From today’s Crikey email:
Kevin07 is like a refreshing spring breeze. It’s very bronzed and very beachy. There is something new under the sun. Or at least that’s what Labor would like you to think about its new website.
In Monday’s Crikey, I had this to say about Howard’s online strategy:
Howard is actually using social media rather cunningly – to play the mainstream media rather than appeal directly to the “YouTube generation.
Kevin07 is trying to have it both ways. The unkind would say that’s not dissimilar to the offline Kevin.
Initial blog reaction to the site’s appearance around midnight on Tuesday captured the strategy well:
Such a breezy breezy response to all the doom and gloom and negative ad campaigning this desperate Coalition government is getting into… Labor is running lovely breezy pictures of people having fun by the beach. Is this tack going to be an effective antidote strategy to the endless, joyless nastiness of negative political advertising?
That’s spot on, and Alexander Downer was seemingly so impressed with another blog commenter’s remark that Rudd might be running for Governor of California, you might suppose that he recycled it for the next day’s talking points. Who said that Australian blogs don’t influence politicians?
But do blogs influence politics? Kevin07’s message to the media and the voters that “fresh thinking� is just the ticket if you’re tired of the apocalyptic thrashing around that passes for the government’s message in these days of The War on The States. It’s the new millennium version of the “It’s Time� bumper sticker. And the semiotics are all about youth, not age (not that offline Kevin would suggest Mr Howard is too old).
But Kevin07 does actually do what the Coalition isn’t really doing – engaging with the (mostly young) users of social media. It’s a cleverly designed one stop site for the Kevin07 presence on YouTube, Myspace and Facebook. And as Trevor Cook suggested, it’s a first for Australian Politics 2.0 in actually allowing unfiltered comment on the Kevin07 blog – there’s criticism there as well as Young Labor adulation. That’s actually very clever. In Griffith Review last year, back when you had to counter arguments from Caroline Overington that Gen Y were Howard’s Young Fogeys, I suggested that a lot of youth politics was already taking place on sites like Myspace and Facebook. That’s still happening, even if the political parties are quickly moving to colonise the space. The idealism and the high expectations on display at the Kevin07 blog are a clue as to why Howard’s numbers are so low among younger voters. Allowing it free reign is very smart. But there’s a risk – in light of the likelihood that a Rudd government will be quite conservative, it might still come back to bite.
adulation from the youths’s for a politician? jeez, young people of today…
once he’s in power, i’d expect a lot of them will come to their senses.
No doubt there may be cheesy elements to Kevin 07. However it is interesting and refreshing to see there is some space allowed for a two-way conversation on the site. This is in stark contrast to the few Youtube ventures of John Howard where comments are under tight control.
While Rudd has the air of conservatism and that may appear to colour the ALP’s face for the present, it will be interesting to see what kinds of role-reversals might appear under a Rudd government. Hopefully we won’t be treated to cases like “no GST ever” followed up by a somersault of enormous proportions. Perhaps some social reforms will appear that remain gift-wrapped until mid-2008 when the senators retire.
At the very least the use of the technology allows a sense that “aha we have a listening ear who will talk with us, not talk down to us from kirribilli house.” Of course we must wait for the next round of The Chasers War on Everything to see what satire they bring to Kevin 07, T-shirts and all. If Kevin Rudd is willing to allow himself to be satirised and seen to be genuinely not taking himself too seriously with some Chaser stunts in the election cycle, that may endear him to even more younger voters. An electoral “blessing” from Dame Edna on PM Kevin would make the humour complete.
An electoral “blessing� from Dame Edna on PM Kevin would make the humour complete.
Unfortunately if that happened I wouldn’t know whether to laugh or puke .
Can’t see Bazza giving an endorsement any time soon.
Rudd is deathly boring and so effing ernest . Beattie tagged him beautifully on Lateline last night – he is a conservative in everything but name and an election win leading to his PM ship will be a self inflicted by the so called forces for social justice.
self inflicted wound that should be…
Not that my political predictions (at least regarding election dates) are that close to the mark, but I think that post election ALP will be a lively affair. The ALP know that they are walking a tight rope to win this election. And it isn’t won until it is won. So every one is shutting up to reduce the normal Labour static to a whisper. But post election regardless of the outcome there will be a clamour that will be heard around the country. Julia Gillard is very much a part of this leadership team, but she has said very little as well. All part of giving the Coalition sledge hammer noting to swing at. So, yes, it is all very boring, but not for much longer, I feel.
But spelling it free rein would be even smarter.
Oh Dear, a Govt MP doesn’t like fake Myspace sites – yet the Libs freely set up sites attacking Rudd etc.
MySpace is a social networking website that allows people to set up free personalised web pages.
Stewart McArthur, the government’s deputy whip, said the fake page – which has since been taken down – had included his photograph.
The unauthorised website portrayed Mr McArthur as a vicious homophobe who wanted to become prime minister, according to local media.
Mr McArthur said people were using MySpace to smear reputations while hiding behind anonymity.
“This material was so extreme that the site was obviously fake but the management of MySpace left this fraudulent site on the internet for over three months, smearing myself, smearing the Liberal Party in Corangamite and smearing the Howard government,” Mr McArthur told parliament.
Hypocrites.
I give K07 ticks for being even smarter than just publishing, and appearing to publish, less than hagiographic comments, per TC’s suggestion noted in these threads.
(Point of Order Mr Speaker: I”m new to 2.0 social conventions, shouldn’t we be giving him trackbacks or something? Isn’t that why TC has “Listed below are links to weblogs that reference “Kevin07 publishes criticisms” on his page? LP is not listed.)
Kev got it right, IMOp, (and talking ’bout it to danah boyd ‘tother day bolsters that Op), when he said in some interview or other, wrt KevSpace, that he wouldn’t be being overly censorious with comments, that it only works if you ~Keep It Real~.
And amongst the e-bunting of Kevin07, with it’s 1.0 newsdrops and shopfronts, they are ~Keeping It Real~ and ~Spreading The 2.0 Love~ in comments.
They’re confident enough to give the lead of the DailyKev to guests, to build their profiles. He can after all only win one seat, Griffith, and they need to snag a swag more than that.
Today’s benificiary of the PixieDust was Tanya P. Go read it and tell me it’s not a ~KIR~ post.
I mean, invoking Lily Allen was stroke of genius.
Well if you allow dissent on your site you encourage debate and for people to hang around and come back and so forth. That’s simply blogocracy. Rudd’s team has got it exactly right, full marks for making genuine effort.
Mcarthur simply is ignorant in over reacting to this. It makes him and his lot look even further out of touch. Of course people will recognise it as a fake site. What a dork.
Now would Howard ever, ever, ever allow dissent? I suspect his dog would be banished to the kennel for wagging his tail at the postman – lack of loyalty that.
I predict that, if elected, Rudd/Gillard/Swan/Tanner will move very quickly to establish their Labor government as the one that really established lower personal income taxes in Australia. There are a few reasons for thinking this:
1. They will need to get Treasury and the economic commentators onside fairly quickly, which won’t be that hard given what can be expected from Howard over the next few months.
2. All new Labor governments are keen to use ‘fiscal realities’ as a way of keeping in check the demands of the special interest groups who supported them.
3. Rudd would come in with very few debts in this regard at all. Most left-aligned interest groups are now too battered to make a demand, excpt for some form of clemency. His relationship to the unions will be the one to watch.
4. Swan and Tanner in particular are very signed on to fiscal discipline, and other such as Craig Emerson are spoiling to out-do the Coalition on free-market rectitude (which ain’t hard).
5. The Hawke/Keating years prove that being better economic managers than the Coalition is the key to electoral longeivity, and Labor is in some respects the best party to deliver it. Remember the late 80s, with Keating as treasurer and ‘Sid vicious’ Peter Walsh as Finance Minister.
6. There is abundant evidence around that Kim Beazley’s problem was that he could never switch the thinking of middle-income Liberal voters on the economy. They remember his unconvincing sway to old Jimmy Barnes tunes in a half-full MCG on a trade union love-in, and just turned off.
Er, yes breezy breezy – but I notice the mainstream media is starting to wonder whether Kevin is not playing it very smart by agreeing with him all the time. I mean it’s one thing to not play the wedge, but when Kevin starts saying that Labor’s economic policy is a mirror image of Ratty’s then where is this all going to lead? Heck Kevin has even been criticising Beattie over his councils amalgamation initiative and not ruling out buying out that Tasmanian hospital.
Is Kevin showing up his lack of experience in election campaigning, or has he really got some fresh ideas in that supposedly highly intelligent brain of his? Has the mainstream media got it wrong again as far as how well Kevin at the beach (and not in budgie smugglers) is doing? If so I am not used to thinking of Laurie Oakes as out of touch with what is happening out there – Dennis Shanahan maybe but not Laurie Oakes.
Oh ha ha!
mark, dont know if you read this piece from the GG on rudd and gen y –
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22107158-28737,00.html
re: FM radio – which apparently howard just doesnt go on, but rudd has been a regular guest on Kyle & Jackie O and Hughesy’s show in melb? and Merick and Rosso etc…huge audiences of yoof.
Rudd, regular guest on FM commercial radio – who knew!?? like sunrise, unless you watch it, you dont know, and man, i never listen to commercial FM radio.
Jo, I was in a bar tonight, and I’ve just had a classic Gen X/Gen Y incomprehension moment – chatting with a young boy because I overheard him saying that “I voted for Howard last time but I’m voting for Kevvy this time because I want to elect Midnight Oil” – I was trying to get him to explain to me why the words “Gough Whitlam” represented some sort of complex of associations for him – not having grown up as we did with the actually existing Gough Whitlam the political figure, and I was met with incomprehension. It was also very difficult to explain to him what Raymond Williams would have called the “structure of feeling” of living through the Joh and Keating eras respectively. Much as I’m sceptical of generalisations, teaching sociology and politics to 20 year olds I do think there’s something in Robert Manne’s postmodernist end of history/forgetting thesis – much as I would intellectually like to resist it. I really do make a huge effort to bracket out the fact that I’m just much older than these kids and have seen much more change, but then I think back to Eric Hobsbawm’s preface to his history of the twentieth century where he argues that we are endowed with a hundred and fifty years of lived memory through our grandparents’ told experience and customs handed down. My last surviving grandparent died in 2004, but I have vivid memories of her mother – my great grandmother – telling me when I was a young boy what it was like to be a young girl in rural Victoria in the 1870s. She’d met Ned Kelly which might have helped me freeze it in my memory! But this boy’s parents were the same age as mine – late 60s – but he seemed to have no understanding or real feeling for how their lives and life prospects when younger were so different from his and mine respectively. I hope I’m wrong about all this!
Anyway, some midnight musings.
mark,
it’s hard to make sense of someone, who has none!
as as primary school kid – i remember thinking the same after spending the arvo on the walk home from school, at mrs douglas’ who was already in her late 80’s. and talking to her about her grandfather who was born early in 19th century, and going home thinking…. i was talking to someone who knew someone, who knew alot of people from the 1700’s!
then got home and turned on the telly, of course.
Inter-generational memory capacity getting smaller is what the Party needs most
But look, if you really want my gen to Learn More, you’ll need a) Youtube and b) an American voice-over.
What worries me, Jo, is what Walter Benjamin meant when he said:
http://www.leedstrinity.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/WBenjamin/CONCEPT2.html
Have we reached a point where that is meaningless?
In the conversation I overheard one thing mentioned about Kevin07 was that he was “fresh”. Christ help us all! I understand fully how the message is disseminated, but Lord it’s depressing to hear it spoken with no knowledge that the word itself and all the symbolism associated with it has been planted in the mind of the speaker. It gives me confidence that Kevin07 will become our Dear Leader, but it’s really got me feeling rather melancholy.
Have we reached a point where that is meaningless?
In my more pessimistic moments, I would have to say yes. People of previous generations could scarcely imagine what this generation has become.
Whatever is ‘Messianic’ of the successive generations has become terminally weak.
Kojeve had it right, I think, with his bitter Hegelian Nietzcheanism. Language has become babble, love has become sex, music has become noise, art has become random flashes, meaning has gone from the world. It’s a thesis I’ve resisted for a long time, but I think that just as the twentieth century was shaped by the thought of Mill, Bernstein and Marx, the twenty first century is shaped by (or predicted by) Strauss, Kojeve and Schmitt. The Straussian moment is over, but still haunting us, and the Schmittian moment describes our politics, but our culture is nonhuman in Kojeve’s terms – Fukuyama was right. History has ended, and the last man has died. We’re all animals now.
Even the Catholic Church now in the person of Pope Benedict is reduced to Heideggerianism – “only a god can save us”.
I don’t know if that’s a comfort or not.
Or again, as Benjamin wrote:
Well Mark, there is Badiou, with his ‘passion du reel’.
Fukuyama is right, in a somewhat ironic way. We are at the end of history, or at least, Fukuyama’s history. Under a certain hegemony, we have reached a kind of das Absolut.
Despite this, there are many gaps, through which all that has been repressed returns.
Until then, it’s sex, drugs, and reality tv.
Or, if one is a Hindu, we live under Kali Juga:
There will never be an end to ghosts. There is an infinity of ghosts.
“Ghosts go along with us until the end”:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2005/03/21/ghosts-go-along-with-us-until-the-end/
Dregs
http://books.google.com/books?id=nXEXAB4gtKYC&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=%22ghosts+go+along+with+us%22&source=web&ots=Z3G0iYYuKR&sig=EsXygqDiR3ugA3CfW73HwNuFBpY
Is this Ben Chifley’s “light on the hill”?
Kim, your quotes above remind me of a soliloquy from Marat-Sade (whether from the play within the play or the meta one I can’t remember).
“We few survivors walk over a quaking bog of corpses”
And that Klee painting is my favourite EVAHZ!!!!11!
I’m impressed, Mark. Has the “Come Back To My Place And Let Me Explain Raymond Williams And Walter Benjamin To You” line ever worked on anyone in a bar past midnight? Brisbane must have changed. Sweet rock-climbing Jesus in Sinai, I love these drunken competitive-quotation threads.
Everything is going to plan.
It is very interesting that Rudd has opted for classic Aussie 1940s and 1950s cultural rhetoric, both visual and verbal. A nod and a wink to those Hansonites who fled Labor in droves from 1996 onwards, per chance?
Mark
You are twenty years behind the times dear boy. Alan Bloom said all this is Closing of the American Mind.
Kevin Rudd, FRESH!!?? PUHLEEZ! The guy is the most reactionary Prime Ministerial aspirant this country has ever seen. NTTAWWI.
“Everything is going to plan.”
So is the elevation Of St Kevin part of the big picture ?
I can’t take all the credit. I was more a Latham backer, myself.
Frank C, a follow-up to your reference to Stu McArthur’s complaint about in Parliament about MySpace. He also got featured in the Warrnambool Standard a bit earlier on the same story. I notice in his speech he’s now seeking to blame MySpace for the hoax. But apparently the thing was around from April and it took him (or one of his staffers) three months to notice.
I’m sorry I missed the original MySpace, now removed. It made a reference among his achievements to the ‘extension of his driveway’. This is a local joke based on Stuart getting the deadend road leading only to his property sealed with fed funding.
Yeah every so often I think history is dead, the youth of today, meaningless, meaningless meaningless…. but then again… for how long have people been saying this stuff?
Oh come on….
True, true, David. My sour mood last night may have been provoked by whisky sours.
Are you back on the roller coaster Mark?….sounds you like stepped off last night, always good to get off the ride for a while. You made my brain hurt with all stuff, and I had to go and think about things…..thanks a lot.
Like an evolutionary examiner passing out grades; so we’ll be sent back to being amoebas, if we get the frigging answers wrong, or muck up in class?……devolution IS the new hell.
Like when were we ever not?
Everything else might be contestable. But the fact we lumber around inside these giant evolving meat carcasses needing to breathe x times a day, fill gobs & stomachs x times a week, urinating, defecating, possibly reproducing, dying and turning to dust – isn’t.
Oops, gotta go vacuum and hang out a few loads, before school pick up, now there’s lack of evolutionary progress, for yer.
What whisky, plz?
Yep, back on the roller coaster today, jo!
Canadian Club.
Mark
Ah that explains your flirtations with Strauss!
This is certainly a week in which Public Relations and the use of new Communications Technology are on significant display.
We’ve had the launch of the Kevin07 website as well as the Prime Minister’s announcement on YouTube of the Armed Forces Gap Year program.
Now we’ve just witnessed the new media use of the Internet by the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) for the key event in their election year calender – an address by both John Howard and Kevin Rudd to the National Press Club, an event then streamed live over the internet to an estimated nationwide Christian audience of 100,000 people.
You can hear a preview of the event by listening to the final minutes of this week’s ACL “political spot” podcast and read a summary.
I’m too short of time myself just now to critique the issues surrounding the interaction between religion and politics, but would like to quickly say four things that provide you with an indication of my concerns related to this subject :
ONE
Ian ‘Dicko’ Dickson of Australian Idol judging fame, who has previously completed a degree in politics, was precise in telling Charles Wooley on his morning radio program this morning that religion is the “bureaucracy of faith” (not something Mr. Dicko is enthusiastic about as he expressed concern about all forms of fundamentalism). For this reason, I think it is helpful to make a distinction between church as an institution and church as a source of ideas.
TWO
As a gay man in a relationship, it’s not uncommon for me to find evidence across the internet of others that regard gay marriage as nothing less than the next biggest threat to humanity besides terrorism. Thinking that is challenged by at least one man of faith as an attempt to inflame tensions with reckless comparisons.
Of course, this not only misrepresents the cause of affirming gay relationships (however which way you advocate change on this issue), but also creates noise that obstructs diversity of opinion about relationships within the gay community itself.
This report from The Age which contemplates the concept of Gay Conservatives gets me thinking about the distinctions between a debate over gay marriage versus a debate over so-called civil unions.
To quote Townsville Liberal MP Peter Lindsay from the article:
“Parliament is sympathetic to the concept of civil unions. You would be surprised if you knew the level of support in the ministry for civil unions. It’s just that they don’t “come out” and say so, preferring to opt for safety and to keep their views to themselves.”
Because some Conservative Christians who oppose gay marriage also oppose the concept of civil unions, I think this debate needs a paradox concept much like Joseph Schumpeter’s “Creative Destruction” to help all interested parties better comprehend changes in relationship, whether opinion is pushing for transformational change, change in increments or maintaining the status quo.
A concept which might help people feel more comfortable with raising issues.
To quote a Vicar called Eric Woods about the concept of Buried Treasure:
“This metaphor of the search for treasure underlines the truth that the Christian enterprise of exploration into God is a radical enterprise. ‘Radical’, from radix, meaning ‘root’: a radical is properly someone who lives from his or her roots, who is not content to live on the surface of things, but always probes and questions, searching for the truth and reality behind and beyond the humdrum and the mundane. Both as Christians and as the Church we have great need of that radical dimension, that dimension of depth.”
THREE
In addition to these resources, I encourage you to at least scan through this transcript from ABC Radio National’s Religion Report, one of which is an interview with Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd.
Having recently listened to Charles Wooley interview Mr. Rudd from Launceston on his morning radio program, I’m rather impressed by Mr. Rudd’s ability to value “knowledge for knowledge’s sake”, something University study seems to demand of me, regardless of the practical value I also need to gain from learning.
The opening of Rudd’s conversation with Wooley indicated to me that even if he is a small target opposition leader, he’s able to display a peripheral vision of a situation (I recall he was talking about Tasmania’s environment in general), rather than just be keeping his words and movements carefully chosen and directed in order to achieve an outcome.
By comparison, John Howard’s problem is that I only ever recall the green and gold jogging tracksuit and sometimes one-sentence answers in Question Time. Perhaps that’s just my limited perception , yet consistent with this concern about Mr. Howard is this point raised by Denis Shanahan today:
“The perception can become reality by putting pressure on the government leadership, creating anxiety and uncertainty among MPs and candidates, giving voters a sense of inevitability and forming a group assumption within the media that accentuates criticism of the government and eases criticism of the Opposition.”
FOUR
Also related to the topic I raise today is another important transcript from the ABC: an interview with social observer and thinker Clive Hamilton from The Australia Institute
I would caution left-wingers from making the opinions of Mr. Hamilton too central to their thinking.
As a Marketing student (combined with the study of Communication), I really have an issue with Mr. Hamilton’s critique of Marketing and I’m likely to take a relatively conservative position to counter his views.
In contrast with the problems of affluence identified by Clive Hamilton, consider the words of Brink Lindsey, who speaks about a prevailing libertarian synthesis:
“The ideologies on the left tend to be upset about the economic state of affairs and therefore are always preaching economic decline and economic pessimism, and likewise the people on the right don’t like the cultural changes so they’re always preaching cultural and moral decline.”
What’s important about using the study of Marketing to discipline thinking is that, unlike Economics or Sociology, it is a synthetic discipline which integrates economics, sociology and psychology (the study of the human individual in isolation) into one.
I’m not suggesting that Mr. Hamilton’s research is of no value. Far from it (I couldn’t develop my own insight without his), but he needs a critique of his critique, probably from a “libertarian synthesis” perspective rather than leave all the work up to Janet’s rich-hating myth critique in The Australian
After all, while I’m likely to give my House vote to Mr. Rudd (my entire family is Labor), I’m not willing to be branded Leftist as easily. I did give my Senate Vote in 2004 to the Democrats (based on their targeted campaigning of Melbourne’s Joy FM radio station) and I do firmly believe Joe Hockey is a great pollie to keep in Parliament, whatever the overall election outcome.
You can eventually follow more detail about this topic on my personal blog.
…From Justin
Do Albrechtson and Howard realise that when they have a go at Tall Poppy Syndrome, be it obnoxious articles or new preambles, they’re undermining a supremely democratic social reflex-mechanism?
All Kevin07 is trying to do is get Labor back in power federally with himslf as PM. But not as yet being able to create a radical “New Labour” as in UK movement of the ’80s, he is settling for expanding the political boundaries within Labor after the Latham/psuedo left debacle of 2004. This has given him the scope to agree with Howard on just about everything that previously were old and pseudo left verities.But unlike New Labour under Brown/Blair/Mandelson he has no clear reform project for the future to put before the electorate.
That’s Kevin07’s weakness, but is not of his own making. He is figuring he can finesse it. Rudd’s strength is his personal lust to be in power for Labor, whatever it takes, which matches Howard’s political and personal credo. This is what makes Kevin Rudd Howard’s most formidable opponent/threat since ‘96.
Hi Mark,
Kev might be “having it both ways” but it seems to be working for him. Having strong opinions only upsets the electorate, they are best avoided.
Having said that, it’s still early doors and I’m sure Howard will win in the end – maybe the QLD Council amalgamations will scare folks of putting the ALP all governemnts.
Megan, think Kev might be onto something with the “me too” stuff. It is depressing and I blame the media. This occured to me yesterday:
And WA ain’t the Golden State for Howard either.
The Labor surge in the Westpoll taken this week as interest rates rose shows West Australian voters are turning their backs on Prime Minister John Howard and his Government.
The poll, to be published in The West Australian tomorrow, shows a huge eight percentage point swing to the ALP, delivering it 54 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.
An election result of 54-46 to the Labor Party would not only ensure it retained the marginal seats of Swan and Cowan, but it would sweep up the Liberal seats of Hasluck, Stirling, and Kalgoorlie.
The Government has been hoping to hang on to Hasluck and Stirling, and believed taking either Cowan or Swan would give it enough of a buffer to offset expected Labor gains in Queensland, NSW, Tasmania and South Australia.
But this poll suggests West Australian voters, like their east coast counterparts, are rapidly ditching Mr Howard and the Coalition.
Labor’s primary vote has soared back to 43 per cent, where it was earlier this year soon after Kevin Rudd took over as opposition leader, according to the poll.
The Coalition’s primary vote is down eight points from the July Westpoll at 38 per cent.
In the 2004 election, Mr Howard hammered the ALP with a two-party preferred vote of 55.4 versus 44.6.
Justin, i read your post carefully, and found the Clive Hamilton link made good reading. Mind if i put it up under the Preaching to the Choir thread?
Yep, so much for WA offsetting losses!
Some shrewd punter (maybe Crikey) picked up on something fishy a few weeks back; ie why was Howard bothering to spend time in non-marginal Lib WA seats?
Lib polling has probably been telling them worrying things about WA for a few weeks.
Again: Rodent rooted.
Hi Sublime Cowgirl.
I’m glad that you like some of my links. Hope you find the Clive Hamilton link useful, whatever you use it for.