spoils can be divided.
This is a systemic problem in the ALP that Rudd can only paper over. So its reasonable, if not fair, that the LN/P put the blow-torch on him.
Mind you, I think oppo research against Rudd will back-fire against the LN/P. The general populus seem heartily sick of Howard’s political shenanigans, whatever their foundation. The ascendancy of politics over policy will tend to confirm wavering anti-Howard votes.
“Howard has bent the truth here or there, usually in the national interest. But claims that his ministers have engaged in criminal activity have not been seriously entertained, let alone been sustained.”
Gerard, Gerard is that you? – come on honey, out you come.
And conservatives just ‘divine’ the national purpose I suppose, removed from any interest groups of any kind, since by definition any groups the Liberal Party and its coalition partner represent or deal with, are simply manifestations of the general will, eh Jack?
Pull the other one son.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
The first half of this sentence is almost an admission of wrong-doing, but then comes the howler.
Oh yes. The AWB bribes were “in the national interest”. The “children overboard” lies were “in the national interest”. The meeting with the millionnaires who wanted to build a nuclear reactor then announcing an investigation into nuclear energy was “in the national interest”. Saying interest rates would rise under Labor was “in the national interest”. Its denial of global warming and refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocols was “in the national interest”. Agreeing that Saddam had WMDs was “in the national interest”. Peter Costello appointing Liberal Party megadonor Robert Gerard to the Reserve Bank board was “in the national interest”. Bill Heffernan’s fabricated claims about a High Court judge were “in the national interest”.
amused on 15 March 2007 at 1:42 pm
Pull the other one son.
Thats a breathtaking non-sequitur, an almost world-record breaking jump to conclusion. Just because I say X is bad it does not imply that Y is not-bad. Amused needs to take a short course in baby logic, or just get smart.
I didn’t say that conservatives were without special interest group sin. In fact elsewhere I have made a special point of criticising the LN/P for being beholden to financiers, private insureres and the Big End of Town.
I merely stated that the LN/P ministers headline lies were plausibly in the national interest and that there is no proof that they have engaged in criminal activity. Two conclusions that were routinely drawn by unhinged Leftists during the nineties.
By contrast the federal ALP, compared to the federal LN/P, seems to have a closet rattling with more than its share of skeletons. Especially with the likes of Graham Richardson, Andrew Theophanous and Al Grassby still fresh in everyones memory. Not to mention more traditional
“industrial relations” negotiators like Tom Dominican, charming piece of work. And a systemic problem with crooked ethnic lobbyist branch-stacking.
But I wouldnt expect someone like amused, who comes across as a partisan hack, to come clean about all this.
silkworm on 15 March 2007 at 1:51 pm
Howard’s head-line lies plausibly served the national interest, and were not always consistent with LN/P interest in getting re-elected.
Kids overboard lies: the people-smuggling boats were stopped. Public attention drawn to border protection and refugee rorts. The Wets met their political Waterloo. Popular.
AWB bribes: Aussie wheat got sold, Iraqi kids got fed. Popular indifference.
WMD hoax: The US alliance fortified, so far the ADF unharmed and no terrorist blow-back. Unpopular.
Jobs for the boys: gimme a break.
All the rest and in the main: who cares?
Certainly not the Australian public, who are more concerned with substantive outcomes than formal processes. Most of the time they were aware of Howard’s misleads. They were content to let him get away because they trusted him to get the dirty job done.
Pot, meet kettle.
Certainly not the Australian public, who are more concerned with substantive outcomes than formal processes…
Haven’t I heard something similar recently? Oh yes, the Governmentâ??s main task is not to blast away at Ruddâ??s credibility but to keep delivering better outcomesâ?¦â??
Outcomes uber all, it seems.
adrian on 15 March 2007 at 2:21 pm
Not.
Don’t you guys get anything right? Its like shooting fish in a barell.
Holier-than-thou moral sensitivity at LN/P mud-slinging has a hollow, phoney ring.
Jack, you entirely miss the main thrust of my post, which I will summarise for you: Abbott’s holier-than-thou article has a hollow phoney ring.
Think of the ocean of Howard-hating bile that has been spewed out by the Left over the past decade. Rudd-mud slinging pot meet Howard-hating kettle.
You seek to divert attention from what is clearly a strategic policy of the Government‘s in the lead-up to an election. A strategic policy by the party in power to make “character” an issue in the minds of the electorate is very different from the amorphous “Left” indulging in “Howard-hating”, which is just an emotion, after all. And at least it’s a straightforward emotion, whereas this mud-slinging is based in deceitfulness and manipulation.
suz on 15 March 2007 at 2:38 pm
Outcomes uber all, it seems.
Your point being? Ohh yes, the govt and its sometime apologists are all of a piece with the Third Reich. Godwin’s Law violation. You lose.
Once upon a time new boy Kevin Rudd dobbed on John Howard and Co. to the parliament – ‘You met with Ron Walker. I’m telling”. The problem for Rudd is that he’s run to the student council of the big school – the parliament. Whose in charge there? Coconut, Dolly, Studs, Tip a.k.a $weets, and the
madferal monk.The coconut gang met behind the dunnies at little lunch and worked out a strategy: the new boy needs to have his head flushed down the toilet – some of it will stick.
The first dunk in the loo smeared a bit of Berk on the new boy. “Look everyone he’s covered in Berk!” shouted Tip, “Berk’s played him like a piano.”
The feral monk peformed the second dunk and cut off the new boy’s old family tie. “Look everyone, he smells off and his family tie is in tatters.”
Down behind the dunnies the coconut gang laughed and smirked. Dolly reckoned he gave the new boy a wedgie, but no one believed him.
At School assembly Coconut spoke to everyone and pointed to the new boy, “He smells!” Everyone laughed, even Studs. The coconut continued, ‘This is a clean school and we don’t want stinky new people running for the student council.’
Just then Tip let go with an air biscuit so powerful that Coconut’s eyebrows flattened.
Everyone laughed. Even Studs.
“Howard and co have decided to make Kevin Ruddâ??s â??characterâ?? an election issue.”
Wooo Hooo…thanks for the Belly laugh!!! ..It was the true believers and ALP itself who set Rudd for the classic fall. Mr Honest and Faithful, Ol St Rudd is actually just self serving liar like the rest of them. To be fair its not like the spin doctors had a lot of substance to work with.
Trouble is once the halo slipped and fell in the dirt, the is nothing else, not a cracker. Although anyone who has watched the sneak on Lateline or anywhere else would know that if you actually stood for something, you might find the balls to answer a question straight just once.
Yep, Howard ain’t the issue, its the ALP provides no alternative and every time you look past the lastest joke of a leader..its gets dirtier, darker and more on the nose.
OK Gerard/Jack – i was going to go through your wee list of why one shouldn’t demand that the laws of one’s sovereign nation & international treaties that one has signed should be upheld. But then decided there obviously is no point as you obviously do not believe in the rule of law unless it, of course, supports your sectarian interests. I’ll go for a walk instead.
your point? the govt and its sometime apologists are all of a piece with the Third Reich
That wasn’t my point. Language can be used in a far more nuanced way than that.
You lose.
I’m not playing a game.
Rod Cameron was on Lateline last night talking about the publicâ??s reaction to Howardâ??s mud slinging and the Brian Burke non-scandal in all its over-inflated glory. He said that the people are â??looking in bewilderment at this mud-slinging issue. They hate mud-slinging. They hate it with a passion.â??
I think he is right. What Howardâ??s mud slinging reminds me of is a story about the 1996 election campaign in Pamela Williams book The Victory. Basically what happened was the Liberals made an attack ad having a shot at Keating and some other Labor minister over their houses. When they focus grouped it more or less everyone who saw it got really mad about the mud-slinging and wound up defending Keating. Now if they are willing to defend someone they donâ??t like in the face of the garbage dredged up by the Liberals dirt unit imagine how they feel about it when it is directed at someone they seem to quite like.
Oh and Jack Strocchi the term Howard-hater is obnoxious. You never here about Rudd-haters, Iemma-haters, Bracks-haters, Keating-haters, Fraser-haters, Hawke-haters and so on, although some of those I just named and some others I could are or have been hated plenty. The implication is that John Howard among politicians is such a wonderful, saintly person that feeling ill-disposed towards him is the same as hating fluffy kittens.
I think Gillard’s thoroughly enjoyed having a chance to hop into Tony Abbott again. Every second thing she’s said this week has seemed to be about something to do with him:
“I don’t know what about that Mr Abbott can’t get.”
“This is a new low in Australian politics even for Tony Abbott.”
“They don’t want to hear about Tony Abbott canvassing things that happened to Mr Rudd.”
“Tony Abbott has been associated with some lows in the past.”
“When is Tony Abbott actually going to volunteer for a debate on the economy or climate change or health or education?”
…And that’s just a small selection.
Abbott was certainly out of line, but Gillard didn’t go after Downer or Costello with such gusto. I think the palpable frisson she shares with the Health Minister is continuing, despite the reshuffle as this Youtube video would attest:
“Why the SMH gives him a pedestal to shriek this sort of tripe”
Umm, two words…Ron Walker
…federal treasurer of the Liberal Party from 1987 to 2002, reportedly raised $175 million in corporate donations for the party and Howard government.
…serves as Chairman of John Fairfax Holdings, a media company which publishes both Melbourne’ The Age and Sydney’s Sydney Morning Herald newspaper
Ron Walker….where have we heard that name recently?
What was it that Kev did to start all this, that upset Pete and Johnny so…All make sense now, what?
Jack Strocchi, if all you can manage is fallacious appeals to popularity, then isn’t it a lil counterproductive to use the “easy as shooting fish in a barrel” analogy against your polemical opponents? How many really would ever want to do such a thing?
The White Australia Policy was popular, as were assimilationist policies: abducting Aboriginal children from their families; punishing them if they insisted they were Aboriginal; or spoke in their own language.
Support for British colonialist policies were popular in Australia, as was forbidding married women to work in the public service. One could go on.
Your point is?
However, the problem is that as much as people say that they hate mud-slinging, it works – it serves a larger Machiavellian purpose.
In this light, all the commentators here and elsewhere who contrast Rudd’s trivial infractions with Howard’s accumulated mountain of credibility issues are missing the point to some degree. Howard is playing the long game. He is wily enough to know that after 11 years he can’t hope to present himself to the electorate as a paradigm of rectitude; he just wants to make sure that Rudd can’t either. He wants to neutralise the “character” issue so that he can fight the election on his preferred terrain – competence, experience yada yada.
History suggests that this strategy will probably work. Howard is willing to sacrifice some personal standing in the short term in order to drag Rudd down to his level. He’s gambling that by laying down some manure now, he can get some electoral roses to bloom sometime around October, even if some of the odour is attached to him. He can always take a bath afterwards.
That’s right, Blind Freddy. (Non-Victorians don’t have a good gut feel for how powerful Ron Walker is in Australia.)
â??Why the SMH gives him a pedestal to shriek this sort of tripeâ??
Umm, two wordsâ?¦Ron Walker”
A conspiracy! That must be it. Ron tells the editor to run Abbott’s column in order to sway the SMH readership demographic! He presumably gets Tanya Plibersek to provide him with a column as well, in order to cover his fiendish tracks……odd how it’s never occurred to Ron that SMH readers might be more inclined to Tanya’s views than Tony’s…………..
Pollies of all colours have written Op Ed for Australian papers for decades. The key here is Op – as in opinion. I take it with a grain of salt. And rarely read “conspiracy” into it.
Geoff,
Thanks for the heads-up,
My first reponse was “Tanya who?” but googlenews-ing revealed that indeed she is a serious-minded person with opinions worth reading.
Courtesy of your prompting, I know now something about “Alternative proposals” ( per the trope the libs mis/use in parliament to “have a go” ) regarding the ID card, housing issues, baby bonuses etc. ( Bonus Bonus: The search even afforded me a view into Tim Blair’s fantasy life: he writes that he wants to drive a V-10 four wheel drive, the “mighty Volkswagen Touareg, a 2.5 tonne behemoth that generates nearly three times the EC (emissions) target.” through tanya’s electoral office, Who would have guessed Timmie was such a man’s man, fantasy-wise?).
Lest we forget, sneaking the ID card through was the job on that dud Campbell’s plate before he was untimely ripped, naturally Tanya was already on his case for reasons unconnected to BB, I can understand her wanting to give him a send-off, last chance and all that…
Due Diligence being my middle names, I eventually tracked down the Tanya SMH op ed, presuming the one headed “If character means having the steely resolve to knife even your closest ally when it suits your short-term political interests then John Howard has it in spades, writes Tanya Plibersek.” is your reference.
An excellent article, worth publishing and reading, quite a few facts we should be reminded of, like the litany of Howard minsiters that have had to walk the plank, or should have (Warwick Parer, Warren Entsch, Peter Reith, Jim Short, Brian Gibson, Geoff Prosser, John Sharp, David Jull and Peter McGauran, Phillip Ruddock, Amanda Vanstone, Alexander Downer, Mark Vaile, Helen Coonan and Ian MacFarlane). Also, full marks to her for suggesting that Major Michael Mori should have got an australia day gong… a little imagination in Australian politics is no small bad thing.
My point is, Geoff, (and I must say I am surprised at you, considering you otherwise intelligent and perspicacious posts), some op ed pieces are worth publishing and other ones, such as the subject of this thread by the Minister for Slumming It Away from the Health Portfolio, are just plain crap, publication of which raises suspicion that there must be an alternative motive on the part of the publishing house, or conspiracy as you shorthand it.
It’s not as if he hasn’t a really important job on his plate, which you should well appreciate, considering your AIDS interest.
There is another virus, alive and well and and mutating towards pandemic status, which he should be devoting his well-paid and duty-bound ministerial attention to. If he’d wasted $4 million on a dog’s breakfast PR stunt regarding YOUR virus of interest,and nearly 6 months down the track there still wasn’t a hint of a report out of it come to light, well you’d be screaming blue murder, and rightly so.
So please, Geoff, pull the other one if you want to take the moral equivalence line by comparing tony and tanya. Or shoud I say moral equivocating?
I’ll get out of your way now. Fred.
I’m waiting for the complaint about bias on the SMH letters page, or perhaps even a ‘pro vs anti’ breakdown of the letters they received. The Herald will normally print at least a few letters diverting from the mahprity view – at least as it is presented on that page – but the responses to Abbott’s latest attempt to be a man of letters were uniformly anti. I wonder if they received any mail supporting his views.
Guise, or someone ITK:
My doh…”mahprity” ???
Google suggests it’s mispelling of majority, what is proper-like entomology? Means what, opposite of luvvie?
IGOOYWN, Fred
Geez Jack – invoking Godwin’s Law – always a winner that tactic.
Pity about Quirk’s Exception:
There is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically “lost” whatever debate was in progress. This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin’s Law. Thus Godwin’s Law serves to impose an upper bound on thread length in general. It is considered poor form to raise arbitrarily such a comparison with the motive of ending the thread. There is a widely recognized codicil that any such ulterior-motive invocation of Godwin’s Law will be unsuccessful (this is sometimes referred to as “Quirk’s Exception”).
Godwin’s Law does not apply to discussions directly addressing genocide, propaganda or other mainstays of the Nazi regime. Instead, it applies to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations to Hitler or Nazis. However, Godwin’s Law can itself also be abused, as a distraction or diversion, to fallaciously miscast an opponent’s argument as hyperbole, especially if the comparison the argument made were actually appropriate.
Or, in other words: “Intentional invocation of this so-called “Nazi Clause” is ineffectual.”
Nice try though.
Bernice on 15 March 2007 at 4:15 pm
You have a point. Howard has violated due process in his various misdeeds and misleads. This is a problem for conservatives interested in preserving stable and legitimate institutions.
My Machiavellian apologetics are a not very satisfactory way of resolving that problem. But it does get him off the personal corruption hook, given a higher political aim.
Bernice says:
I said “national interest”. I don’t have any partisan sectarian interests. Try to be more honest and fair-minded in your debating tactics.
I seriously think that Tony Abbott wants to root Julia Gillad.
“My point is, Geoff, (and I must say I am surprised at you, considering you otherwise intelligent and perspicacious posts), some op ed pieces are worth publishing and other ones, such as the subject of this thread by the Minister for Slumming It Away from the Health Portfolio, are just plain crap, publication of which raises suspicion that there must be an alternative motive on the part of the publishing house, or conspiracy as you shorthand it.”
There’s no conspiracy. Abbott is an ex journo, a prominent government front-bencher and a controversialist
Presumably the deal with both Abbott and Plibersek is that they get to write a column on a regular basis, the content of which is up to them, providing they meet the normal publication standards.
I doubt that Fairfax would can one of their columns because the content might outrage blind freddy. all the more reason to publish, one might have thought
OpEd thrives on controversy. It’s about stimulating and engaging the readership and most papers run columnists who don’t fit the readership demographic for that reason: Adams in the Oz, Henderson in the SMH, etc.
Bridie on 15 March 2007 at 6:19 pm
Your point is?
My point is that progressive majority rule is the test of political acceptability in this country, subject to the constraint of processive minority rights. Time after time the majority have demonstrated that they are happy enough with Howards bads, accounting them as venal rather than mortal sins.
But Howards lies did not change political morality. They are a Machiavellian evasion of it, to which he has made the majority accomplices. Given the absence of great harm caused one is inclined to let him off with a slap on the wrist.
I do not find your shopping list of Australian political vices very persuasive. Political morality, like everything else, evolves. Australian political morals have shon increasing benign valency over time. Howard’s political morality is definitely superior to the disgraceful rorting that occurred under Fraser (ethnic lobbies), Hawke (entrepreneur rip-offs) and Keating (special interest bureaucracies).
One hopes that Australian political morality continues to evolve from the historically relative to the theoretically absolute. On that day, given sufficiently extensive and intensive validity, it will marry up with personal morality.
But this highlights the enormous problem western social democracies have when engaging in international politics. Mad murderous terrorists of any ilk & their supporting political structures can, rightly or wrongly, call upon their divine beliefs and morality to justify their actions. As sectarian democracies we can only rely upon the rule of law.
And as soon as we in any way fail to act within accordance of those laws, we will be seen as hypocrites and open to all the accusations of self-serving economic and geo-political greed and imperialism.
I would not for one moment claim our rule of law as anything other as imperfect as our social structures, but to fail to insist upon its implementation at every point of governance is not to serve the national interest but to undermine the important philosophical and political rationale we can bring to the debate and engagement with extremism and fundamentalsim – the rule of evolved and evolving secular humanist law.
And who better than JS himself to determine the national interest eh? Your references to shady characters associated with the ALP do nothing more than illustrate that there are shady characters associated with the ALP. Earth to Stocchiverse-political parties attract and sometimes engage a variety of crooks and near crooks like bees to a honey pot, because the lure of power as a way to make money is irresistible to many. Let’s talk John Elliott, for example.
My point was that your description of ALP supporters/enthusiasts as ‘special interest groups’, was typical partisan hackery. It is common for conservatives to describe as ‘special interests’ any group that challenges the status quo, whereas the groups that are content with, or actively support the maintenance of the status quo, are of course acting in the general interest.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with any group seeking to have their interests represented. The humbug arises when a particular interest claims to represent the general interest and you illustrate the point perfectly.
Strocchi:
TimG
Strocchi’s construction of general laws of political acceptability for infractions of conventional morality can only at best be rough approximations.
Strocchi’s construction omits the most important independent variable of all — the passage of time.
The point is that Abbott’s hit job is no worse than a decade of this stuff. The difference is that now too many people are now tired of the Liberals’ schtick. Liberal bully boys used to be able to get away with this stuff. Indeed they were admired for it. But now it has lost its novelty and shock value. It’s like looking at the latest fashions of 1995. Today, they just look daggy.
While I agree with TimG’s analysis of Howard’s “long game”, I believe that he has damaged his chances for success next time around by losing his audience with an old and tired shtick.
Hmmm, “old and tired”. Might not that be a catchy description of 1995 fashions, and John Howard, in 2007?
And then there is the humbug on stilts such as Virginia School public choice theory, or the more ideologically loaded “new class theories” of environmentalism, which attempt to impute specially interested motives to people and movements who are challenging hegemonic conceptions of the “general interest”.
What you talking about, Katz?
Well one shouldn’t resist the imputation of ‘interests’ when campaigning on issues. It is as always, whose interests, and who seeks to speak on whose behalf.
The cultural conservatives’ problem is that ‘deference’ towards the more traditional sources of social power and respect has now all but disappeared, leaving little more than respect for wealth and individual achievement. Personally I think that is an advance on claims based on biology or ‘natural hierarchies’ as a basis for claiming rights to speak. Talent and wealth at least are open to some sort of rational challenge, or emulation, unlike the motley collection of moth eaten old tropes of biologically determined categories of race and/or gender, trotted out by the Stocchis of this world.
amused on 16 March 2007 at 11:51 am
Can you point to a passage here i have insisted that “‘natural hierarchies’ [are the appropriate] basis for claiming rights to speak” or other social goods? Not likely because it does not exist. Like I said, some more honesty and less straw men construction in debate please.
amused says:
If amused denies that race and/or gender are biologically determined then I suggest he put his new trope generator in for a valve job. Its already clapped out with very little mileage on the dial. Scientists and others who believe their own ‘lyin eyes beg to differ.
Your blithe assumption that New Left minority rackets and rorts are noble and disinterested “challenges the status quo” is risible. The career trajectorys of Andre Theophanous and Geoff Clarke are instructive.
amused says:
This is a perfect illustration of the intellectual disabilities that I pointed out above. You still have not learned.
Straman alert. I have never claimed that the LN/P does not represent special interests. So you are swinging at thin air.
Baby logic violation. I merely claimed that Howard’s headline lies were plausibly in the national interest. Because a party may routinely support special interests does not preclude it from occasionally acting in the national interest.
We can’t even do dinkum Oz mudslinging. Karl Rove showed a streak of evil genius when he introduced attacking an opponent’s strengths rather than weaknesses – a la Swiftboat. So our Roving government members get a fax from Karl and off they go.
Oh man. Can I play that game too. Let’s see… If you your name is Jack Strocchi then you’re a moron. Wow, I can make up useless laws too. What good fun!
There’s two issues (well, probably more than two) being discussed here – my main point in the post was about what and why Abbott wrote what he wrote. Then there’s the issue of why he has that platform in the SMH. Geoff wrote:
There’s no conspiracy. Abbott is an ex journo, a prominent government front-bencher and a controversialist
Presumably the deal with both Abbott and Plibersek is that they get to write a column on a regular basis, the content of which is up to them, providing they meet the normal publication standards.
I doubt that Fairfax would can one of their columns because the content might outrage blind freddy. all the more reason to publish, one might have thought
OpEd thrives on controversy. It’s about stimulating and engaging the readership and most papers run columnists who don’t fit the readership demographic for that reason: Adams in the Oz, Henderson in the SMH, etc.
I don’t think there’s a conspiracy either but I do think it’s poor editorial judgment to install a Cabinet member as an opinion columnist. The government gets a lot of airtime for its policies as it is. This week’s column amounted to a government ad, not an opinion piece. (And I’m sure it’s not Tony Abbott’s opinion, in the true sense of “opinion”. I’d be very interested to read his real thoughts on the matter, but we won’t be getting that opportunity.)
I don’t object to MPs being newspaper columnists per se, if they are commissioned to write something other than politicianspeak. Roy Hattersley, for example, is a longtime columnist for the Guardian and is a unique and independent voice – he doesn’t spout the latest Labour spin. Abbott is a clever man and a good writer and will probably make a wonderful columnist in 20 years time when he’s retired from politics – but I don’t think he should be one now, unless he is asked to write something observational about his life and work.
If getting rid of him meant getting rid of Plibersek, so be it. The two aren’t on an equal footing anyway.
PS: Roy Hattersley is an ex-MP, but he was a senior figure in the Party and is in the House of Lords as a Labour peer.
Dennis Glover’s piece in the Oz is worth a look. He thinks what has happened so far is just range-finding for the main act at election time and that the negative campaigning is going to get a whole lot worse.
Although this article doesn’t say it, I understand that negative campaigning was a feature of the Dutch election last year. It was thought that Labour (PvdA) was a shoe in to become the largest party. But the economy was doing OK and the dirty tactics used by the Christian Democrats paid off handsomely.
Labor’s strategy this far out is probably good and there is no reason why Rudd should ever get down and dirty. I suspect they’d do well, however, to prepare some quite direct adds reminding the electorate of Howard’s lies.
Yes a good article, thanks Brian. (Although why people like Glover will write for Murdoch I will never understand.)
And so far this has been the outcome for Howard, hasn’t it?
Suz:
On of the reasons the smear campaign against Rudd was set to fail right from the outset is that the Liberal Party bigmouths are so remote from what has been happening right around Australia for the past few years.
The story was about Rudd’s family having to move out of a house when he was eleven, right?
Guess what. There are now thousands and thousands of Mr Howard’s much-beloved “Asprational Voters” who have gone through similar experiences themselves. And there are thousands more who are desperately worried about what they will do WHEN that happens to them too. Attacking Rudd, someone who is now being seen as “one of them”, was not only politically idiotic but now completely irremedial. It would not have mattered if Rudd had been telling a pack of lies!!!! [I think he told the truth]. These former “Aspirational Voters” have been grievously insulted and they will get their revenge.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do in politics is to keep you bloody big trap shut …. but oh no, not the almighty and all-wise Mr Abbot and his cronies, Bloody fools.
Phil [way back at 12.32pm on 15th]:
Swiftboating will spawn an interesting variant once the Australian forces overseas start suffering casualties.
The Labor Party is perceived as generally anti-military, anti-war, anti-veteran so nobody has high expectations at all about previous military service by their politicians. [Actually a few have indeed been on war service]
Not so the Liberal Party which is forever waving the flag, preaching the greatest patriotism under the sun and sending young Australians hither and yon to fight everyone elses’ wars. Unfortunately, apart from a few ex-officers, the Liberal politicians themselves not only have a rather poor record of military service but their previously accepted reasons for not putting themselves in harm’s way are rapidly becoming quite an embarrassment. The only ways in which they can deal with growing awareness of their lack of military service is either to lie about it or to invoke their new Pro-Terrorists laws so as to impose silence and censorship on the subject. Either way, they lose.
If the Liberals continue to botch this negative campaign and are thrown out of office, they will pay a just price. Howard has always been willing to trash the image of polticians for political gain.
If he loses, Cambell Newman, as Lefty E pointed out elsewhere, will be the senior serving politician in Australia, barring a big surprise in NSW.
But I heard some expert on the radio say that if Howard loses the Liberal Party itself will scarcely exist. It’s already in a shocking state in all the states.
Brian and Lefty E:
No way. Campbell Newman is too smart a politician to get trapped like that. Wonder if he’ll go to the Australian Democrats or to The Greens and what deal he’ll cut before joining?
The polls for Labor are of course sensational but there is no sense yet of blood in the water for Howard. People still expect him to pull a rabbit out of his arse. Once, however, the press pack gets a whiff of death abt this govt they will follow the scent — just as they did with Keating — and that will be story, the demise of Howard, not the ascendency of Rudd. So far they’ve had just a sniff, but we are two months at least off the stench of a rotting cadaver.
suz, you write: “It’s almost as if Abbott thinks that by disavowing the mud-flinging of his first seven paragraphs, his hands have been cleansed”
Yes, like believing you have absolution by simply telling yourself that you will go to confession next Saturday arvo. Fascinating variation on “doublethink”.