It’d be interesting to go back and trace the first appearance of the “Kevin Rudd will be a one term PM” narrative – I suspect it coincided with about the fifth round of declarations that “the honeymoon is over”. Lyn at Public Opinion helpfully summarises today’s MSM commentary so we don’t have to read it:
Gippsland one day, the nation the next. Newspoll via Possum says 55 – 45, back to the 10 points off primaries at 44 – 39. At last, the honeymoon is over, the chickens have come home to roost, the electorate has woken from its slumber and the narrowing is narrowing. Kevin’s down from 68 to 64 and Brendan has gained a whopping 2 points at 15.
In a post about Rudd’s decision to make an emmissions trading scheme the centrepiece of his government’s reform agenda, Brian provides us with some sensible commentary on the Newspoll numbers [pdf], while the redoubtable Possum Comitatus observes:
91% of all polls for the government are historically below 55%.
In other words, governments do things and some people get unhappy. But they can still go on and win. The poll numbers don’t imply all that much this far out from an election about what will occur the next time Australia votes – they’re better read as an indication of public opinion rather than as an answer to the ostensible question they pose – who would you vote for if an election were held now? Perhaps the press gallery gang are still suffering from 2007 election andrenaline addiction, but this stuff really does need putting in perspective. Possum’s post provides some of that, while Trevor Cook’s article at Unleashed today takes care of the necessary historical perspective:
In the wake of this weekend’s Gippsland by-election, some commentators are not only suggesting that the Kevin Rudd honeymoon is over but that his government might have already started down a path to ruination.
A quick look at history, especially John Howard’s first term, might give them reason to be a little more circumspect. Whatever its trials and failings, the Rudd Government is still coming up roses by comparison.
I don’t quite know what psychological need is fulfilled by loudly proclaiming “Rudd is finished”, and I wouldn’t care to speculate as to whether part of it comes from the typical born to rule arrogance on the part of Liberals and some of their supporters who view any Liberal defeat as a random and inexplicable interruption in the natural order of things, soon to be corrected, but I do think it’s worth pointing out that:
(1) Treating every phase of a government’s term as if it’s the middle of an election campaign is deeply misleading (and the same people on other occasions would often condemn “the permanent campaign”);
(2) Most speculation this far away from a campaign is worthless, and treating every poll as if it’s earth-shattering news is stupid;
(3) Nevertheless, the probability that the Rudd government will be a one term administration is very low – on the basis of the evidence we have available to us.
As usual, the more interesting questions for analysis arise not from the substance of the commentary available from the Canberra press gallery, but from its motivations and tone.
For those who like obsessive commentary about poll movements, there is of course The Poll Bludger’s thread.
They gotta justify their paychecks, be seen stirring up the pot, etc. These journos can’t be cheap and it doesn’t help when amateurs like Possum make you look stupid.
… make journo look stupid? oh NOOOO…
I’m still keen to see Annabel’s attack on LP, the crabby old girl.
“Oncer” is the Jolly Swagman Hypothesis, isn’t it? And its ghost can be heard….
THE JOLLY BAG MAN
camped by a watering hole,
under the shade of a Moolah-bah tree
and he sang as he watched and waited while his subbie boiled
you’ll come a psephing Matilda with me
Down came a new chum
to drink at the watering hole
Up jumped the journo
and grabbed him with glee
Here’s a bloody new chum
doesn’t know his arse from tit
I’ll spin a yarn
and he’ll quote me fer free!
Down came the Packers
Mounted on their thoroughbreds
Up rode the stoopers
One, two, three
Where’s that bloody blogger
Makin’ us look stew-oo-pid
Thinks she can write?
Well, we shall see!
Psephing Matilda, Psephing Matilda, Psephing Matilda – yer k’n do it fer free
- cos the experts ‘n numbers boys,
‘n pundits ‘n jounos,
got less clues than you and me!
Do you mean, Mark, that the news reporters are actually the news?
In the Fin Review yesterday there was an article by Michael Baume, rejoicing that rejoicing in Rudd as the one term wonder. They really think they’ve got him.
I don’t usually read Baume because I think his stuff pollutes the brain. He reckons that WorkChoices and climate change have gone from vote winners to millstones around Rudd’s neck.
What they say the news is, at any rate, Brian.
Why is the media endlessly playing up the honeymoon is over angle? Because journalists as a whole are lazy, herd-following, easily manipulated drones. They are reporting on politics as if the election campaign was still underway,simply because it is easier and cushier to live on a spoon-fed diet of pointless opinion polls,’gaffes’, ‘backflips’ and doorstop blunders. Political journalism in the MSM is full of unimaginative careerists, glorified typists, wannabe players and mirror watching drunken spivs.
Stuff like this is why I can hardly be bothered even with the likes of Lateline. It’s so fucking boring, so fucking boring.
I think Monday night’s whole interview with Tony and Malcolm was about the honeymoon being over, or something. Whether it is or isn’t, the tone of discourse on shows like this (the supposed quality current affairs) couldn’t be further removed from anything I give a shit about.
Tony is better than Virginia, and Lee Sayles is better than either, but none of that is saying very much at all, imo.
You are right Kieran – they have no idea, yet in their own minds they are so influential it hurts.
There was one (and only one) interesting exchange on Q and A recently, when Jones asked Julia Z (from RockKwiz) an inane question about Rudd, to which she replied in an exceedingly irritated fashion along the lines of Why don’y you just give him a chance to get on with it for f—s sake – He’s only been in for 7 months!!! The audience applauded and you could see Jones was not happy.
I think that they live in a bubble, believing their own publicity and that we share their fascination with themselves. Boring indeed.
And you are right about Trioli, she is the pits.
Yeah, the drift toward triviality is a worry. It’s not even that Tony Jones is ‘right wing’ or something, it’s just that somehow the apparent concerns that drive his interviews, seem so irrelevant to… well, anything. Everyday’s a ‘crisis’ or a ‘honeymoon over’. How much of this sludge can we survive before we just sink into hopelessness? I’m being tongue in cheek of course.
Now Virginia, with her world weary air of knowingness (she is so worn-out by the burdens of office that she can’t even sit up straight), is a real piece of work. An irresponsible piece of work, if one were foolish enough to take her version of Lateline at face value. I don’t know anything about her radio career, not being a southerner.
This oncer thing has only come about because of a “lack of knowledge” about Rudd in effective power, or in effective accountability. Contrast this with other PMs who brought with them a wealth of history. This “lack of knowledge” gives journos who’ll take it a license to create a hole and explore it – as much of their making as they like. A whiff or nuance or even notion can become all so mountainously meaningful in that journo’s head. A real flaw line, naturally occurring in any new government, and woooo it’s all over.
At the front end, the public: what does “lack of knowledge” mean? Well, they voted the person in, so it can’t trouble them too much. At worst, a general result of Rudd after 7 months would be “not disappointed I voted for him; obviously questions are there to be answered; it’s way too early to know one way or another if I’ve made a mistake; I’ll give him a go.” They haven’t written him off.
So why would these journos persist with this? Notwithstanding for some a conservative predilection and a chance to bury some arrows shot in hope, they still have to meet the public with their product.
The only place where this media element can take any purchase is in the place which says “obviously questions are there to be answered” in the public mind. That’s the target.
But I don’t believe the public are framing these questions in terms of a oncer.
I’d guess the public response to this oncer stuff is bemusement, if indeed it’s not itself thrown into the wastebasket labeled political folly.
Moreover, the very background (Climate Change, rising prices, need to cut out profligacy etc) upon which this is playing out actually feeds into the public wanting to believe in Rudd – to feel to want to support him. They know well that the previous bloke would have ignored them.
Elements of the media on one hand are building this oncer thing, tilled up and swiftly fancified from ground which is actually valid, to give to a public on the other wanting to go in another direction.
Three things can happen.
1. The public will grow tired of the oncer push knowing very well they have grounds to seek proper, apposite, and relevent answers.
2. Rudd will provide the answers the public are seeking.
3. The media fancy will grow real if Rudd doesn’t come through with the goods by the end of his term.
In cases 1 and 2 we’ll have yet another round of media recreating itself in self-justifying image (”No, I never thought Latham would be PM.”), long before the poll day.
In case 3, the alternative will come into question alongside it. This is assuming that Rudd is politically empty.
Sadly, the 4th case won’t materialise: that media will shift focus from the oncershit and seek proper, apposite, and relevent answers, or provide commentary towards that. Our MSM has a tragic record of quality, investigative journalism. The more it flippants out, the more the public grow disinterested, and the less the fabricated focus has an effect. They can blame things like the celebrity politician all they like, handlers and personalities, but at the end of the day, they’ll have to once again jerk themselves back into facing the questions the people really are asking.
“Why is the media endlessly playing up the honeymoon is over angle? Because journalists as a whole are lazy, herd-following, easily manipulated drones.”
I just cannot go along with this alternative “lazy” journalist narrative. It is a a little bit like the good old ozzie ‘let off clause’, for our famous multi-millionaire rip off merchants.
They, really, really did not mean to do anything bad to the people, that they had conned, but are allowed to keep coming back to vomit in their lap just one more time.
Mark,
The first appearance of Rudd as a Oncer came from Clinton Porteous back on May 29.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23776380-953,00.html
Thanks, Possum. I had a feeling Christopher Pearson might have got in first.
Pearson flogged that horse a week or two later, then someone else who’s name escapes me flogged it again, before it finally worked its way down the credibility chain to Comrade Confidential himself Mr Milne.
Actually, if you go back to after the Rudd-Gillard team first took over the Labor Party, the first ‘honeymoon is over’ reference dates back to the Burke meeting story on March 2, 2007 when The Government Gazette ran with the headline ‘Perfect Storm Shakes Up Rudd’:
The Murdoch press was at it again in April last year after the Anzac Day dawn service “gaffe”:
On April 25 last year, The Australian’s Denis Shanahan (who else?) ran with the headline ‘Howard and Costello are Back in the Game’. Yes, according to Denis, the Labor honeymoon was over.
Since the election, the first reference to Rudd’s honeymoon being over was in The Daily Telegraph on March 14, when Sue Dunlevy opined that he had cooked his goose y upsetting the elderly rich who had sucked on Howard’s tit for so long:
And on it goes. The media is locked in an ever shortening news cycle and naturally most of the journos can’t see the wood for the trees. Most of them write for each other. And the younger ones, who spent the entire careers under Howard and saw sucking up to their Lib contacts as a surefire to get on the leak dripfeed, have not been able to get their heads around the fact that the electorate has moved on.
They WANT this to be the narrative. And they will manipulate every event to make it fit that pre-fabricated story. The readers, in their world view, are just ignorant punters who don’t understand the intricacies of politics. The tragedy is that THEY (the journos) are the ignorant ones, living in a narrow, cloistered world dominated by spin. And believe me, spin has become so sophisticated in the past 20 years that the spin on an event takes precedence on the underlying news. The spin IS the news. It is created by the highly paid spruikers who work for the politicians. And the journalists who advance the furthest are the ones who dutifully replicate in their copy the world according to the spindoctors. It’s easier that way. The news comes pre-digested.
And THAT’s why the polls are so at odds with the hysteria in the media. The synthetic, inward-looking language used by press gallery journos bears no resemblance to how most of us see the world.
Well I’m not sure to what extent the oncer thing is a News Ltd strategy but Kevvie’s floudering people. Earth to Kevvie. Earth to the ALP. Kevvie cannae take et Cap’m.
.
Kevvie seems to be about three things: reasserting Australia’s status as a progressive Social Democracy, winning back trust in the ALP by sticking to promises and various foreign policy bits which may or may not be utter brainfarts.
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He’s also the first PM who is aware of the AGW problem as a serious problem. He’s not aware that his arbitrary timeline of solution is out of touch with reality.
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Trouble is Kevvie’s job isn’t doing any of that whether he likes it or not. Kevvie job is the job of every ALP PM; making it easier on the ‘battlers’ when the economy goes shithouse. He needs to bring the petrol prices down and prepare for a recesssion. The first job of any new government is to get a second-term. If Turnball gets his shit together he might not get one.
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The fact that people have the balls to call him a one-termer especially considering the competition as it stands is not a good omen.
Possum at 13 – Pearson is in a “so last week” mode at the moment – a week late to the “OMG! Rudd’s office in chaos!” party for instance. Perhaps he should get in early and write the “Popefest shows Latin Mass beloved by millions” story before…
I think the Nelson drag factor has something to do with this narrative. Many are openly speculating how much closer the polls would be if someone else was Opposition Leader.
But the very thought of a one-term government is laughable. A mere 2% swing to the government would result in a 12 seat gain for the ALP. 55-45 is still a resounding endorsement of the government.
I am fairly young and haven’t been following the politics thing for very long, but I get the impression that Australians are more generous than just giving governments a mere one term to prove themselves. Certainly in my short lifetime I don’t know of it happening, (at the Federal level at any rate). Why would we suddenly change our voting patterns on account of a PM who is trying to keep his promises when we were so generous to the last one who kept either outright lying or dismissing promises as being ‘non-core’?
I mentioned this on another thread, but I’ll restate it bercause I think its a very good argument against the MSM mania that Rudd is a oncer.
Since WW1 we have had only one one-term government. That was the Scullin Government, 1929-1931, and that was under very extraordinary circumstances – the onset of the Great Depression AND an extremely destructive Lang/Lyons split in the ALP. From this one can reasonably conclude Rudd will only be a one-termer if the Federal ALP falls apart between now and the next Federal election. And that ain’t gonna happen.I’m not even going to try and predict what will happen with the NSW ALP and those Labor Rats Costa and Iemma.
It would be useful of these brain-farts in the MSM and on morning televion and shock-jock radio had some sense of history. But I suppose that’s asking too much
Perhaps some are hoping that a double dissolution election will mean only one term for Rudd.
No, I think that they believe if they say something often enough it will come true.
Those who’ve had an eight year old in the house will recognise this technique.
That’s not intended to disparage 8 year olds by comparing them to journalists. Most of them grow out of it.
“Since WW1 we have had only one one-term government. That was the Scullin Government, 1929-1931, and that was under very extraordinary circumstances – the onset of the Great Depression ……”
Maybe one could also conclude, Paul, from your comments, that you carefully opt out on the first part of your considerations. This is wise, because while an ALP split seems most unlikely, at this stage, it is only real estate agents and stockbrokers that would conclude that the world economy is currently in terrfic shape.
http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2008/07/02/13154_gold-coast-business.html
If things do get very difficult, economically, in Australia, due to outside influences, it would only need a few to change their vote and ‘blame it all on Rudd’.
Indeed, it is already becoming a bit of a fashion if you are to believe our generally one – sided media.
Speaking of which, Andrew Bolt lets rip with the unbelievable truth on Gippsland:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/07/02/cat-bag-etc/
Joe2,
I don’t think a World Depression by itself would be enough to restrict Rudd to one term. The impact of another Great Depression, (and I’m aware some variation of that is very possible and have earlier suggested it on another thread, I think)would have to be combined with damaging ructions in the ALP. That could happen with the current idiocy about electricity privatisation going on in NSW, but I doubt that neither Costa nor Iemma would be capable of convincing people they are right, the way Lang and Lyons did in the Battle of the Plans, albeit to different conrituencies.So my prediction of at least a two-term government for Rudd stands, based on historical trends.