“Be proud of what we’ve achieved – don’t take any cheek from the other side.”
Andrew Elder wrote an interesting post the other day critiquing Gerard Henderson’s critique, and pointing to a fundamental problem the Liberals have:
The Liberals and Nationals do not take the intellectual debate seriously, which is why it is left to pinheads like Miranda Devine, Tony Abbott, Janet Albrechtsen or Gerard Henderson to carry the (empty) can of rightwing intellectualism. If you really want people to take on the challenge of right-of-centre intellectual development, create an environment conducive to it.
The point’s been made here a number of times that too much political commentary relies on stale analogies with the past, and a complete inability to grasp the challenges of the present. Perhaps that’s because no intellectual work goes into it. The Nelson/Turnbull mob have been talked into the view that they can’t “disown the legacy of the Howard government” lest they lose their advantage on “economic management”. Never mind the fact that ALP polling found last year that when the question was posed as “whom do you trust to manage the economy best for your family?”, Rudd was streets ahead. It’s the distinction between a “beautiful set of numbers” and paying attention to people’s actual financial struggles. In other words, you could simultaneously think the government was keeping the shine on the numbers, but managing the economy for the benefit of big biz and the top end of town. Howard understood that back in about 1996.
But the Libs are now stuck in some Shanahan of a universe where whatever wording Newspoll uses is gospel. So we get the risible strategy – based on nothing much but the insights into history of the Shanahans, Milnes, Hendersons, and the like – that they have to pretend inflation doesn’t exist and argue for a big spending budget. Because otherwise they will be consigned to opposition forever because the Labor party supposedly shot itself in the foot by disowning Keating. To maintain a “lead” on “economic management” that is just an artefact of a poll asking the wrong question, and acres of newsprint self-validation.
This is all tosh, frankly. As Graham Young points out, Brendan Nelson is spruiking something which makes neither economic nor political sense. Why? Because Tom Switzer or one of his other genius staffers told him to. How pathetic.
Incidentally, how come Christian Kerr is published so irregularly in The Australian when he was hired full time from Crikey to work for them? Dennis jealous? Kerr’s writing isn’t to everyone’s taste, but he’s actually got a clue about political tactics and strategy. There’s just so much dumbness of all sorts in the conservative media and the opposition, that they don’t know a good thing when it’s under their noses!
Elsewhere: More on the Henderson column from Darryl Mason.
They’re a bit like Kryten in Red Dwarf. Just can’t quite bring themselves to say “Smeg Head.”
Someone’s seriously gotta remove the Howard chip from their motherboards before they freeze-up completely.
Sme…Sme…Sme….Sme….Smeggggggggggg………..Crack, fizzzle. Pop.
Interestingly, Graham Young was one of the few people to do any reporting on Nelson’s speech today. But Howard’s speech gets tons of media attention!
Christian Kerr has a peice in todays Oz really sticking the boot into Rudd over his use of spin and Media management.
That’s cheeky to talk about Rudd’s use of spin and media management when the Libs stacked the ABC Board for years with their pets, and the Oz’s former op/ed editor is now on Nelson’s staff, abandoning any pretense of the fourth estate’s duties.
Kind of like when Tony Snow left Fox to be Bush’s Press Secretary.
Hypocrisy, much?
No, Mercurius. Snow and the Oz’s op/ed guy would only have an interest conflict if they still worked in their media jobs at the same time. I don’t know why you are under the impression that reporters are still obligated to remain objective even if they are not reporters anymore.
I recall Howard’s former media guy David Luff (?) used to work for the Daily Telegraph. Probably Rudd’s people worked in the media somewhere at some stage too. People who’ve worked in the media previously are generally in a better position to do that job.
You pointing out the ABC Board is stacked is a furphy, because it is obvious the editorial line at the ABC is independent of the ABC’s BoD. Noone with half a brain claims the ABC’s BoD has any input on the ABC’s editorial stances, so your point there is irrelevant.
Kerr’s complaint is that Rudd has taken media management to the point where he is almost totally unavailable, and at least Howard ran the gauntlet every morning out the front of parliament, and did radio interviews in person without any notes. Rudd does it by phone so he can have his notes in front of him, and the ones in person he doesn’t allow TV crews in because having his notes there looks bad. Kerr’s article makes very valid points, if its accusations are true.
It seems many people only like Kerr and Megalogenis when they attack Liberals. Some of the comments on Mega’s blog if he attacks Rudd are stupefying, he often makes the point his job is to state the facts, but many comments act like he is betraying someone. Seems the same when Kerr does it too.
Stephen, your position only makes sense if you believe that a politician’s highest calling is to make life easier for journalists.
Personally, I think Rudd and co answer to us, not the media hacks. I couldn’t give a tinkers cuss if he talks over, around, or through the media or ignores them completely.
They should quit blubbing and do what they are paid to do – investigate and report – not wait around like surly children to be handed the day’s news. No wonder Joh called it ‘feeding the chooks’.
The press gallery got fat and lazy and too cosy with government in the Howard years. They forget that, like power, real ‘access’ cannot be given – only taken. Right now, a lot of them are whining like jilted lovers, not journalists.
“I couldn’t give a tinkers cuss!!!!”
Mercurius! Do we read you with a red neck yo mamma accent now?
No, more school maam-ish – that should be “tinker’s cuss”. One should always take care to punctuate one’s profanities correctly.
Despite all his rage he is still just a rat in a cage.
What Mercurius said.
The MSM now seems to believe that its principal function in reporting the news is to report what politicians have said. How many times does an interview consist mainly of requests for comment on what someone else has said about an issues, with the answers being used to inspire more questions to other politicians and so on.
The disease has also spread well beyond politics. One reason I barely read sporting news these days is that it’s usually much more about what people have said about each other than about the games themselves. What was the big story last night about the forthcoming RL test? Something Willie Mason said.
Kevin Rudd will be doing us all a huge favour if he gets on with the business of government and journalists concentrate on reporting what is happening, not what is being said.
Does anyone seriously believe the ABC changed their attitude to the Howard Government because of who was on the ABC Board? Watching the 7:30 Report and Four Corners, it is clear that the effect on the editorial content of the ABC was unchanged.
The Liberal Party must work to a certain degree to resist Rudd and his acolytes writing the history of the Howard Government. The challenge is that at the same time, they need to concern themselves about the party moving forward, developing alternative policy for the next election.
The difficulty with bias is that it’s largely in the eye of the beholder. Keating and Hawke thought the ABC was biased against them. However, there were (a) concrete changes to ABC editorial policy and (b) a reduction of resources which promotes lazy journalism which were a direct result of the Howard government’s stance towards the ABC.
I’m with Mercurius. Journalists should get out and be journalists, not complain that the dripfeed isn’t to their taste. Would most of the press gallery be able to sniff out and find a story if they tried? I don’t think so. “Access” and leaks are their only tools of the trade.
For instance, look at the contrast between Graham Young’s citizen journalism on Brendan Nelson’s speech and the media coverage.
The media either don’t bother to cover it or they just go off the press release of the speech. God forbid that anyone should hop in a plane and fly to Brisbane and report on him delivering it. But Graham goes along and tells us Nelson refused to take questions, appeared unsure and nervous, read the text rather than extemporised, etc. That all helps us understand Nelson’s plight, and whether he’s confident about his arguments, which we don’t get at all from an article which says “Nelson said today blah blah”.
““Access” and leaks are their only tools of the trade.”
Which to a great extent makes them more tools of the political trade than journalists, except by the most generous definition.
Paul Norton shortly and sweetly:
“Rage against opposition.
Despite all his rage he is still just a rat in a cage.”
I was intrigued by JHo’s use of the word ‘rage’. My guess is he may have thought G Whitlam’s phrase “Maintain your rage!” [ignoring the "and your enthusiasm"] was tantamount to incitement to civil disturbance or worse.
Now he urges his erstwhile colleagues to rage. I don’t think he means “party”. Perhaps he’s saddened to see them so depressed and aimless?
But ‘rage’? For me, it calls forth
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (where the end result was Death by Old Age).
or
“Rage Against the Machine” – he can’t have that feisty band of lefty Californian anarchists in mind, can he? They don’t play cricket. They don’t revere Menzies. Ummm, mutter, ummmm, mumble, ummmmm, back to my rusks in the TV Loungeroom and Raffia Work Centre of the *Twilight Reverie Village for the Forgotten People*.
deary me, oh lordy, is that the time, nurse?
FDB at 14, word!
Yah Evan! The spaceship analogy does it beautifully! In deep space, a long way from any planet but Planets Janet, Brendan, Shanahan, Bolt etc and Planet Spin. So far away from reality they’re still judging everyone else by looking in mirrors at their own images.
Ex-Dear leader is channeling Dylan Thomas’s exhortation to his elderly Dadda, with pics of George Dubya on the big screen. Planet Brendan beats up Johnny’s achievements in mendacious words guaranteed to inflame (& alienate) everyone who remembers Oz triumphs pre-Howard. Prouder than we were of our WW II troops returning to street parades & rapturous “welcome home” parades? Of Bradman’s Invincibles, the Melbourne Olympics, the America’s Cup win, reclaiming The Ashes, THAT Warne ball …
The Snowy – like the Holden, a Chifley-era, nation-building infrastructure, multi-national workforce forging a multi-ethnic nation on borrowed money …. Bloody hell! We can’t have that, can we! No wonder Howard & Co don’t want to admit that, when it came to pride in being an Aussie, the Snowy was up there with …
The bloody AIF, RAN, RAAF! Got into a hellava a war, won, and wrote the legends of Greece, Crete, HMAS Sydney’s sinking of the Bartolemo Corleone, Kormoran, Tobruk, navigating bombers on “Dam Buster” and other raids, The Great Escape, Kokoda, Milne Bay, Hellfire Pass, Changi … all the triumphs my generation grew up with …
But despite those defeats & victories, we were never as strong or proud as a nation as we were during Howard’s Era, its racist/ sectarian beatups & hounding of migrants in order to win back voters who’d gone over to Pauline Hanson (Geez! Weren’t they proud moments in our history!!), Tampa SIEV X (Gawd, we’re all so proud of the strength we showed in those crises), being brave enough to engage in an illegal war in Iraq on false evidence … 200+ years of white Australia’s history leading to those three policy peaks: Whatever it takes to get re-elected; Brown-nose George Dubya; Screw the workers & their unions … now they’re policies to be proud of …
WHAT UTTER BUL*SH*T!!
I think Dear Leader was right to channel Dylan Thomas – he did lead his party towards that good night, leaving them with little to do except Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Sure, but they were attacked from the left not the right
(Not that I have any real issues with the ABC, though I think the provide a balance to the rest of the mainstream media rather than being balanced).
Well I think its important that they be available to respond to questions from the press gallery. For the general public, this is the only conduit that they have for having their politicians respond to concerns which is not just a press release.
Well this is fundamentally the same criticism that Rudd is getting – except he is refusing to answer questions by not making himself available – which admittedly is smarter as it doesn’t look as bad, but does have the same effect.
Seeing similar things in Canberra where Robert McLelland is refusing to do radio interviews and be queried on his reasoning around overriding the ACT legislation on civil unions.
I would argue that ABC journos see their task to make it difficult for governments, and they fulfilled that over successive governments, and that task is one they should be performing.
Darryl Mason has a good point about “bias” in the media, arising out of the same Henderson column Andrew Elder had a go at:
Oops, forgot to link:
http://theorstrahyun.blogspot.com/2008/05/loser-conservatives-cant-stop-whining.html
Does he mean, maintain rage against the people who voted his party out. Does it mean that his party was born to rule and they should have been vote in. Rage to me is a useless emotion. They would be better to face the reality that they deserved to lose. That they are not born to rule. Voters generally get it right. It is bad for any party to be in power too long. Each side has the ability to rule.
I see the modern right as being fundamentally anti-intellectual anyway, so there’s few surprises in a right-wing party floundering in the wilderness after a big election loss.
Think about the talking-points and the touchstones of this movement:
(1) Science is flawed/evil/unimportant: some of them don’t believe in evolution, some don’t believe in global warming, and they cling to the least scientific of the the sciences (economics – driven as much by opinion as facts or data). Yet, somebody like Howard will often try to talk economics but fail to implement anything he supposedly believed in. Bigger government, bigger welfare state, higher taxes were his legacy. If some leftie fronted the American Enterprise Institute with that kind of record, they’d be lynched.
(2) Uninformed Prejudice is OK. This time around it’s muslims, last time it was irish catholics or greeks or italians or vietnamese. Never changes.
(3) The old institutions are A-OK. Yay the queen etc. Even Turnbull is slowly backing away from his earlier support for a republic. Pretty clearly he was simply a fifth columnist in the republican movement. Again, around welfare, the whole social engineering scheme of saddling another generation of women with domestic duties via the taxation system is appalling.
Now, I suppose the right wing tend to blame “left wing institutions” for the complete lack of actual right wing intellectuals, but why? Shouldn’t they be arising spontaneously, funded by generous capitalists? The whole mindset is baffling.
Henderson is one of the great irrelevancies as a columnist which even Andrew Jaspan at the Age could work out. Sadly at the increasingly unreadable SMH the penny has still not dropped. Althought the column was v funny in parts but as Gerard has never seen a joke he likes it was obviously unintentional.
There was Gerard saying the right had no intellectal depth and no cheer squads in the media. But where does that leave him and the other right wingnuts Bolt Devine and the great fabricator ST Janet?
But the worst of it was the vile attack on the ABC’s Fran Kelly. Henderson makes an unsubstantiated attack on her making some blanket accusation of left wing bias. The Herald happily runs this because it suits their agenda. In the same way they run Paul Keating’s column on power privatization without making it clear he works for a company that stands to gain by privatization as does Bob Carr another loved by the SMH.
Unthinking right wing commentary as run by the SMH doesn’t help the Liberals but it does prove Henderson’s point.
Well argued, Guy.
I know Murdoch is teh evil and so on, but why people think the Fairfax rags are shiny happy excellent journalism is beyond me. With the exception of the Fin, they’re in a period of very steep decline. Whoring for advertising cash seems to be their only function these days.
The Australian newspaper just makes up the news these days. The headline yesterday was based on a year-old “leaked” Treasury minute, and got a quick derisive run on the ABC nightly news, what a coup.
Today, Greg Sheridan continues his personal campaign to convince the Japanese that Kevin Rudd rooly rooly hates them (when is DFAT going to have a quiet calming chat with this peculiar little man?):
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/gregsheridan/index.php/theaustralian/comments/how_to_lose_friends/
And Paul Toohey continues his personal campaign to get rid of those pesky aboriginal land permits that are interfering with his right to go anywhere he pleases (someone tell the poor bloke he’s lost the argument):
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23662835-5013871,00.html
I’m sppeechless, again. I thought he was dead, sort of. The little I’ve seen of Howard’s latest glory hunting exercise proves several things. The Libs, except for Costello, are still stupid and still behaving like the Bourbons. And, as the American Imbecile noted, while PM Howard was for the most part acting in the US interests rather than Australia’s. So when is Howard going to be charged with treason?
I expected Bush and his Poodle, Blair to be there. After all, we all know these three war criminals stick together like glue. But what on earth was Helen Clark doing there? Apart from paying Morris Iemma back for the way he stuffed up the unveiling of the Kiwi digger statue at Anzac Bridge.(Which had nothing to do with Howard.)
A listening tour isn’t interesting, so it’s not much news. No problem with that editorial decision.
The global warming argument against conservatives is only half right: regardless of whether the planet is warming or not, oil and coal are going to run out, so we need to replace them. We should all arrive at the same place. Conservatives need to reframe the argument from one of warming to one of resources.
Why on Earth would Australia abandon a multi-lateral defence forum with the US, India and Japan other than to appease China? Can’t we keep China happy without turning our back on our democratic friends and allies?
And to discount economics is disingenuous. Not only do you discount the right-wing experts in the field (Milton Friedmann), but you also discount the fact that without robust economic policy of either colour, none of us would eat.
Howard C wrote:
The problem as I see it is that the boosters for people like Friedmann never implement his ideas. What are they afraid of if he’s so correct? De-regulation of things like banking have proved to be a disaster for everybody but bankers. Social safety nets are apparently evil but corporate safety nets are A-OK. We handed a bunch of risk management off to the corporate sector on the promise they’d be more efficient but the only thing that happened was we found out they couldn’t price risk. We swapped pensions for super, health care for health insurance and protected markets for globalised ones on the understanding that we’d all be better off. Only it didn’t happen – there are a few people stupendously better off financially and the rest of us got fobbed off with $40 dvd players in place of job security. Not much of a bargain.
Since when do political leaders of any party take intellectual debate seriously? They decide on some talking points, slogans or mantras based on what they think will cut through and appeal to voters, and then they keep repeating it and try to fit every eventuality into their preferred narrative.
Lots of commentators then comment on whether it is a smart or dumb strategy that is or isn’t working, and suggest other narratives they think are cleverer.
Meanwhile reality plods along mostly elsewhere, with most of the facts that are either inconvenient or not exciting enough being routinely ignored.
I don’t think it’s fair to single out the Libs for this sort of thing – their narrative may be less credible than others (which isn’t surprising given they’re having to adjust to that whole Opposition thing), but that doesn’t mean Labor’s is the pinnacle of intellectual rigour. Look at the nonsense they’ve got away with about ‘abolishing’ Workchoices when they mostly won’t even reverse the laws to 2004 Howard IR laws – great mantra which clearly has worked politically and become received ‘truth’, but intellectually its no more honest than the stuff from the other side.
BTW, I’m not saying that all politicians or commentators pay no attention to genuine intellectually honest and rigorous debate – plenty of them do, but these days it’s not really the main job of a political party and particularly their leaders – at least in the day to day public domain, which is what is being reacted to here.
Ken Lovell writes:
Heard it myself this morning on PNN: dill of a reporter asking Wayne Swan What He Thought (TM) about the Petrol Pricing guy’s comments on Coles Express. Swan responded that they were doing their job. Reporter: “But What Would You Say (TM) to Coles?” Gah! I want my 8c back.
Thank you Andrew Bartlett for proving himself a self-fulfilling prophesy.
I would argue why those policies of people like Friedmann never get implemented as designed is because of the very nature of government and politics. To a certain extent, any ideological policy idea ends up somewhat resembling the fish from “The Old Man and the Sea” when put through the process of government, and when someone comes up with a system of government that avoids this while properly representing the people, then let me know.
In the meantime, we may have to settle for pleasing most of the people most of the time, and getting most of the policy most of the time.
Friedman’s ideas were implemented in Allende’s Chile, along with the activities of the Villa Grimaldi
Friedman later noted the coincidence between the reputed success of his economic policies and the screams emanating from various annexes in the grounds of the Villa Grimaldi, paraphrasing Stalin’s observations upon omelette-making.
Winners make omelettes. Losers commit crimes against humanity.
So Howard C, what is your alternative? The process of government includes calculations concerning the electoral popularity of a policy, or rather, ensuring that policy does not go ‘against the grain’ so much that the electorate rejects the government sponsoring it. I see nothing reprehensible in this. It is just that politicians assume people are too stupid to deal with reasonably complex ideas, and the msm has no intention of abandoning its preferrred role as megaphones for commercial social and political power. I mean it is not as if Milton and the boys from the windy city haven’t been given a reasonably good ‘go’ in the last 25 years. It is just that all things considered, their ideas don’t get the kind of support in a democray, that they get in a dictatorship.
This is not surpirsing, all things considerd.
Well, I for one am shocked and horrified at this shocking and horrifying example of honesty from a politician, and look forward to many more shockingly and horrifyingly honest comments from Andrew in the future!
Thanks Andrew Bartlett: them’s wise words from someone who’s in a position to know (rather than guess).
Florence Howarth: I think JHo meant “rage” against the very fact of being IN OPPOSITION, as a spur to getting them out of THAT poo-poos, back into government.
I think he wants his Party to show some spirit, resolve, flair, nous, thought, action and to develop a PLAN pretty damn soon.
cheerio
I would argue that the reason is that they’re total bullshit – impossible to replicate in the real world – based on a raft of naive and blind assumptions about ‘rationality’ – but even if they were, the most cogent examples of free markets are horrifying compared to the slow and steady statism of the western world (Russia, anyone? How about Gambon, whoopee!).
But I digress. I tend to agree, political journalists need to do their jobs, which few do, left or right, but we keep buying papers…
If you’re engaging in public debate, chances are it’s because you lack behind-the-scenes clout to get things happening. Recent polling shows that 100% of respondents would prefer to get things happening rather than have a public debate, even if lobbyists must be paid for the privilege.
And say what, grace? Why not just build a relationship with the Japanese and Indians that makes the man a laughing stock? That’s how Labor governments deal with conservative opponents – they ignore them, leaving them to become increasingly shrill and drown in their own
pissirrelevance.As ever, it’s important to parse every single word:
The cricket analogy is actually quite amusing if you think it through fully …
Great post DeeCee !! Loved it.
Cheers
Chris
“Rage against opposition” is one of the strangest things I’ve heard.
If it’s an allusion to Dylan Thomas, he’s asking the party to show some little bit of spark before it dies.
In people unaware of the Thomas reference, it’ll spark Smashing Pumpkins images (e.g. Paul Norton above), or Rage Against The Machine, especially “Killing in the Name”:
“F*ck you I won’t do what you tell me
F*ck you I won’t do what you tell me
F*ck you I won’t do what you tell me
F*ck you I won’t do what you tell me
F*ck you I won’t do what you tell me
F*ck you I won’t do what you tell me”
I don’t have an alternative, and if you read my earlier post, you would have seen a request for one.
Generally, I think politicians do a very poor job in this country actually leading. They do a lot of consulting, though. For the most part, the populace aren’t subject matter experts. What we need from politicians is better explanation and support building.
SJ, I was aware of the Dylan Thomas reference, but I have long thought the Smashing Pumpkins reference was also apt. I have often wondered whether there might be a quid or two to be made by some producer from dubbing samples of Howard’s intonations to replace Billy Corgan’s vocals on “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”.
Paul, I didn’t mean to suggest that you were unfamiliar with Do not go gentle.
Your interpretation of his “rage” comment is much funnier anyway.