Well, blow me down with a feather. According to the bible of the political class, Newspoll, Iguanagate and petrol prices and a lack of a “unified narrative” and “symbolism over spin” and Marn Ferguson as policy rigour warrior and overworked public servants etc etc etc and all the Emoting from Brendan Nelson and the Shanahaning of the commentariat, have seen Labor get a media hostility bounce? Whichever way you read the entrails, as they say, and probably the most convincing hypothesis is that the meejah noise is either irrelevant or resented by the electorate, Nelson’s “bounce” on the already irrelevant preferred prime minister has evaporated – down by 4%.
We await the spin.
Update: Samantha Maiden has the good sense to write that “KEVIN Rudd’s honeymoon with Australian voters is not yet over”. And the Coalition fell back to 41% 2PP while Labor rose 2 points to 59%. That’s within the margin of error (Nelson’s drop is outside it) and what it indicates most likely is that nothing much has changed in terms of the overwhelming lead the Labor party has continued to enjoy over the Tories.
Via Mumble, the Newspoll tables are here. Here’s the Poll Bludger thread.
Elsewhere: More from Tim Dunlop.
Bye bye Brendan…
Heh heh. If Nelson had any brains, he would have left the whole fuel thing hanging two weeks ago while it was effective, and brought up another populist idea to keep the government shuffling and reacting.
Trouble is, he hasn’t got any brains. He has to learn pretty quickly that the only thing that will unnerve Rudd is a constant flow of irritants to upset whatever grand chess plan Rudd is playing. Not that I’m all that enamoured of a grand chess plan that so far hasn’t addressed things like Ruddocks poisonous anti-terror laws or a hundred other bits of phlegm coughed on Australians by J-Ho. Hurry up and get into it while the getting is good!
I guess all they can do is blame Nelson. Poor guy, Costello’s gonna take him down.
Try as they might to scuff at the duco the MSM have only managed to buff it into a shine. Tremendous.
“Costello’s gonna take him down:
Can’t wait.
I think we’re almost at the point where we need to push a cart in front of the Coalition front bench & yell:
BRING OUT YER DEAD
Nelson will be the first stiff.
Julia looked beaut today. Obviously got some well deserved rest. And then came up w/ the goods.
I enjoyed Rudd on 7:30 Report tonite…all revved up & giving “what for”…fire in his eyes, steely determination…he’s grown well into the leadership job. Learning as he goes. Nothing wrong w/ a gutsy approach when you’ve got the bulk of the media stacked against you. Tell it as it is on the oil price problem.
Bush is gonna get metaphorically tarred & feathered soon because of his war. The American public is gettin’ mighty agro. If global warming does its job this summer it’ll be “Do the Right Thing” outside the White House.
Is it my imagination, or are the Corporate media startin’ to get the look of a cornered & cowed dingo?…all sneer & growl & desperate bark…but no bite.
tick tock…tick tock…almost July. Ding dong…Justice league calling.
I’m delighted to admit my comment on another threead about the petrol price controversy hurting Rudd was completely, absolutely wrong.
Agree with David Rubie. There’ll be a Costello come-back.
My theory about Labor’s success, apart from reasonably good governance is, people haven’t forgotten Ratty yet. On present evidence it may be years before the electorate becomes amnesiac about him.
Does anybody think the Coalition might be getting the idea that it might not be a smart move to block Labor budget measures in the Senate, or are they just too thick?
Now I see where the Liberals and the Murdoch Muppets went wrong this poll cycle:
They thought the government was being stoopid Watching Fuel, so they decided to go one better and sniff it.
Hey!? It worked for Troy Buswell!
Though I wonder if they’ll want Nelson to stay put for the moment – until every person in Australia is thoroughly convinced ‘he’s the problem’, not the Libs…
Then we get a big Liberal Party relaunch maybe a year from now?
‘Liberal policy is fundamentally sound, trouble is Nelson just ain’t a leader’ message hammered and hammered in the meantime, until ‘just get rid of him already!’.
If that were the case, Brendan ‘Scapegoat’ Nelson is gonna age 10 years in the next 12 months…or, roughly a year for every month he lasts…
Hopefully not drop by-elections…count on maybe winning back some states in 2-3 years time…have some momentum up for the next federal election…
Hmmm.
The Liberal Party has dropped from a primary of 36.6 at the election down to 29 currently.
The Greens have risen slowly but steadily from 7.8 at the election up to 12 currently.
If these rates stay constant then the Greens will pass the Liberals about this time next year.
How come Costello was on the list in the survey question?
We got nothing but inattention from him for 10 years.
We waited years for him to oust Howard, but he was all talk.
Rudd is playing a dangerous game with his duplicitous attitude to petrol.
His “applying the blowtorch” to suppliers routine perpetuates the lie that we have a supply problem.
His regulatory restrictions on petrol alternatives, eg E85, shows that he not serious about protecting the consumer.
His overarching desire to restrain the domestic economy by any means possible including support for damaging market manipulation of oil prices will bring him unstuck.
Those who advocate the mindless adherence to an arbitrary inflation metric as the only measure of competent economic management are sadly misguided.
If anything, our inflation rate should track that of our trading partners.
Choosing an arbitrary level is arrogant and pretends to more control than is possible in a globalised economy.
It is ironic that Costello was advocating moving the economy up a gear just before Howard got them thrown out.
Rudd would do himself a favor if he got a second opinion on this business.
Glenn Stevens’ may have a sentimental attachment to his “rate band”, but that won’t save Rudd and the gang when the economy tanks.
Nick – I guess it sucks to be the nightwatchman.
Middle Australia has been underestimated yet again.
“Everyday Australians” are Brendan’s counterparts to “working families”.
Mark – how does one stop being an “everyday Australian”. Is there some special passport that I can apply for that allows me to be, say, Norwegian on the weekends?
Yes, I think that’s the gist, mick. Or perhaps he wishes to contrast what Jack Strocchi would call “the populus” with those Australians like himself who sleep most of the day owing to being up every night at 3am sitting in the proverbial gutter at Kings Cross.
Hannah’s Dad @ 9: I don’t think there’s been anything like a real vote shift as indicated by the numbers you quote. Libs losing 7 primary points in six months, and Greens gaining 5 – it’s just preposterous.
Opinion polls at this point of the electoral cycle are just p**s and wind to give Shanahan something to write about. ‘Cos nobody in the government will talk to him.
Voters don’t engage mid-term. And sure they say they’ll vote Green…years from any election. Just like they say they’ll get around to painting the fence this weekend, oh and putting up those shelves.
If you polled 1,000 people I’ll bet about 12% would say that they’d like to try bungy jumping too…but the actual results when you get them near a bridge with a long elastic band will turn out to be somewhat less than that.
No, I think that’s wrong, Mercurius. You’d need more detailed polling to see if there’s direct movement from the Libs to the Greens. But there’s nothing particularly surprising about the Libs’ support crashing in the wake of the election loss – it’s not an uncommon pattern.
And both the drop in Nelson’s rating and the Coalition’s primary in this poll are statistically significant.
It is, as Robert Merkel remarked yesterday, “a different world out there,” http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/06/16/its-a-different-world-out-there/ though in far more ways than he mentioned.
Little more than decade ago, we were still in C20, with almost all of us stuck with C20 purchasing, information etc paradigms. I could buy globally only if I had access to overseas magazines and was prepared to ring up and give my card details. I depended on uni libraries for OS newspapers. Fellow ‘message boarders’ & email correspondants were part of small groups laboriously coding postings & replies. IT gurus fixing my work computers shared visions of a SciFi-like future of information / computer / phone / TV “convergence”. In that era (and all eras since newspapers appeared) print was still “King” of Mass Media (though enhanced, and sometimes out-classed, by serious investigative TV journalism like 4Corners) gate-keepers of public opinion. Countering their arguments required access to AARnet and libraries with air-mail copies of OS papers. It was an era where Joe & Jane Public had no real access to alternative opinions to politicians’ & MSM journalists’ policy and political statements.
Now, with ebay and other on-line auctions, Paypal and an increasing number of similar payment systems, and all that on-line access to the world’s media, instant access to & involvement in global issues – even “Friends” through Youtube-like social networking sites – paradigms have changed, increasingly so since Global IT & communication technology conversion has achieved that SciFi dream, making us all citizens of a global community. Most of this nation has access to this Brave New World through home, school & work computers – even OAPs who now get an Internet allowance if they’re on-line
But this Brave New World was one which the Howard government showed no desire to enter, or even acknowledge. Nor, from what we’ve seen, has its rump – now in Opposition. Nor has much (most, even) of “news” MSM. So while Nelson, his front-bench and attendant MSM beat-up Petrol Prices & Iguanagate into massive “crises”, the Netted Public is simply not listening. Why? Because such beat-ups no longer resonate with a clued-up on-line & increasingly well-educated public quite able to remember the actions (or lack of them) of the previous government, and to distinguish between beat-up and reality. Because the Opposition is still stuck in C20 paradigms and shows no desire to shift into this century.
Polls show that Joe & Jane Public made up their minds about Rudd a year & a half ago, and have shown minimal shifts since. They know which crises are global; which national but of the Howard Government’s making. They know Climate change demands much reduced oil consumption. They can compare “Iguanagate” with media responses to a much more physically damaging pub brawl by a certain swimmer & far too many footballers (not to mention Lib back-bencher “Irob-bar” Tuckey’s record). They follow “The International Adventures of Young Ken” and know, from OS press reports that local media – even the ABC & SBS – almost never mention his growing international status, enhanced by his being the only national leader fluent in Mandarin.
And, folks, they’re no longer to the Coalition or MSM. Guess why!
Pssst…hey Mercurius….I wasn’t [entirely] serious!
But on a [slightly more] serious note I think we can see a few trends occurring.
There has been a consistent trend upwards in the Greens vote since the election as compared to the election and the lead up to the election.
I suspect some [previous] ALP voters are moving left to the Greens. ["Its 'safe' to do so now we've got rid of HIM."]
There has been a consistent trend of a decrease in the Coalition support which I suspect has partly gone to the ALP [thus accounting for it's post election increase], possibly the ‘left’ Liberals moving beguiled by the success of recent policies and the fact the sky hasn’t fallen down as promised, and partly to ‘others’, the sadly disillusioned with the LP performance ‘righties’.
In other words a distinct shift ‘leftwards’ of the whole continuum with the addition of a few % of demoralised ex-Coalition voters wondering where the hell to go.
Whaddayareckon?
hannah’s dad, Possum’s latest statistical analysis of the polls would support what you’re saying – ALP primary suffering in favour of the Greens since the election, though coming back to Labor on preferences.
http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/putting-the-newspoll-in-perspective-and-us-election-updates/
The Greens biggest test is approaching at the end of the month.
My bet is that msm will start to focus on “the kooky policy positions of the greenys”, now that all else has failed in building up Brens’ poll.
According to Brendan, we shouldn’t pay any attention to the polls. (Which of course isn’t what he was saying when he reached the stellar heights of 18% a fortnight ago).
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23879485-2,00.html
“Dr Nelson told a private meeting of Liberal and National MPs today that they had two weeks left before the parliamentary winter break to “frame the Government”.
From “doctor” to “don”.
This bloke has fallen, so low, before our very eyes.
BTW Mark, to hark back a bit, we were told that the SA and NT Working Women’s Centres were funded by the Federal govt. for another year thanks to an extensive lobbying exercise on their behalf.
Some 200 plus e-mails etc sent supporting them.
Qld missed out I believe, I have no idea why.
Dunno about the rest.
Ha! Ive been overseas for two weeks, but it doesnt surprise me to learn Nelson’s B-grade petro-whining got him nowhere.
Petrol is like smoking. Even the addicts know its bad for them. They want to be taxed on it.
Even LA has record traffic lows. People are using buses. I welcome higher petrol prices.
FWIT, the Today Show reported in the Reader’s Digest (eek!) most trusred personalities of the year poll this morning. Brenan Nelson, Tony Abbott and Peter Costello are very close to the bottom of the list. After Paul Keating and before David Hicks and Rodney Adler.