Further to Mark’s thread on what swung the Gippsland by-election, I have an alternative theory.
It wasn’t the journalists - it was Ute Man. Glenn Milne told me so.
Ute Man is the right-wingers’ preferred choice of Noble Savage.
Once believed to be a journalistic hoax, Ute Man now strides the Australian electorate like a slightly inebriated colossus, guzzling hyper-taxed spirit-mix cans (don’t call them Alcopops, RRRRaaaaoowwarRrrr!!!!) and leaving broken honeymoons and smashed climate change consensi in his rampaging wake.
While there are still no confirmed sightings of Ute Man, some intrepid journalists have recently returned from the wilds of Gippsland, with tales of UDL-can strewn middens, discarded girly mags and burnt-out campfires they discovered a few miles off the dirt-bike trail.
Able to crush Wild Turkey cans in his bare hands like a manly man, Ute Man’s soul source of nourishment is believed to be Brown Coal, which he washes down with lusty gulps of Brown Spirit ‘n Coke. His upper body is usually covered in distinct alternating coloured and white stripes, described by anthropologists as a “check” or “flannelette” pattern. They have also been observed in Glenn Milne’s imagination to work bare-chested as the sun glistens off their sweaty and bulging pectoral muscles.
Like some Australian Paul Bunyan, Ute Man will inspire myths and legends amongst our journalists for many years to come. “I saw Ute Man in the forest!” they shall exclaim. “He built a new dam with his bare hands!” they shall exclaim.
Along a dusty country road, his hour now come, Ute Man slouches hopefully towards the Canberra Press Gallery, looking for somewhere to have a slash.
The Victorian sub-branch of the Ute Man lineage can be discriminated by by the bumper sticker on the aforementioned ute, which states “Mountain cattlemen care for the High Country”.
This refers to their mythical belief that 300-kilogram Hereford steers with sharp hooves and enormous, nutrient-laden faeces have a cleansing effect on the Victorian alpine National Parks.
CHOP THE TAX ON PRE-MIXED DRINKS - Gippsland By-Election Ad
Go Independent Distillers of Australia!
I hadn’t seen any of the regional TV ads…
Thick and heavy (and weird!) stuff from the Libs…
Rohan Fitzgerald - Fighting for Gippsland’s future
Labor has done nothing about the cost of living
and a heap more where they came from…
Then again, unnecessary doom from Labor…who on earth chose that tact?
Gippsland By-Election
And this creepy soundtrack-induced disembodiment of man and somewhat rushed message couldn’t have helped either. An impotently presented ’stronger voice for Gippsland’…
Darren McCubbin
That was it…those two ads.
I have to say overall I prefer the flavour of the National Party’s series, 1 through 7…
Darren Chester - TV Commercial #1
etc
Well done, Mercurius!
Mercurious and all:
Where’s the mystery? Ute Man is just down the road; so is his brother, his auntie and his cousin; do you want me to call him up here?
He’s not a bad bloke. He is quite smart - but he is actively discouraged from showing any signs of cleverness. He does work hard - but the banks punish him if he saves his money or invests it wisely and they reward him if he wears the print off his credit card. He can be astute and observant - but because the only ones who talk to him are the commercial TV channels and the RWDB troglodyte political parties, he does tend to echo what they say.
If the more progressive political parties and the social action groups weren’t so bloody precious and if they bothered to talk to Ute Man for a change, maybe he would listen to them. Fat chance of that ever happening though.
Hello all,
On the “Send Canberra a message!” thread I wrote:
“I’d like to mention a few features of Gippsland federal by-election:
i) pre-selection trouble with a local non-ALP person (town cryer FFS, Mayor of Sale) plucked into the candidacy; plenty of public dissent voiced by local ALP Left, e.g. Keith Hamilton, former State Member for Morwell and Bracks govt Minister
ii) Nationals had won State seat of Morwell on Liberal preferences, end of 2006; so Nationals not unknown even in the “Labor heartland of the Latrobe Valley” - again, this followed damaging public brawling in Traralgon & Morwell ALP branches; resignation of dissident Right member who then stood as an Independent
iii) saturation TV ads on local TV by Libs, Nats and “ute man” (telling Wayne & Kev to give their alcopops tax the chop); some Party ads had blokes yelling at the camera “It’s not bloody good enough!”)
iv) related to i) above, a telling TV ad had an audio clip featuring Keith Hamilton saying the ALP candidate didn’t have a track record of standing up for working families
v) coal mining families and those in associated companies servicing the power industry are worried about ETS
vi) regardless of v), unemployment has been very high in the Latrobe Valley for the last 20 years
vii) the dairy industry is doing well, though you’d be hard pressed to find a dairy farmer who’d admit it
viii) Petrol prices are high in Gippsland and have been for 30+ years
Conclusions? Disunity is death. Working families are not necessarily rusted-on voters for Labor. Weak candidates are discerned. ETS is not just a Latrobe Valley stinger issue.
*******
Ute man lives in many electorates, not just Gippsland.
Other bumper stickers that might be mentioned are
“The Only True Wilderness is Between a Greenie’s Ears”
“Fertilise the Bush: Doze in a Greenie!”
but I’m still inclined to think a major factor in the Nationals’ win was Labor in-fighting, on public display.
This in-fighting was also a big factor in the ALP’s loss of the State seat of Morwell (late 2006) when the campaign of Brendan Jenkins [ex-union leader, Latrobe Councillor, hard left] was scuttled by an uproar between Morwell and Traralgon ALP branches, followed by resignation of a Traralgon member who stood as an Independent. This sounds terribly parochial, but such events can tip the balance in a State seat. Federal seat? Well the hypothesized “Labor heartland” in the Latrobe Valley [Morwell, Churchill, Traralgon] has not yet swung back to Labor.
Another State seat Labor lost in the last election under Bracks was in West Gippsland, a bit further from the brown coal mines. Two neighbouring seats. Very few Labor seats lost in that Bracks victory. The ALP held a special inquiry about these losses.
I heard that in the State election booths around Maffra, a large number of ballot papers were informal; story was, the timber workers couldn’t bear to vote for Breandan Jenkins, couldn’t stomach Libs or Nats.
In the Gippsland by-election, the TV ads were at saturation levels for several weeks on local TV: Win, Prime. “The Age” reported that Nat Rat Julian McGauran donated $40,000 towards the Lib campaign. Money spent effectively it seems.
I live in West End in BrisVegas and even Ute Man is scared to cruise here. West End is the gangland turf of “The Kappuccino Kid” and her posse of culinary thugs that roam the footpaths and wine bars, indiscrimainately imposing their loud conversation onto innocent passers by.
These urban terrorist with their advanced skills of administration and etiquette have managed to squeese Ute Man’s loyal friends in the city - blue collar workers, unemployed, Aborigines, and all those other folk who love Ute Man, out of West End and into suburbs closer to the dirt bike tracks patrolled by Ute Man, where innocent citizens can live free from the bourgeois brigades.
From her West End stronghold, the Kappuccino kid has managed to have her cronies inserted into the highest offices in the land, entrenching baguette bigotry into the national fabric.
Ute Man is ridiculed and demonised by the trendy tyrants, mercilessly taunted and targeted as an inferior race, several rungs of the evolutinary laddder lower than even the most inexperienced kitchen hand.
Ute Man has become the new Emmanuel Goldstein, the hypothetical enemy of everthing that a coffee plunger stands for.
But some of us remember Ute Man and have not swallowed the poison pasta.
Come back to the city Ute Man, we need you!
Yeah, all the Ute Men I know vote Labor ot Green. Or Socialist Alliance. Totally agree with Graham @ 4.
Presumably this was the first time Glenn Milne and co. ever went bush.
Joe Bageant (wrote “Deer Hunting with Jesus”) has a lot to say about liberals (small ‘l’) in America who would dismiss the un-washed. In this essay he talks about people who are often forgotten in our political process. They are not exactly the same as Ute Man, but we denigrate these people at our peril. The essay is worth a read, because it shows the nobility of some of these people.
While I think Ute Man can be redneck, racist and mysoginistic, he can often have some very deeeply held positive values that are inclusive and support the underdog. In some cases it is necessary to cut through a lot of what has been fed to him as ‘masculine’ or ‘patriotic’, but it is worth, I think, going through the effort.
As Neil says above, the left ignores Ute Man at their peril.
Kevin: How can one “ignore” something that doesn’t exist?
The point of the post, which seems to have been lost on a few, is that the Ute Man label is a ridiculous construction that exists only in the fevered imagination of the Canberra Press Gallery.
Ute Man is a shibboleth of the right…no use lecturing us about what we need to do about Ute Man.
One of my neighbours was a man. He drove a ute. He even drank pre-mixeds. But the absurd reductive label of Ute Man doesn’t begin to describe him.
The truth about Ute Man: there is no Ute Man. Just like there was no Noble Savage.
Ute Man doesn’t exist? Try riding a bicycle for transportation and you’ll quickly notice how common Ute Man is. He (it’s always a he) is driven (pun intended) into a rage by the sight of a bicycle on the street, and feels it necessary to assert his perceived dominance by yelling abuse, passing too closely, or simply revving his engine in a throaty roar.
Just because Ute Man because is a generalisation/stereotype doesn’t mean that there isn’t some truth to it.
Mercurius
Ute Man is not a construction of either fevered journalists or an ad agency. He lives, breathes, works, drinks in many parts of rural Australia. I’m not lecturing you, maaate. I’m reporting to you empirical opbservations of actual persons who inhabit parts of the wide brown land. Now in Gippsland he may be only 1% of the polpulation, outnumbered by “Single Mum” or “Welfare Family” or “High School Teacher” or “Dairy Farmer” or “schoolkid”, but his being outnumbered does not render him non-existent.
Ute Man exists EVEN IF Glenn writes about him.
To quote the late Dr Frank Knopfelmacher, “Something can be true EVEN IF Henry Kissinger says it.”
Get out a bit, Mercurius; look around.
cheerio
Mercurius, there are people out there who identify with “Ute Man” and see themselves as belonging in that ‘demographic’, if you will. They do so for all sorts of reasons: they like utes, they enjoy football (or rugby), they identify as ‘working class’. Whatever. The point is, there are other values attributed to these people that are assumed. The point of my post was to say we do need to recognise that these people (i) exist, and (ii) are not necessarily the wing nuts that some people assume them to be.
I’m afraid I do think Ute Man exists. (But then, some people say Santa Claus doesn’t exist too).
Agreed Kevin
We can see Ute Man every day; but it doesn’t follow that Ute Man has the attributes or opinions posited by Glenn or indeed by any other commentator. Now if Mercurius comes back and says HIS “ute man” is that confected by Milney, we may be at a cul de sac in the discussion….
Mercurious,
Ute Man does exist and 7% of him has changed his mind about the ALP since the Federal election, no matter how much you deny his existence and claim he is just a figment of Glen Milnes imagination.
I don’t know why LP is so determined to deny the significance of the Gippsland by-election or the Qld and national surveys indicating similar trends everywhere.
Mark has now done many posts on exactly the same theme - denying or downplaying the significance of the shift against Rudd. Why? Is the ALP paying advertising money - cash for comment?
Maybe Mercurius accidentally missed his own point, though it’s still a very funny post. Ute Man does exist, as an ideal for (some) right-wing voters to live up to, and as the bete noir of a (certain) type of left-wing politics.
Is Ute Man merely a platonic idea, or an actual, in-the-flesh manifestation of the living, breathing inhabitants of darkest Australia? After a few Bundies, it probably doesn’t matter…
He’s a simple man
With a heart of gold
In a complicated land…
I grew up in “The Bush” (the medium sized one, near the dirt road turn-off that goes under the railway) and I can state with some certainty that Ute Man exists.
Of maybe he IS just a boozed, violent, thug after all. Best way to find out is ask him over for a barbie (just hide the Cold Chisel collection).
To be sure, the left ignores him at our peril, but he’s often hard to reach, except by, well, ute. More importantly, he DOES tend to vote Nat (and Shooters too, in my home locale, which spawned the beast), and has a tendency to write off lefty politics as all kinds of nonsense (usually described with a variety of colourful and surprisingly imaginative expletives).
What is important to note, however, is that Ute Man is usually a nice bloke, and capable of higher-level thought too, except maybe when he’s had a few or is down in Tamworth. Is it really any surprise, then, that the Nats have an ongoing reputation of being some (hideous, malformed) variety of “state socialist”?
While I grew up surrounded by rodeos, utes, dirt bikes and bundy, I’m one of those inner city lefty types now (a bloody socialist, no less), with a uni education twice over. I still can’t bring myself to drink a latte (I drink flat whites), or chardonnay, and I often catch myself admiring a good ute.
So maybe, just maybe, Ute Man is being simultaneously misled into being a reactionary fool and vilified because of it, but is still redeemable. After all, the seat of Bowen in Qld actually elected a Communist in 1944 (the only Commie elected to a parliament in Australia’s history - if you don’t count the bloody Watermelon Greens…)
John Tracey, c’mon…you honestly intended to submit not only “Ute Man does exist!” but 100% of the Gippsland electorate consists of Ute Men and 7% swing in Gippsland is wholly attributable to him?
No, because that’s utterly daft.
OK, maybe your remarks should be interpreted as - whatever smaller % of Ute Men exist in Gippsland, 7% of his numbers “changed their mind about the ALP”, presumably because of engendered bad feeling about the Alco Pops “tax lug”, along with a an equal 7% of the rest of the constituency, presumably for other reasons of their own?
Hmm, no that would be equally improbable.
So, how about:
A small percentage of the Gippsland electorate consists of Ute Men, and x% of them has “changed their mind about the ALP” - and the Nats of course who suffered an equal primary swing against, though since they started with higher individual votes, they actually lost more individual voters than the ALP - along with y% of the rest of the constituency.
A smaller percentage again of the x% of the realistically small percentage of the Gippsland constituency that are Ute Men “changed their mind about the ALP” because of Alco Pops. The rest of the Ute Men (like the rest of the constituency) just possibly (maybe just possibly?) because of other issues perceived to be at stake in the region?
Who could possibly think Ute Man and his love and dependency above all else on cheap Pre-Mixed Drinks has been blown out of proportion???
Mercurius’s mytho Ute Man, the apparently easily digestible (to yourself?) figure presented on a conceptual paper plate by self-interested journos and lobby groups alike…and who’s been consistently making cameo appearances in their writing the last few months, is exactly that.
The Gippsland by-election was a chance to put Ute Man through his paces in an electorate anyone from elsewhere is supposed to more or less unthinkingly accept he might ‘really’ exist in droves. There was a swing against Labor, hence Ute Men have changed their mind about the ALP and we journos really were onto something…hey look, we just gave ourselves permission to roll with it.
Tell me Wombo, when you share a few drinks and higher-level thoughts with Ute Man, who I grew up with and still fondly enjoy a chat with (even at the pub, during his introspective slow-down-and-take-a-break-for-a-bit time of the night) - is the number one political issue on his mind the Alco Pops “tax lug” (ignore for a moment he’s generally drinking beer at the pub anyway)?
Or maybe just possibly his job security and the cost of petrol to fill his V8 with?
John Tracey, you might like to read the posts I write carefully before decrying them. For a whole range of reasons, you should be very careful about inferring too much either from Gippsland or from state polls. If that doesn’t fit whatever narrative you want to construct about the Rudd government, that’s life.
I haven’t been a member of the ALP since 1992, and I’ve never received any financial benefit from the ALP. If anything, I’m much closer to the Greens these days. The fact is that the Rudd government is travelling well, and I like to write about facts, not wish fulfilment fantasies. If the Rudd government has disappointed you, that’s fair enough, but it might be more to the point if you analyse why, rather than jump to all sorts of unsafe conclusions that your opinion is reflecting that of particular segments of public opinion.
Last time I looked, I’d imagine 50% or 51% of the voters in Gippsland you sweepingly characterise as “Ute Man” are likely to be women in fact, John.
Ute Woman is a fairly common phenomenon here in Armidale (at least amongst the UNE students). Picture a 10 year old ute with mack truck mudflaps, 14 aerials, a massive bull bar, huge spotlights and hundreds of stickers on the tailgate indicating that the owner is a woman and has attended B&S balls over a range of 4000km. I’m not sure it’s a huge demographic, but it does exist.
Oh sure, but there’s no evidence that alcopops had much of an impact on the by-election. I’m sure Nick’s right - to the degree that “Ute Man” swung, it’s likely to be for a more complex set of reasons than a tax on bundy and coke. And a social demographic isn’t necessarily a political demographic.
My Lady Friend recently worked for a month or so with just such a Ute Woman. In the Department of Sustainability and Environment, no less!
“Ute” Man (to use a quaint southern term which seems to have migrated north) exists. There are plenty of them here. He possess research skills no more or no less than the rest of the population.
Thus he became abusive (as expected) at the sudden price rise in pre-mixed drinks.
In anticipation of this, we had commissioned the printing of business cards. On these cards it was made plain that the new federal govt had increased the tax on bundy & cola by 70%. The card then went on to list the phone number of federal ALP electoral offices, and urged the card holder to phone up & inform ALP staff what chance there was of “your vote” going to the ALP at the next federal election.
When it was realised that it was a “SEVENTY PERCENT, you’re joking?” tax increase, Ute Man was ready to vote out Rudd on the spot. I keep issuing the cards, so they are reminded who has taxed their pleasure, and just how much it has been taxed.
There’s a ute woman out at Deni who has 4 of them huge spotties on the roof, and a decal which says “I’m scared of the dark”.
What did they call a ute up north before the quaint southern term migrated? Would it have the same ring to it as ‘Ute Man’?
Buggered if I know, Dr Cat. I always thought they were called “utes” and I’ve lived in Quinceland for 39 years. steve at the pub might have some more arcane Banana Bender jargon up his sleeve, I guess.
Oh, to be sure, Ute Man’s pissed about the tax on cans of b&c (especially after a couple), but you’re right Nick, he’s usually more shat about the cost of, well, everything. Still, I’ll check in with him on the weekend, just to be sure.
Anyway, everyone knows what Ute Man REALLY drinks to wash down that brown coal. High grade rocket fuel if he can get it, but otherwise he’s chugging down the fuel - unleaded, leaded - whatever he can get.
Oddly enough, though, he mananged to give a shit about a diesel-fired power station near Kew the other month. Enough to give the local MP the willies. It was going to wake him up at 3am and pollute the local school. But otherwise it’s still steers, steering and beers that gets his goat.
That, and WorkChoices. Ute’s a contractor, you see, but he reckons the last government probably went a bit far, and some of his mates lost their jobs. So he wants it fixed up a bit.
Oh, and the roads are shit. But then, we knew that.
O.K. I’ll admit that Ute Man may not be true, but there are lots of ute people who do his job, like Santa’s elves, male and female.
Mark,
Mecurious’ construction of Ute Man is a good example of my analysis of your analysis on the “send Canberra a message” thread - Comment 9 (Mark’s analysis) and comment 14 (my analysis)
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/06/29/send-canberra-a-message/
As painful as it is for me to agree with Wombo (hi Wombo) s/he is correct in saying “So maybe, just maybe, Ute Man is being simultaneously misled into being a reactionary fool and vilified because of it, but is still redeemable.”
As long as only the conservative parties take seriously the life experience of the ute people then they will naturally park their utes in conservative spaces.
If the ute folk are dismissed by lefties because of their cultural ideosyncracies then, apart from the trendies being somewhat hypocritical in their critique of the culture war dynamic, the ute folk will never be the friends of left or progressive politics.
And by the way, in ute mythology the original idea for the ute came form a woman in…. Gippsland
http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Pit/9026/history.html
- Maybe Ute Man is really a woman?
I’m not doing any dismissing, John. I’m just pointing out that if swinging “Ute Man” were resident in one of the seats Labor actually won we’d have more to talk about. Swings in rusted on Tory territory don’t tell us anything about whether some demographics in Labor territory might also be disillusioned. If you want data on how Labor is travelling in rural and regional areas, and in Queensland, there’s a whole heap of it in the two successive quarterly Newspolls to which I linked in a previous post. As Possum said, the worry for the Coalition would be that their support outside major cities has fallen to 38% 2PP. That suggests that there’s no anti-Rudd backlash, quite the opposite, outside the state capitals.
By the way, I read Mercurius as inferring that it’s the height of patronisation to suggest that “Ute Man” is most concerned by the price of a can of Bundy and Coke.
Here’s the relevant table from Possum’s post. The line to focus your attention on is the Coalition vote outside the capital cities:
http://possumcomitatus.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/npq208coalgenloc.jpg
It shows a significant swing away from the Coalition and towards Labor since the 2007 election in rural and regional Australia.
Mark,
Please correct me if I have misread the graph but it seems to show a massive drop away from the coalition after the election but a significant bounce back this year in both rural and city lines, admitedly nowhere near the level at the election but, as you have said, it is the movement that is important. The line did not just slow down or plateau but turned around.
Also, it seems to suggest that the total swing back to the coalition is from women only, the male vote has plateaued this year.
It seems it is Ute-Woman who Rudd should be worried about, the blokes seem to be satisfied.
Are there any figures since the budget?
Well, as a rural person, and I slightly feel, well a little stronger than that ,that ‘ute man’ is defined as country hayseed who can’t think beyond the Nats and booze.Bit of a hick who gives a superior air to some who wouldn’t have even shaken hands with ‘ute man’ or more likely have prejudged at distance, mind you, a bias.
A while ago I had the sorrow of driving into the international terminal from Thornleigh at 5.30 am at was amazed at the ‘ute men’ complete with dogs, roaring down Pennant Hills Road ,being complete idiots, and thanked christ that this was a once off. How the stuff all these ‘ute men’ got to Sydney at that time on that day, got me. Oh the agnst among the deep and meaningful, I mean, would you put up with one of these ‘ute’s’ if they offered to drag you out of the mud when you missed the turnoff to the winery out in the sticks?. Dear me, what should one do.
By a percentage point, John, which is almost certainly statistical noise. Coalition on 38% instead of 37%.
The series takes us up to last weekend.
Maybe, but note that the figures for male and female are for the whole of the sample, not just from the city/non-capital city axis - they’ve just been plotted on the same graph. In truth, Rudd has very little to worry about when it comes to polls. As I’ve been saying!
By the way, the qualitative polling we’ve linked to before here on the budget shows it was generally well received. The biggest issue Labor voters had was perceived inaction on climate change.
I’m much happier going with the results of genuine research than with the crap the media constantly serves up. That’s not to say I think everything Rudd has done is laudable, mind. But it would be wrong to think the government is in anything other than a commanding position electorally.
Mark, The graph seems to stop at the end of the first quarter. Inaccurate artwork?
Some thoughts on ‘ute-man’:
1. As someone who has worked at a university campus that also doubles as a perpetual building site, I can assure you that “ute-man” does exist, at least in Brisbane. He is notable for having a considerably newer and better car than the academics (let alone the students), and for having a lot of bumper stickers on it.
2. The “ute-men” really, really hated Work Choices. Whatever they thought about just about anything else, they had well and truly decided to vote out the government that gave them Work Choices.
3. As “ute man” does not read The Australian, Glenn Milne’s new found love for him is likely to remain purely Platonic. He is also unlikely to be a Brendan Nelson fan, no matter how many guitars he owns, tho’ he may knock down a bevvy with Belinda Neal if she’s shouting (the drinks, that is, not at him).
4. He is also unlikely to read the Garnaut Report on climate change, so there is lot of scope to explain what it really means for aspiring pundits and politicians. He may instead be reading The Tradie, so there’s a thought.
5. The “what to do about ute man” question is a variant of the age-old question that troubles advertisers, marketers and political campaigners everywhere, who may inherit the earth if he can get off the couch.
As Homer Simpson famously put it, “I’m a white male aged 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are.”
A ute man I know who is a contractor, said he was concerned about the desal plant planned for Wonthaggi, as it would use massive amounts of electric power and thus contribute too much in the way of CO2 emissions. I wouldn’t lightly dismiss his ability to think about politics and the future.
*Snorts wine through nose* **
** Disgusting
If Big Belinda gets chucked out of Labor and goes Independent, will Ute Woman and Ute Man flock to her cause? I mean, the trouble started at a bar, innit?
Not sure, John, go ask Possum round at his joint. He did the graphs! But if you’ve been following Newspoll, Labor’s been steady or up since the budget. Here’s Possum’s post:
http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/newspoll-quarterly-breakdown-2008-1st-edition/
John, the site was taking a bit of time to load before, so I couldn’t check. All the other graphs are to the second quarter of 08 so I’m assuming graph error! But as I say, I’m not Possum - check with him.
But while we’re at it, as he says, this graph should give some pause for thought to those running the “honeymoon is over” and “one term” narratives:
http://possumcomitatus.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/npq0802alpallloess.jpg
@ Langmack @33
“I mean, would you put up with one of these ‘ute’s’ if they offered to drag you out of the mud when you missed the turnoff to the winery out in the sticks?. Dear me, what should one do.”
Buy a Porsche Cayenne. Although I’d probably get the Turbo S model. You might just need 550HP to cart all that wine home.
I love stereotypes.
I’ll pimp Terry’s post on Ute Man since he was too modest to do so at 37…
http://terryflew.blogspot.com/2008/07/ute-man.html
Nuts and gum…together at last!
Ambigulous [5]
Thanks for the Gippsland perspective.
Kevin Brady [8]:
Thanks a lot for that Joe Bageant link.
Yea verily! Pauline didn’t. Family First didn’t. Lyndon LaRouche’s crowd
didn’t. …. and they were rewarded.
The Greens did. Australian Democrats did. Somewhat leftish intellectuals did …. and they were punished for doing so.
Ambigulous and Kevin Brady [11&12]:
Not ganging up on you Mercurious; you’ve opened a timely discussion; thanks …. but there is wisom in what these two said.
Mark,
Possums graph, if it is updated from the one you gave, confirms the bounceback.
http://possumcomitatus.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/npq0802coalallloess2.jpg
I think this is a deceptive graph, if you follow the dots you get a very different story to the blue line. The steady course of the blue line doeas not take into account the major event of a government change, so I think this time period is not appropriate for any kind of averaging that simply confirms the trends under Howard.
The figures behind the graph show that the bounceback in the first quarter increased a further 2% since then. (includes budget period)
http://www.newspoll.com.au/image_uploads/0608%20State%20&%20Dem%2003-07-08.pdf
Possum (or whoever made the blue line) has not even registerd the now nearly 4% bounceback this year as even a glitch on the average. It has been heading steadily upwards for six months now and appears to be speeding up.
Terry [37]:
Good points.
The problem is that Ute Man/Woman is maligned and ignored and scorned because he/she speaks in a different register and accent; because, too, he/she has been compelled, by neglect and indifference, to adopt the hee-haa “culture”[?].
One of the reasons Ute Man/Woman has been so easily branded as a Bundy or a VB or a Fourex drinker or as a Tojo driver or as a State-Of-Origin fan or as a Family First voter or as a Channel 10/9/7 viewer is that only those with something to sell or inflict bother talking to Ute Man/Woman. Artists, academics and intellectuals avoid him/her like the plague …. they would not be seen talking to such a racist[?]redneck[?] in a blue fit let alone engaging him/her in serious activity or purposeful discussion.
The hypocrisy of all this is that the very people who who decline to talk with and listen to Ute Man/Woman will gush all over someone from overseas who speaks in a different register and accent, who is presumed to be of their own type but who, in fact, may not only support a brutal regime but be an active participant that regime’s brutality back in their homeland. Ute Man/Woman may have shortcomings, for sure …. but I don’t think profiting from murder and oppression can be included in such shortcomings.
Eek, I don’t know Graham…your post is a bit all over the place.
Where I’m from racists look more like the delightful Diane Teasdale who actively preaches globalism is a Zionist/Fabian Socialist conspiracy.
Not Ute Men/Women who’ve had no discernible problem with our region having the largest (I think?) intake of Iraqi immigrants anywhere in Australia.
Yet I can’t help engaging Diane whenever I get the opportunity and never fail to remind that her “groundswell” translated into 615 votes out of over 85,000 for Murray (7 in every 1000 people).
John, I’m not following you. The table you refer to shows the averaged Labor primary vote for the first quarter at 48 and for the second quarter at 47. The Coalition in the same time period has 34 and 36. These figures blow out when you look at the 2PP. If there’s a trend here, it’s a very slim one, and it might well reverse, because statistically speaking, it’s hardly discernible. It doesn’t become meaningful because you call it a “bounceback” or because you attribute it to the budget without foundation in the data. Whichever way you massage the figures, and I’m afraid that’s what you’re doing because your analysis doesn’t make sense in statistical terms, the ALP has had a very entrenched lead since the election which shows no particular signs of going away. As I said - if you have specific questions about the data, you should address them to Possum. They’re his tables. I didn’t construct them. He can answer your questions. You seem to me to be trying to seize upon any skerrick of evidence that might support a pre-formed view, which is not the way to interpret data.
John, where do you derive your 4% from?
Going by the table of quarterly averages you linked to, there was a post-election drop to an average of 34% for Jan-Mar, then a 2% rise to an average of 36% for Apr-Jun.
That’s an 8% drop, then a 2% rise…there’s only been 2 quarters in 6 months.
The graph you linked to is current and following the dots, has been ‘heading steadily upwards’ for just 3 months = 1 quarter = the time difference between 2 points…it simply cannot appear to be speeding up.
Make what you like of a 2% bounceback…
Oh, but then the Coalition is still 6% down since the election.
The steady course of the blue line definitely does take into account the major event of a government change/the election.
If that 42% dot didn’t exist, the line would slope much lower than ending on ~36%. It’s just a ‘co-incidence’ the last dot also happens to be 36%.
Mark,
The table shows the coalition have gained 2% in the last quarter, an increase on the trend of the first quarter. Your link was about the conservative vote. The discussion was loosley about why Ute Man might vote conservative.
My point is that Kevin Rudd and the ALP may have enjoyed the support of many rural people including Ute Man because these people were dissillusioned with John Howard and/or the nationals. Many were apparently willing to give Rudd a go but are changing their minds having seen him in action.
Half of the swing to the Lib/Nats is from “others”, not the ALP, suggesting a renewed credibility of the Lib/Nats post-Howard.
While it is true that 2PP will absorb much of the fallout going to the Greens on Climate change, their increased vote this year is already enough to get them a senator in QLD. and get their NSW one back.
I do not disagree that Rudd is safe, at this stage anyway, but I do disagree that the backlash is insignificant or ended. The steady regrowth of the Lib/Nats is not just statistical noise.
The fact that (apparently) most of those who have moved to the Lib/Nats are women suggests to me that cost of living issues are hitting hard. Women do most of the shopping and are more likeley to be sacrificing their personal pocket money to pay for increased family costs.
Nelson has been very astute to focus where people are hurting, and it is Rudd’s arrogance “there is nothing more that can be done” that will alienate strugggling families, who may have continued their support if Rudd appeared to be as concerned about household budgets as the conservatives are.
It may well be psephologically accurate to say Gippsland poses no threat to the government. But psephology only measures politics, it does not generate politics as the renewed conservative opposition is succesfully doing, not based on a fictional Ute Man counter-narrative but on real people and their perceptions. - and not contained to the Gippsland electorate.
JT at 38.
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The large markers on the bottom axis are the 1st quarter of eaxh year, the three smaller ticks are 2nd,3rd and fourth respectively. So at the moment we are at the 1st little tick of 2008, which is the second quarter as the 1st quarter was the bigger tick.
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JT at 47
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The blue line is a Loess regression placed through the individual poll results. You are falling into the trap of treating each individual result as accurate when it’s not, it’s only approximately accurate as it not only contains sampling error - the dreaded Margin of Error - but also over the longer term each poll bounces around a little from the month to month noise of politics. Currently the blue line sits fractionally above the current Coalition quarterly primary vote aggregate - far from taking not into account the “bounceback” you’re talking about, the regression has actually adjusted for it fully by not recognising the depths of early 2008 as being entirely accurate representations of what the coalition support really was in early 2008. The next piece of quarterly data will most likely show that blue line flattening out at around 37-38, but it cant do it until the data is actually there.
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Similarly, if you want the most accurate tracking poll measure that we have available on a weekly basis that takes into account month to month and even week to week noice, try this:
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http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/pollytrack/
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Again, while there was a small movement towards the Coalition recently in their Primary voter, it’s not “accelerating” by any yardstick.
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It’s just slow, grinding longer term movement surrounded by noisy variation around the mean of that movement.
While I think Ute Man can be redneck, racist and mysoginistic, he can often have some very deeeply held positive values that are inclusive and support the underdog. In some cases it is necessary to cut through a lot of what has been fed to him as ‘masculine’ or ‘patriotic’, but it is worth, I think, going through the effort.
See, here’s the problem. Many of us do not think that racism and misogyny are little frilly side issues distracting from the basic wonderfulness of a social group, or society at large, anyway. Many Ute Men are sweeties, I know some, but as for the rest - the knock you off your bike kill a greenie sheilas should know their place type - we reserve the right to criticise and to recognise that these very qualities are what needs to change if our lot is going to improve, no matter who owns these qualities. As for the poor petals being denigrated, really, there is no social group more consistently vilified than the “inner city leftie”. For the Ute Men who conform to the stereotype, if they’re as tough as they want to make out, they can suck it up just like we do.
Word, Helen.
John, I said earlier that I thought you were trying to impose an interpretation on the facts, and now Possum has kindly explained the basis of the data, perhaps you’d be kind enough to outline what your objections to the Rudd government’s policy settings are, which are of interest whether or not there is some sort of “backlash” discernible, which to date, I think it’s been shown there isn’t. Please note as well I find your imputation at 14 that I’m some paid shill for the ALP quite offensive, and I think you should take that into account when deciding how to conduct yourself on this blog. An apology might be nice, for instance.
Anyway, you said:
What, in your view, should Rudd be doing about household budgets that he isn’t doing? Do you think that the tax cuts in the Budget and other changes (moves for increased contestability in retail markets, for instance) are of no significance or are insufficient? Are you suggesting some sort of price controls? How would that work? I think the nub of what you’ve been saying is about the issues, and I don’t think it strengthens your point to claim that you’re surfing some developing wave of public opinion, because there’s nothing we can point to which would validate that at this stage. So perhaps it would be best if you outline what your view is.
Yes, well said, Helen.
First we create a stereotype that by definition means SFA, then we use that stereotype to beat over the head another stereotype, the trendy inner city Lefty.
And we think we’ve made some sort of point?
Reminds me of the aspirationals. Maybe it should be aspirational ute men.
Possum - I understand what you say about the margin of error and the small fluctuation so far recorded. However, the steadiness of the blue line does not take into account the change of government marking significant changes in voting patterns. As I said before, the line represents trends under a Liberal government and that is no longer the case. Raising the blue line retrospectively for the Howard years to compensate for a rising contemporary votes under Rudd does not seem like clever analysis. It may confirm some mathematical theorum but does not explain the politics or reflect history. I guess time will tell if it is a trend or a glitch, but if it continues to rise, the blue line will begin to indicate Howard had much more support than he really did - or the bounce back will have to be acknowledged as occuring in January.
Mark, I have no evidence at all that LP accepts cash for comment. I am sorry.
However I do not back off from accusing LP of being ALP apologists or agents of priveleged white urban philosophy. Your presentation of counter narratives is similar to those of the MSM so often deconstructed by LP. Your consistent insistance that despite the predictable by-election swing and a number of polls confirming the by-election sentiment represent some statistical noise is incredible. The acedemic explainations for why struggling families do not need to be listened to indicate heads well and truly in the sand.
This post here makes fun of the rural working class indicating an ignorant detatchment from such people. To suggest that the concerns of the rural working class are a just journalist’s imaginary counter-narrative indicates a trendy urban fantasy land.
Your continued insistence that the Pineapple party will flop is amazing considering they are blasting from strength to strength including already rebuilding support to within striking distance of getting government. They could blow themselves away but they have certainly not done so yet despite various predictions (including my own) that the Pineapple could never emerge from such a rabble - but it has.
The threads on Zimbabwe and on the USA feminist blog wars have shown that LP is a gathering place and reinforcement for racist opinion. The US women of colour launched stinging attacks on U.S. white feminists but LP could not even recognise that such issues are in this country too. Your own comments on Zimbabwe that colonisation cannot be undone is perhaps the most telling comment of all as to LP’s perspective on racism.
I choose to challenge such Yuppie and aging Yuppie ideology. I do not apologise if such challenge appears impolite.
And you are absoulutely correct that my focus is the issues not the stats. My response to the stats is because they have been used to explain why the real concerns of struggling people can be ignored as insignificant by the government.
What would I like to see Rudd do?
- Increase pensions
- Abolish remnants of work choices
- tax high earners more and low earners less.
- remove GST from all food
- increase public housing
- make energy company profits pay for carbon emmissions rather than consumers
- etc.
As for the topic of this thread and policies for the ute people
-Christine Milne’s energy farming proposal - which would immediately turn rural Australians into loyal soldiers in the war against climate change.
- return to farmers co-ops and single desk marketing ( I am all for Joh’s agrarian socialism)
- increased subsidies and support for farm diversification including rural manufacturing
- increased health, education, childcare and welfare services in remote areas
- free bumper stickers for utes (I’m serious, even a token acknowledgement of the perspectives of rural Australia would help)
And as for the ute people who are my friends and family
- secure land title for housing and economic development on native title, DOGIT, NT excisions and Aboriginal owned farms
- Aboriginal controlled health and education programs working both within and without of the state hospital and school systems.
- Systems of regional autonomous Aboriginal governence
- Government brokering of business deals between native title holders and investors.
All this is no easy agenda and is frought with contradictions, in particular the interests of white landowners and native title holders. But a bit of commitment and an open mind and the win-win solutions are not hard to find.
But if Rudd agrees with the psephological consensus he has no need to even consider these things - leaving non-metropolitan voters to the conservatives and rebuilding the conservative machine without challenge.
Helen ,
perhaps it is you who rely on stereotypes in suggesting racism and misogyny is an exclusive trait of rural people. Racism and misogyny is alive and well amongst the urban cappuccino set too, although possibly delivered through more refined nuance than the bush blokes do.
‘..in suggesting racism and misogyny is an exclusive trait of rural people..’
You know John, Helen suggested no such thing, and you either need to read more carefully or refrain from misrepresenting people.
Indeed. It might give you some satisfaction to play the “leftier than thou” game, John, but you very rarely seem to read others’ comments in good faith when constructing your lengthy screeds. Aside from all your blather about “Yuppie ideology”, you’re actually in the constant business of misprepresenting people you disagree with.
For instance:
That’s offensive, and not just offensive, but wrong. And you know it, because I explained, as patiently as I was able to given the onslaught of constant comment from you in a thread which blew out to 275 comments (over half of which you wrote), that what I was saying was that the effects of colonisation are a given - that is to say, the current situation in Zimbabwe is a result of colonial practices. That’s just a fact. It’s exactly the same here. The disposession of Indigenous people is the result of colonisation, and that history can’t be undone - it’s happened. You know full well that what I am saying is that we have to deal with those effects - deal with them justly - but putting your head in the sand and wishing them away is neither just nor at all realistic. Or if you don’t know that, then you’re incapable of reading comments from interlocutors with whom you disagree.
For the record, and because you’ve just accused me of racism, people can make their own judgements by referring to my comments on that thread:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/06/18/zimbabwe/#comment-480359
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/06/18/zimbabwe/#comment-480371
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/06/18/zimbabwe/#comment-480373
To sum up, I am saying that the results of past colonial history have shaped present realities, and however much we decry that history, we cannot escape from it in making choices as to how to redeem it. Redeem it we should.
Your accusations of racism are completely unfounded and if you wish to continue making them - so frivolously, I’d suggest - you are not welcome here any more. We don’t have to host the “John Tracey’s opinions about everything” discussion threads at this blog, and I’m unwilling to if you’re going to so blithely characterise those with whom you disagree as racist. It’s not on, son. This is our blog, and you must play by our rules here. I am no longer willing to allow you space to make offensive and hurtful accusations against those with whom you disagree.
I reckon she does…
“Many of us do not think that racism and misogyny are little frilly side issues distracting from the basic wonderfulness of a social group”
I say the same thing of the cappuccino set.
This argument has no basis to dismiss the suggestion that Ute people or blue collar perspective of the world lacks any inherent integrity or that those who point to such integrity are engaging in blind stereotyping.
While rural and blue collar Australia may well talk in a more racist vocabulary than politically correct urbanites, they manage to have real relationships with Aboriginal people in their communities. These relationships are not without conflict but in most cases most of the time there is peacefull coexistence with Aboriginal people that is never ever experienced by city people who have a vaccuous understanding of such things as racism as a result.
If racism has anything to do with ignorance then bush people are much less ignorant that city ideologues.
What is misogyny? Is it simply an ideological attatchment to family structure, something culturally different between rural people and inner city trendies? Or is it about violence and alienation? If it is the latter then the plethora of family circumstances can all be judged by the same circumstance and I think it would be hard to justify such things as peculiar to rural or blue collar people.
And Mark,
I have been censored before for arguing that responses to domestic violence in Aboriginal communities was mens business and not womens business so I am neither surprised nor concerned about you censoring me again. Such dismissal of contrary opinion is all part of what is necessary to re-inforce self and peer perceptions which, it seems, is a major purpose of LP.
JT,
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Why must a change of government of necessity change longer term voting patterns?
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On the quarterly newspolls there isnt anything substantial to yet suggest that such a thing has happened. On Newspoll monthly averages there is no evidence that such a thing has occured, and neither is there evidence looking at every poll placed in a single data series.
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Looking at polling behaviour over the last 12 months, the polls havent really moved at all between Dec 2006 and today, except for being interrupted by an election result which was closer than all of the polls had been saying except for ones in the final 5 days of the campaign.
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The Coalition primary vote actually started dropping at the beginning of 2005 and continued to do so before bottoming out about April/May this year.Since then it’s been hovering between about 35-40 with a fair bit of volatility.
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That blue line you’re talking about is just a local regression that runs through the individual polling points.I’ve started using Loess regressions a fair bit lately to analyse longer term trend behaviour because looking at Australian polling back to the late 1970s, it’s proven itself an extraordinarily accurate representation of longer term voter behavior. That blue line is extremely unlikely to make Howards vote look better than it was. It would require the Coaliton to lead Labor for the next 6 months on around 55/45 TPP for anything like that to occur.
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What will most likely happen is that over the next 6-12 months the blue line will slightly turn and bottom out before maybe rising a bit. The quarterly data is long term data for long term analysis, if you want shorter term analysis, the Pollytrack series are probably the way to go:
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http://possumcomitatus.wordpress.com/pollytrack/
#60 - Oh really, John? And a major purpose of your incessant comments isn’t to reinforce your own self-perception that you are the sole arbiter of what is and isn’t properly “left”? I say that because you dismiss others’ opinions without engaging properly with them, you seem incapable of responding to disagreement without characterising your interlocutors as “racist” or “sexist”, and you adopt a pose of total self-righteous certainty in holding forth your views as a litmus test others must meet. In the process, incidentally, you claim to speak on behalf of other social groups - for instance “rural people” and Indigenous people - and to represent your own subjective perceptions as if they were the collective view of those whom you apparently represent. I’ll leave it to you to determine the democratic value of adopting such a speaking position, but I’m afraid that since you’re unwilling to agree to the baseline requirement of participation in this site - that you don’t unfairly characterise others - you will have to publish those reflections elsewhere. If anyone’s doing any “censoring”, it’s you yourself because you’re unwilling to accept the terms and conditions which govern debate here. That’s the final word. Unless you’re willing to apologise and change your ways. In the meantime, you have every right to loudly condemn us elsewhere on the intertubes, and I have no doubt you’ll exercise that right.
As Laura said on another thread: wow, just wow.
I’d like to back up John Tracey’s sentiments if not each specific plan for the future.
Then again if you are going to compile such wish lists they might as well be as extensive as your ambitions.
Glenn Milne seems to have spoofed the image of the working rural people of Gippsland but Mercurious’ strange effort was to ridicule the habits of rural dwellers - their drinking , their clothes , their recreations. I didn’t discern a refutation of this ‘Ute Man’ as rubbish in his writings so I’m not surprised some readers have been offended.
right murph…
and “Glenn Milne told me so” to open with, wasn’t a discernable
“refutation of this ‘Ute Man’ as rubbish”…
yep, see where you’re coming from.