The Shanahan has spoken. He might claim that Rudd lacks a narrative, but he’s sure got one.
We pointed out here at LP around budget time that the punditariat love trying to make their dreams come true, and it could have been added that sections of the media would do their best to make the “honeymoon will end with the budget” narrative a self-fulfilling prophecy (and as with so many media motifs, the opposition have been saying the same thing for just as long).
There are a few things going on here:
(1) The dripfeed drongoes are frustrated with their lack of access – hence all the stories about “control freakery” and “media management”. But maybe those with long memories will recall that Labor never gets a particularly good deal from what used to be called “the capitalist press”… Who could blame them for wanting to get the message out even if they have to shoot the messenger?
(2) It’s just so much easier to write about a horse race. Righteo, summon one up out of the ether? I mean which editor or columnist wants to do the hard yards actually analysing how budget decisions might work as policy. Objectively. How tedious!
(3) It’s the power, stupid. They fancy themselves as players.
Be very interesting to see what the next cherished Newspoll says.
Last few years the guiding myth for the punditariat was a “budget bounce” for Howard that never eventuated.
And Shanahan has been declaring the Rudd honeymoon over since January 2007.
If he ever starts reporting that Rudd is doing well, we’ll know that the government is about to lose office.
Somewhat more sensible stuff from George Megalogenis:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23781121-7583,00.html?from=public_rss
Megalogenis writes as if the media has no role in what and when and how Rudd sweats or more importantly is seen to be sweating and so ends up being as insubstantial as Nelson. The media decide on our behalf whether we think Rudd is sweating the small stuff or not. He has been “bogged down” because its been leading the news for days and not the other way round.
Oh but Amanda, the media are just passive in all this. Except when they’re not!
Depends what suits them to say.
The leading king of smear Glen Milne was at it again this morning on Radio National He invented a new thread that claimed Rudd had promised to keep petrol prices down etc etc and then proceeded to show how wrong he was and that he was failing and it was the end of the road for Rudd.
It was masterly. Milne Shanahan et al got it wrong all of last year and then went on to attack the bloggers (Mumble Possum etc ) who were getting it right.
The thing I can’t stand about these people is that on Monday Milne claimed the Labor candidate for Gippsland had personally organised a risque off-colour theatrical event when it turns out he had done nothing of the sort. What’s more the event was part of a festival which received funding from the Howard Govt and the the bloke who is now labor hopeful in Gippsland receive high praise from then arts minister George Brandis. Milne was wrong but have we seen a backdown? No.
I do agree however with Megalogenis in the Oz today when he wonders why Rudd spent so much time on the fuel watch issue It is a road he doesn’t need to travel. And indeed he should be telling people petrol never going to get cheaper and we have to get used to that and develop strategies to cope.
Let Brendan get stuck in his populist cul de sac.
I think the bloggers on this site are convinced the Rudd Government is actually doing something.
What I would like to know is what that is. Not what areas they have identified as needing a greater policy focus, but what that policy is.
For example, what are they doing about indigenous affairs? (Setting up a bi-partisan committee is not action.)
It has undoubtedly been a bad week for Rudd and his government, and this is a story, because it has been so rosy for so long. He has introduced a policy (ah, something he has done) against the advice of four departments. This advice was then leaked to the media.
By the way, does anyone other than me delight in the delicious irony of Rudd bringing in the Federal Police to investigate this leak?
I sometimes wonder if the only people who read columns in ‘The Australian’ are bloggers determined to show how wrong-headed the columnists are
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I’m not sure Rudd is doing anything. Peter Hartcher likens him to the wizard of oz and it is hard to disgaree. He has all the cards he has to play them He can’t be worrying about the next election. He is proving to be a disappointment to me by picking up on the thing that drove me nuts about Howard. That is that he feels the need to commentate on every stupid bloody issue that rears its head each day from Henson to sport.
I am very worried about the rhetoric not matching action especially on issues such as climate change and the bigger economic issues. The point I am trying to make is that the punditariat is missing this big picture and becoming obsessed with fuel watch . I am concerned that Rudd has been sucked into it as well.
I am concerned that as a country we have to face up to some unpalatable truths about our economy about energy about climate change. Private schools continue to rort the taxpayers, private health funds continue to be funded by that obscene ever growing private health insurance subsidy. Both should be ended now.
These issues will take some working through and there will be pain on the way. It has to happen and it should start happening soon.
Howard C
You’re showing a complete lack of understanding of how the Australian government and public service works, and has worked for the last 100 years or so.
The former regime worked on the basis of saying a lot and doing little. Rudd is different.
Most of what is happening isn’t reported. Don’t expect Rudd to be telling you. Don’t expect the current crop of journalists to bother trying to find out.
Why do you think the public service is whinging like they’ve never some before? Do you think the government has them copying manuscripts or something?
Good policy takes time.
That time is now.
There will be plenty of action for you to criticise before the next election.
Guys, the people who will notice that Rudd and co. had a “bad week” are vanishingly small.
Much and all as it’s small beer, FuelWatch will probably be popular. Not so much for its actual effects on fuel prices, but because it satisfies people’s psychological need to feel like they’re not getting ripped off.
There’s plenty of big stuff in train in the portfolios – the climate change review, the defence white paper, the health overhaul, the university review, and so on. These reviews are all going to start reporting back later this year, and we’ll be swimming in reform proposals – and 2009 will be an extremely busy year starting to implement them.
I have to admit, I feel like Rudd has dropped the ball this last week or so. He’s going populist on petrol prices while Garnaut is preparing a climate change response which should include transport energy to be responsible. Rudd is all about being ‘evidence-based’ but the evidence is that no government controls world petrol prices and he knows it. They will go up, and they will affect more than just petrol at the pump. He should be preparing the electorate for more pain, because it is going to come.
After this, if transport energy is included in the carbon trading scheme, I’ll be shocked and delighted, and my faith in the Government will be restored. I’m not expecting to be.
Perhaps you haven’t been paying attention Howard C. The Labor Government has been so active that apparently it is upsetting some Federal public servants with the workload.
Your example of Indigenous affairs is a good one. Apart from the big stuff like the apology to the Stolen Generation, Jenny Macklin has been tidying up some of the silliness of the NT intervention – restoring CDEP with reforms to clean it up, rolling out a better system for quarantining of some welfare payments, settling and signing a lease with the Aninidilyakwa Land Council, establishing better arrangements for the delivery of housing.
It has been a bad week for Rudd, though. He needs to learn not to follow Nelson and the media down every rat hole. His job is to lead. He needs to ignore the populist rubbish that will always wash about and get on with the agenda that he is there to deliver. In short, he needs to work in the opposite way to his predecessor.
Virtually the whole front page of yesterday’s ‘Gold Coast Bulletin’ was a screeching headline saying something like IT’S NOT KEVIN07 IT’S KEVIN08 AND IT’S YOUR JOB TO FIX THE FUEL MESS. While ever the MSM chooses to function on that juvenile level and play ‘gotcha’ games, the government has little choice but to operate behind a screen of smoke and mirrors and superficiality.
Yep, Howard C has it right – don’t bother reading these clowns. I no longer do, because the signal to noise ratio is far too low.
As for the one substantive issue here – Rudd’s control-freakery and workaholism – well we always knew that. At both political and policy levels it has upsides and downsides, but it aint gonna change because it’s the man’s personality. It’s why at a personal level he’s not really a very likeable person – he’s the anti-Keating.
Further to Robert’s comment at #10, it looks like the fossil fuel lobby is concerned that Penny Wong is violating their divine right to rule energy policy.
If the government isnt doing anything, why is public service complaining about the workload?
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Folks, Rudd is a control freak, puritanical technocrat – policy progress grinds through the system. This is no Howard/Turnbull Murray Darling Water Plan approach to public policy where its developed on the back of an envelope over a few days or weeks, devoid of departmental input and where the quality benchmark is set as the Commonsense Pub Test.
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By September, we all here will be laughing at how the government has so many things going on that the media cant keep up – and we’ll look back to those days in May with a mirthy “Can you believe that [insert Murdoch Press wordjockey] was complaining about the government not doing anything!”
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And another thing that probably needs to be mentioned here is about the ignoring of the so-called advice from 4 departments. The journo’s peddling this story have shown such a profound ignorance of the way the public service works that the mind boggles – especially since their bread and butter is the political system in Canberra! There’s no excuse for this type of gross ignorance considering their job. Thank god for Bernard Keane, seemingly alone among the gallery in understanding the way this works.
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The coordination comments on cabinet submissions rarely, very very rarely involve anything more than a couple of people in a department banging their heads together about the submission and having a quick two bobs worth on it. This isnt just a Commonwealth thing either – it’s the way it works across all states for every issue that doesnt seriously impinge on another departments pissing grounds (although, sometimes departments with nothing to do will ad big dollops of coord comment work in a search for relevance (look at moi, look at moi!)- but we cant say that about the Commonwealth public service at the moment, they are all flat out)
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So when the narrative of the day is that the government ignored the advice of 4 departments, this departmental advice wasnt the result of a major analytical operation swinging into action by those departments – it was most likely a couple of people spending a few hours trying to play contrarian, before sending their scrawled notes off to some poor schmuck to try and write it up, with orders to hunt around for a few references of previous departmental work to add a veneer of gravitas to it.
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Especially since every department at the moment is extremely busy dealing with changes to core policy issues within their departmental pipeline – the time spent adding coord comments to a third order issue like Fuelwatch would have been minimal.
Word, Possum.
I work in the public service (not Federal), and I know I can do plenty of work and be really busy, and that is has nothing to do with policy outcomes. And to suggest that Rudd isn’t telling us, or that he doesn’t want the public to know, is ridiculous. Wouldn’t he want a image of busyness?
Anyway, I think the public service is complaining about the method in which the work is being asked to be done, rather than the work. If they are asked for advice and it is not heeded, then people are going to get upset. It’s human nature. The more it happens, the more likely that upset-ness is going to lead to irrational or hasty behaviour. Like unlawful leaking of cabinet documents.
Good policy does take time. If there is one thing the ALP had in opposition, it was time.
And if the comment about me having plenty of action to criticise before the next election was meant to infer a predetermined opinion of those actions, then I would suggest that those people defending Rudd will be defending him later in much the same manner, regardless of his actions, simply because he ain’t that devil or all devils, John Winston Howard.
Rudd continually annoys me with things like his warning to the public servants (sounded like a petulant headmaster) and his “revolting” reaction to the Henson thing . However I’m happy to be annoyed rather than continually angry as I was for the 12 years prior to Rudd. I think Rudd is riding a populist shotgun so that some real policy work gets done without giving the Liberals the chance to play at being wreckers which appears to be the tactic they have adopted. And at this stage of the cycle it doesn’t matter what Shanners et al say, we’re a long way from the next election (excluding a DD, wouldn’t that be interesting, better be carefully Brendan, it could be a case of “physician heal thy self” in the foot department).
If they are asked for advice and it is not heeded, then people are going to get upset. It’s human nature. The more it happens, the more likely that upset-ness is going to lead to irrational or hasty behaviour.
These people should perhaps reconsider whether a career in the public service is really for them. You give advice, it doesn’t not get taken up (which is not the same as “ignored.”). That’s your job. Cope.
Of course it happens to most of us in our jobs too but we don’t have Laurie Oakes to do our blackmail for us.
I felt the same about all this stuff under Howard as well. The media were just as lazy and self-interested in their treatment of his govt and if public servants were unprofessional sooks under him too, they shouldn’t have been.
Possum – you have more patience than I [and you probably type much faster].
It’s amazing how people expect the policy and decision cycle to be both rapid and successful when there is very little evidence those two items are linked.
Those 4 departments may or may not think their evidence is more worthy than the ACCC’s, and if they do they know they’ll need to do a better job of making it stick next time.
I hope Possum is right, but there is the possibility of wheels spinning furiously but no traction. I remember seeing Jenny Macklin on SBS (Insight?) talking about Gambling policy. When asked about policy direction she responded with that same ‘We will talk with all parties, consult widely, work out the social costs and develop responsible policy’ stuff we’re hearing a lot. Now, no one’s going to suggest irresponsible policy is a superior option, but knowing a bit about gambling policy, that is the same story the States have been running for 15 years. The answers are there, now give us a decision that will change things. I look forward to September, when Possum’s policy feast begins and I can pretend I knew all along it would happen.
Government Policy Development – quick, successful, cheap Choose any two.
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Quick and successful – but expensive.
Quick and cheap – and a failure.
Successful and cheap – takes time to develop
I believe there is a fourth policy option: expensive, time consuming and bad.
I’m not saying it will happen, but it can’t be discounted.
Ah Yes – the Total Failure option.
23 Possum
A nice little way of explaining that one is to get the person asking for the unreasonable to draw a nice equilateral triangle with a stick figure of themselves inside, arms outstretched.
Then label the sides with the 3 parameters cost time and success and ask them which one they can shorten without squeezing themselves.
Possum Comitatus – My god, someone who actually speaks with knowledge.
I agree with Mega: why Rudd even bothered responding to half-Nelson was beyond me. Should have said “iraq war = price rises” and let them baste in that self-saucing marinade – and then bombed the media with a big announcement on something else.
As for Shanahan and Milne: these guys lived off close relations with the previous government, and now they’re about as useful a source of political news as the Duc de Orleans butler, after his masters imprisonment in 1790.
Well the workload may certainly have something to do with the quality of the advice coming out. Lately when going out in Canberra have been hearing public servants complaining about not only the workload but how process is now more important than results. That there is so much review and red tape introduced that people are starting to just go through the motions, signing off on things without properly analysing them as they simply don’t have the time.
There’s certainly a bit of irony about promoting work life balance for working families and then putting so much pressure on the public service that people are scheduling 7am meetings (for public servants who aren’t high up the hierarchy).
There’s a point at which if you want to get a lot more done you need to hire more people, even though its politically unpalatable when you’re trying to cut the budget. Otherwise you end up doing a lot, but badly.
CHris: There’s certainly a bit of irony about promoting work life balance for working families and then putting so much pressure on the public service that people are scheduling 7am meetings (for public servants who aren’t high up the hierarchy).
That did cross my mind too.
Yes. Rudd is really annoying me with his ‘Guess what. It’s just going to get tougher’. Someone needs to have a serious chat with him about it.
I’ve fallen seriously out of love with him this week. But I’ll get over it. Sniff…
I imagine that sooner or later the public servants will bite back on the workload issue, too.
You can’t blame the MSM for this mess… they’ve picked up on a major political blunder from Rudd and they’re like a shark feeding frenzy. There’s the first smell of blood in the water!
The whole fuel-watch and public service row debacle is a mistake on a mistake on a mistake fomr Rudd.
The original mistake was Rudd’s howler that the ‘the government has done all it physically can to help working families on living expenses’ (fuel and food). Wow. What a clanger!!!!! In government for only 6 months and they’ve already done everything they can do on their election pledge to help working families. And I just love the weasly words that Rudd/Swann have used to claim that they never promised they’d keep prices down in the election campaign – all very Howardesque.
So Rudd made that howler – and now he’s compounding the mistake because he has to be seen to doing something. So he’s reacted to Nelson’s silly 5c excise on fuel cut with an equally silly review of the tax-on-a-tax to possibly bring fuel down by about the same amount. He’s also expended political capital defending the dubious fuel-watch scheme.
He’s then compounded the whole thing by essentially losing his cool and putting the boot into public servants!
To top it all off he got himself unnecessarily caught up in the Henson debate with the outrageous comment that a photo of a 13yr girl is ‘revolting’ (regardless of your views on the Henson affir – think how this would make the poor girl feel – the PM thinhs she’s revolting!).
Not a good look…. not a good couple of weeks…. not the MSM’s fault. Rudd’s had his first wake-up call.
I think the government has got itself in a bit of a hole in the last week or so, but I don’t think it’ll be of any lasting importance. I would imagine that Rudd is delighted that the Libs are looking to block things upstairs – the more Double Dissolution triggers the betters I would think. With that in mind, I think we can expect an election in the second half of next year, by which time the events of the last week will be forgotten.
To illustrate this, cast your mind back to the first Costello Budget of the last term (2005). The ALP blocked tax cuts in the Senate, widely seen as a political blunder. And what effect did it have on the ensuing flow of politics? Precisely none (with the possible exception of undermining Bomber).
What people on these sites, and for that matter in the Press Gallery, forget is that most people don’t give a rat’s about politics – they just want to feel that the government’s in charge so that they can then think about important things like the footy, their kids and TV. For all the heat and smoke of the last fortnight, I’m guessing that it’s just not being listened to out there in Voterland.
As far as portents for the future go, I tend to agree with Possum – when the time’s right (ie when people are listening), the government will be taking action. Not that I think it matters greatly. All the government needs to do is to demonstrate some semblence of competence. Come election time, Rudd will be up against the Emo King Brendan, or the Eastern Suburbs wanker Malcolm – either way, Labor will win easily.
It’s entirely possible to have nothing but sympathy for and solidarity with workers continually asked to do more with less and experiencing culture shock under a new and quite possibly ham fisted regime (altho’ memo to CPSU: come up with a more compelling sob story than 7am meetings) and also have nothing but contempt for these shitty little games.
Senior public servants have an extremely privileged position in their access to the centres of power in the country (plus their relative lack of accountability via public anonymity) and they do.not.get.to.use.it.this.way.
That is, if the emerging narrative of the motives for the leaks is true, which it may well not be. The public service might be taking tacit responsibility for them even if they didn’t do it, just to get the issue in the public arena and exert pressure that way.
“There’s certainly a bit of irony about promoting work life balance for working families and then putting so much pressure on the public service that people are scheduling 7am meetings”
Rampant hypocrisy about work/life balance is nothing new in the Public Service. There was a book of interviews with heads of departments in the public service released not too long ago in which almost every person interviewed banged on about how important work-life balance was … before going on to brag about how they worked 12 hour days. The clear implication (and anyone who’s worked in the Public Circus will know) is that work-life balance is only for those ‘who don’t want to get ahead’.
The same hypocrisy is also evident in anti-workplace-bullying codes that most departments have in place. They’ve been used against low-level staff, but it’s well known that, once someone has reached a certain level in the hierarchy, they’re essentially untouchable. The very areas in which workplace bullying is most prominent can’t be reached because to attempt to do so is career suicide.
I know of quite a few people who’ve just been quitting the PS recently. The workloads have become stupid (getting paid for 7.5 hour days, but consistently working 10-12 hours a day + weekends) and the culture worsening as a result.
Thank the gods I don’t have to put up with it.
Well, people have a vested interest in their views and advice being heeded. They like to see it happen. If they come to the belief that it will never happen, then they’ll stop doing the hard yards to come up with the right proposals, as they see the same result coming from less work.
Previous posters can rabbit on all they like about the veracity of the advice, but the fact is that four departments provide similar advice that this was not a great idea, and may lead to some increases in petrol prices.
I think any reduction to petrol excise is bad policy because of the dwindling amount of oil available going forward, and politically it’s a small bang for a large buck.
Howard C., it’s got nothing to do with ‘advice not being heeded’.
You need to go back and read Possum C’s words at 16.
The honeymoon might be over with the arts community because of Rudd’s stupid and impulsive comment on the Henson photograph. But a bucket of meney will fix that.
Unless Henson is actually charged and convicted and sentenced to 10 years jail, or for that matter, any prison term. Then it would be very hard to be K. Rudd.Maybe even disastrous.
Re Fuel Watch – When it works, which it will, I think, unless prices go up, all this current tantrum will be forgotten.Rudd should keep pushing the line hard that Nelson and his mates are creatures of the big oil companies. Which they are. Cf. that link to Penny Wong above.
The same is true for a large national research organisation that has recently been subject to an “efficiency dividend”. All residual risk (legal, audit, contractual) contained within management systems is being transferred to working staff, who also need to respond to the demands of an increasingly frantic policy development agenda. So scientists do not only need to know their work, they reconcile their own accounts, and try and negotiate their work through a system that is essentially hostile to innovation and testing risky ideas. ‘Tis a Kafka-esque concoction where the processes of the organisation are in direct conflict with the aim of the work (e.g. sustainability).
If you can’t stop the inner screaming, the only solution is to channel Strapping Young Lad. The perfect antidote to the calm smarm of the Ruddster.
It is extraordinary, that many in the press, if you go for the logical conclusion, are calling for a “Bureacracy”.
I suppose that bitterness, at their lost favourite, at the hands of the electorate, has given way to wanting Howards’ chosen public servants to run the show instead.
37 Howard C
Go and get elected to a board and get back to us after a few months.
Seriously.
8 people come to you and advise one thing. 1 person advises the opposite. Are you going to go with the 8 just based on popular numbers or are you going to evaluate and prioritise the evidence and make a decision?
Surely you’re just being silly?
The fact is your fact is correct.
The fact is your fact is the wrong fact.
The fact is the cabinet decided the ACCC was more convincing than 4 departments.
The fact is we will shortly find out who is right and who is wrong.
Reproducing MSM and Liberal Party talking points without the slightest intellectual analysis is a bad, bad idea.
As to your first paragraph – it shows a lack of perspective understanding of the advice process. If you had the ego you’re suggesting as a departmental secretary you wouldn’t last long or be very successful in getting your ideas implemented.
You need to be a bit tougher than a 6 year old.
Senior public servants work hard, but so do plenty of other people whose remuneration is nowhere near as generous. 10-12 hours days plus weekends should not go on and on, but sometimes in short bursts, that’s the breaks when something all consuming and important is happening. The leak of papers meant for cabinet perusal should be pursued vigorously. Think 12 exhausting and dispiriting Howard years. Remember any leaks of Cabinet papers?
Rudd’s is a prat if he thinks that a ‘newer gentler’ regime will tame the Liberal palukas that were parachuted into the federal PS down to levels well below SES equivalent.
Sack one, educate thousands. Forget investigations, just move a Departmental Head (from one of the offending Departments), sideways into the annex and instruct them to count paper clips. KPI = silence from everybody else on any matter bound for Cabinet discussion. Otherwise, goodbye annex, hello, golf handicap improvement strategy.
Hard work? Get used to it. Enforecable work and family balance provisions are there for people who have no choices. Senior managers and people who work in organisations where chewing s*it is part of the daily grind, can find another job, where the demnds are less, or the rewards higher, or both. I have little or no sympathy for very senior public servants, who are on contracts and whose rewards look prety goood from here.
A friend of mine who used to work coordinating a “whole of government work/family balance strategy” quite when she found that the demands of Ministers and managers for work on work/family balance were completely incompatible with having kids and doing that job. You know – “the Minister needs this briefing note on family friendly work schedules his desk first thing” and “I have to pick my kids up from school”.
GIPPSLAN BY-ELECTION
Al at 8.40am included this:”The thing I can’t stand about these people is that on Monday Milne claimed the Labor candidate for Gippsland had personally organised a risque off-colour theatrical event when it turns out he had done nothing of the sort. What’s more the event was part of a festival which received funding from the Howard Govt and the the bloke who is now labor hopeful in Gippsland receive high praise from then arts minister George Brandis. Milne was wrong but have we seen a backdown? No.”
It was a big story. Not only front page news with spill-over to an inside page, but then a full Milne op-ed piece which repeated all the sleaziest bits.
I was amazed parts of it appeared in the Opposition Organ: verbal pornography. Hypocrites! But it read like a campaigning piece: “you cannot vote Labor, you conservative rural voters: look at the degeneracy I’ve uncovered!” ….. slime, sleaze, innuendo.
Milne is missing one of the bigger local issues: threatened relocatioon of the old Traralgon Post Office. Liberal, ALP etc have all jumped to the defence of the dear old building, including Mr Rudd.
cheerio
Well, thanks for all the name calling.
I read Possum’s words, but I wasn’t aware at the time that they were the book after the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.
One point I can agree with at the moment is the eight versus one argument, because it appears as though I am the lone voice at the moment. You can join the dots on that one.
Don’t the concerns of four departments deserve some sort of analysis and further digging? The ACCC isn’t a government department. Departments like their status and their access – I know this because this fact is reinforced to me daily.
I don’t for a second accuse the department heads of anything – I would suggest it is the slightly lower downs who are getting aggrieved about this sort of thing.
Anyway, I’m off to continue thinking for myself and proving you all incorrect.
Rudd very deliberately chose to let petrol run as an issue. Why else would he structure question time around petrol?
Having had a few chats with ‘ordinary’ people – not pseph heads or political junkies – what is happening is that they’re being educated about the politics of petrol pricing.
They can tell you why the Doc’s 5 cents exise cut is a crock. They can tell you why removing 3.8 cents from the GST take causes problems. They understand that FuelWatch may not stifle prices but will provide transparency.
Rudd is a great educator. At party conferences, I’ve noticed that his speeches go too long – but when you look at why, it’s because he doesn’t just want to tell people what he’s doing, he wants them to understand why as well.
By letting the debate about petrol run, he has achieved the following:
(i) hardly anyone’s talking about Brendan’s price cut on petrol – and if they do they mention that it’s uncosted.
(ii) people understand that removing the ‘tax on a tax’ is the simple mantra they’ve chanted until now.
(iii) he’s distracted interest from some of the real nasties in the budget.
As for the public service statements – the kind of public servant who had the access to leak a Cabinet document earns more than Rudd does (in multiples). Are they working as hard as he is? If not, what are they whinging about?
Rudd didn’t clean out the ps when he took office. He’s letting it clean out itself, by putting pressure on to make things happen; those who want to make things happen will be happy to go the hard yards, those who want to work in a sheltered workshop will start looking elsewhere.
He’s cleverer than you think (even if you already think he’s clever).
Howard C -The Book of Possum.. Now you’re talking!
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And thou shalt go forth across the rooves and into the eaves of the enemy, and shalt liberate Newspoll from the pestilence of Dennis
And the people said unto him, “Verily, more stength to your claws, oh Possum!” And Possum looked, and it was so. Even unto the discomfort of Dennis and the abstention of Glenn.
ah, men!
I meant *abstinence*
but abstention would be acceptable
Glenn, with your piece on the arts festival in Sale, you have done for political commentary what Sam Newman has done for sports commentary.
He’s having a little rest.
How about you, Glenn?
The fuel thing is not a good look. However young governments tend to absorb these sort of things (the remember the swag of ministers who had to resign because or rorts of different kind in the first Howard government).
It may gall us ‘lovvies’ (which I am a member) but I have to agree with Andrew Landeryou that the Henson statements by Rudd may benefit him electorally more than if he sided with us.
Hey, I think Dennis believes what he wants to believe. And Possum makes sense often.
But further to another point I made earlier, this is from today’s Crikey:
So Rudd represents a bright vision of a post-politics world of long term objectives fearlessly pursued? How did you get that idea?
In my mind Rudd is another politician (not necessarily an entirely bad thing), who wanted to be PM really, really badly, and now will do the government thing roughly adherent to his general world view and political ideology. He seems to like things done his way. He seems an improvement on Keating because his head isn’t completely in the clouds, and he seems to consider a working day something more considerable than 11am-3pm. He has also probably learnt all the lessons of Beattie & Bracks, while the Opposition haven’t been learning the lessons of Springborg, Chikarovski (sic) & Doyle.
Howard C
Nice spin on the 8:1 – well done.
I take your point on the 4 requiring analysis, but are you suggesting that it wasn’t done?
Your POV is based upon the negative – that the cabinet has got it wrong and therefore your analysis is leading to why or how they might be wrong.
I guess mine is tending to the positive – that the cabinet has followed a process and made a decision for good reasons. The fact that 4 departments were ‘overruled’ is just so common that I find no cause to suggest that this in any way insinuates a mistake has been made. The ensuing beat-up shows how ridiculously unaware journalists are in Canberra (or the alternative – there’s more bias than you can poke a stick at).
Actually a lot more than 4 departments were against the proposal initially, but you’ll have to wait 30 years to see the whole story.
Had to larf at this bit o’ hyperbole in Brisbane’s Curious Smell today by “national political correspondent” Clinton Porteous:
Strewth! A bit of manufactured blather on petrol prices and a couple of PO’d public servants and this bloke is ready to declare Mr 70% dead as a dodo. Methinks I might hang on to this column and see how Mr Porteous’ predications work out.
Guido @ 51,
Agree with you on the political impact of the Henson controversy, unless Henson ends up doing gaol time. Then I think it could be a very different picture. (groan.)
“The fuel thing is not a good look.”
And Guido@ 51, i reckon Rudd might well come out of this quite well. Despite the media spin, he looks mighty like the bloke standing up for a pre-election policy commitment despite some departmental advice. I believe he has a good chance of selling this, looking decisive and making the opposition look like the obstructionists they are.
And that, given past history, “is not a good look” for the torys.
Amanda @ 3 wrote:
Yes, I sometimes get the impression that many in the Mainstream Media consider our vote to be a proxy taken care of by them – effectively “deciding on our behalf”.
Ed from The Australian today writes:
Yet it is often the Media that’s so rapid at competing with the Government to fill the vacuum with this extraneous stuff, often by interpreting what the politician has said in a way removed from its intended context.
This happened only last weekend in the United States when Hillary Clinton mentioned the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968 as part of stating her case for staying in the running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Having been listening to the liberal-left radio talk shows streaming over the Internet this week, I get the impression that the liberal media presenters are very keen to ensure that Hillary Clinton “sweats the small stuff” by seizing on her Kennedy comment, having already clearly decided on behalf of their audience that Barack Obama is the preferred Democratic candidate. It is only a handful of talkback listeners who phone in and provide any kind of counterpoint.
Much to his credit, Barack Obama didn’t attempt to take advantage of the Media inflamed outrage over Clinton’s comments, stating that “When you are campaigning for as many months as Senator Clinton and I have …sometimes you get careless.”
What Obama says here should remind us that the Media often only provides us with an abstract of the person we may at some point vote for or against. An important historical example of this was when the Bulletin’s front page in 1989 branded then Opposition Leader John Howard as “Mr. 18 Percent” due to poor opinion polls of him at the time.
And because the Media tends to treat our vote as a proxy in support of their preferences, perhaps some Media people might fail to treat as principle that the individual’s vote at Election Time is about Social Justice rather than Politics. Politics is what happens in between ballots, not at the actual ballot box (except maybe in places like Zimbabwe, where elections are only allowed by the ruling Government for show, not for tell).
Consequently, there are times when the Media does keep the Government on the backfoot in setting the agenda and this can then potentially put us on the backfoot in making an informed voting decision.
But before Prime Minister Kevin Rudd gets too worried about the Media’s influence, nobody should quickly forget the “questionable” job many of our Mainstream Media professionals did in trying to read and influence the voting intentions of the public last year, leading up to the Federal Election.
My understanding is that the Mainstream Media generally underestimated Kevin Rudd’s ability to challenge John Howard and then gave too much credit to Kevin Rudd for winning the election (in my view, John Howard had already started losing the election from mid-2005).
The Media journalists play a vital role in exposing issues objectively, but a less vital role in arguing those issues with the objective of influencing opinion.
From Justin
Both Howard C and Mangoman have referred to happening in indigenous policy to the present. Something to watch is the performance of Brendan Nelson in backing away from a bipartisan approach, and the request that Mal Brough be invited to participate as well as the current positioning of Mal Brough in the ANY community input and in relation to the forthcoming “Bennelong Conference”, which is purportedly to consider where the “intervention” is at by the date of the Conference. The list of advertised speakers goes some way to giving away the shaping of conclusions reached by the Conference participants. Keith Windshuttle for one is sharing the podium to provide his weighty opinion with others who were keen supporters of the Mal Brough approach.
One further query – could Mal Brough be considered to be the Robert Mugabe of Australian politics? Reluctant to leave the stage and exit graciously.
By the way, Tanner on Insiders yesterday was very good, and I don’t like him and was hungover.
The bipartisan approach to indigenous affairs is Rudd’s way of neutralising Nelson on the issue. The way bipartisanship should work is the government proposes a policy, and if the opposition thinks it’s a good idea, it offers support.