http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=35316

How convenient that the cameras were there to catch the action.

The quoted article from The Australian has Mr. Howard saying:

“Speaking in Kalgoorlie, Mr Howard said there was no reason the resources boom should not continue for years.

“I am an optimist about the future of this country. I’m an optimist about the future of the mining industry, and I’m an optimist about the maintenance of the surge or boom or whatever description you want to employ the mining industry around Australia is now enjoying,” he said.

“Mr Rudd talks of the end of the mining boom. He’s always saying we’ve got to prepare for the end of the mining boom.

“I argue that we should be working to maintain the mining boom for years into the future. That is not false complacency, but it is a recognition that the demand of countries like China and Japan and Korea and others for Australia’s mineral resources is reasonably expected to be maintained and grow for many years.”

It’s probably no surprise that Mr. Howard is campaigning in Western Australia right now, where the message about “maintaining prosperity” probably does have the most impact (the hope being that Labor loses seats in W.A. to the Coalition to offset a mass loss of Coalition held seats everywhere else in Australia).

The general poroblem for Mr. Howard is that different sectors of the economy are clearly in different phases of the business cycle: for example, the W.A. mining boom (prosperity), last year’s news of a dip in rural land prices (recession) and the announcement this week that “local manufacture of the Ford Focus small car comes just a few days after the company forecast the end of engine manufacture in Australia and it’s now known that only GM Holden and Toyota will be making engines by 2010, and only the GMH plant is a world-scale operation, exporting more engines than are installed locally, according to The Age newspaper (on balance, you’d call this phase “recovery” for the automotive sector)

This really challenges “a national concept” of economic prosperity. These examples raise the question: Is it easier to evaluate “economic management” on both local and global levels than it is at a national level?

What implications does this have for the Howard Government’s economic credentials?

…From Justin

The Liberal Party that will emerge from the forthcoming cataclysm will be a very different organisation than the party that has been engineered so assiduously by John Howard as the instrument of his personal ambition.

Surely, these Liberal backbenchers aren’t so fatalistic as to accept with resignation a premature end to public life. All those meals of rubber chicken, all those posed photos of familial perfection, for what? Nothing.

It is clear that only Peter Costello offers some chance for limiting electoral damage and building a bridge between the Party’s Howardesque present and the Party’s only viable future, a Party that has repudiated Howard’s corruption of liberalism.

LNP Primary up one to 40%, ALP down one to 47%.

But what of TEH ONLY SIGNIFICANT BIT, I hear you cry??

Well, Rodent down two on preferred PM, Rudd leads 43-40.

Its all too much for Dennis at the Gazeditorial bunker, and in a bizarre twist he experiments with straight factual reportage (excepting the de rigeur irrelevant swipe at Cap’n Smirk, of course):

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22123951-601,00.html

“It’s because the Coalition story about itself and reality are diverging ever more obviously. Because voters who are feeling pinched, who are seeing groceries, petrol and other goods’ prices increase ahead of their salaries, who are increasingly in debt, who can’t afford to buy a house – as soon as you start talking about how much better off they are than ever before, you lose all credibility. And the Coalition’s view of itself doesn’t allow it to concede that anyone might be doing it tough under its leadership.”

Whether or not this theory should be agreed with, what interests me about Mr. Sear’s comments is that it provides, in a few words, a brief statement in which to analyse theories of communication, persuasion, motivation and voting behaviour with.

Given all the money the Howard Government is spending on “advertising”, I question their understanding of the modern communication needs of “developing deep, ongoing relationships” with their publics.

Let this be a lesson to the next-term Government – whether that is lead by Mr. Howard or Mr. Rudd -
that this present, relatively unaccountable use of marketing budgets, expenditure most businesses could never dream of wasting, is going to provide Marketing & Communication students with a case study you could spend years unpacking and interpreting

…From Justin

Every time I post a discursive comment — admittedly, sometimes quite long — the post goes into moderation. These posts rarely, if ever, feature any links, and so far as I know they don’t contain any “objectionable” words or phrases. I can’t see any reason why the spam-killer would be interested, and so I’m left wondering what it is I’m doing that warrants my continual moderation.

Is it something in my email address or name? Is it my IP address? Is it simply the length of the comment? I know it can’t be because I cited John Greenfield this last time, because I swear that was the first time I ever paid him any attention!

Whatever it is, would it be possible for someone to tell me what I can do to avoid being caught in moderation every time I say a word or 600 about an issue?

Or is the problem the fact that it’s coming from me?