Kevin Rudd has flicked the switch to contrite over the insulation kerfuffle, and his failure to deliver the health overhaul on time.
For his pains, he’s received a kicking from just about the entire Canberra press gallery.
Take your pick: Phillip Coorey, Dennis Shanahan, Glenn Milne, Michelle Grattan.
Given that the self-same press gallery has spent the last fortnight or so demanding that the government take responsibility for its many sins, one wonders what else Rudd was supposed to have done?
The default position appears to be to characterise Rudd’s mea culpa as ‘spin’.
All this is probably predictable. What might be more significant is that a number of the journos in question appear to have elicited quotes from Ministers expressing scepticism about Rudd’s strategy. That’s something I don’t recall having seen during this term.
Gee they’ve turned on him. Rudd must have slapped a waitress who turned out to be the daughter of a senior journalist, or something.
Being treated like a liberal/national politician, instead of being fawned over. Wonder if his temper will stand it for long?
For some reason the Press Gallery never liked Rudd, even before he got elected to Opposition Leader.
“For some reason the Press Gallery never liked Rudd,”
Perhaps because they “instinctively” saw him as a “rat slayer” ?
One thing at this point seems certain: this is going to be an absolute dog of an election year.
The problem is the press gallery analyses politics in terms of day-to-day tactics and is guided by opinion polls in judging the effectiveness of the strategies adopted.
It’s a bit like financial market commentators who write erudite analysis of the growing risk of sovereign debt default in southern Europe when that information is already in the price.
In non-technical terms, it is called stating the bleeding obvious.
The press gallery accuses Rudd of arrogance and high-handedness and says Abbott has picked up on growing disquiet in the electorate. Then when Rudd recognises what’s happening, they accuse him of being snakey.
The problem in the press gallery is that they view everything through the prism of their highly reflexive cynicism, so much so that they hesitate to call a spade a spade – usually lest their competitors view them as naive.
Too many reporters, too much white space to fill, too little news.
This is the press gallery. It ain’t the electorate. Still, its worrying. Those of us with long memories will recall the long term destabilisation of the Whitlam Government before the dismissal, despite Gough winning two elections, led, as in this intance by Murdoch and his pack of diseased dogs. This time though, it appears some Fairfax fleas have jumped on board as well.
I think Rudd has a bit of a problem being take as sincere because he used to work for Peter Beattie.
Beattie has allready burned most of the opportunities Rudd would have for this tactic. If the libs were to run an ad with the 2 “I accept responsability” leaders side by side it might hurt Rudd?
http://www.smh.com.au/business/libertarians-silent-on-insulation-bungle-20100228-pb4m.html
Good article here about the deafening silence from ‘libertarians’ regarding the insulation apocalypse.
Hells bells, these are strange times when Ross Gittins is on the Left.
Mole #6. Please delete “Peter Beattie” insert “Wayne Goss”.
Though it is apt to note Rudd’s “Peter Beattie” tactic of publicly announcing an acceptance of responsibilty & expecting that will calm the outrage.
Rudd’s problem is with those who BELIEVED his election promises. That constituency is now sitting around dealing with shattered expectations. The rusted on voters are fine, but those who “voted Rudd” are becoming shat off at the inability to turn talk into action. Watch out for them Rudd, they may push Ms Gillard into a coup.
Guido #2 The press gallery may have had some reservations about Rudd, but he is the man who slayed the antichrist (J Howard) for them, and they cut him one helluva lot of slack before and after the election. He got an Obama-style free pass from the news media.
But none were more surprised/shocked at Rudd’s public appeal than the parliamentary Labor Party. They knew him for what he is, and detested him for it. However, his giant-killer status means they sorta had to shut up (none of THEM were ever able to roll Howard). Rudd knew how to win the election. It won’t be so easy for him to win the next one, as his own record as PM will come under scrutiny. Assuming that is, that he is still leader of the ALP by election time.
Rudd is a smart operator who sniffs the mood of the crowd pretty well.
Remember in the lead-up to the 07 election when Howard and the Coalition hitmen went after Rudd for his story about his deprived upbringing? Rudd sat and took it, reading Hansard, if I recall correctly, while the berserkers shrieked on. Soon, the berserkers looked shrill and wanting for a sense of perspective, while Rudd looked calm and collected under pressure.
In the recent case cool and collected Rudd has reappeared. By implication he is asking the voters to assess the importance of the insulation fiasco in the larger scheme of things.
If Abbott and his zombie berserkers bang on too long about insulation they’ll start to look shrill.
By election time no one will mention insulation.
You know the bit I like the best out of this? Despite the ABC now actively running against him Rudd has not and will not do the old government trick of pushing a broom through the place.
Howard’s appointee’s remain in place and Rudd and co aren’t bleating about the ‘bias’.
This is one small thing to take away from this.
Mark,
Perhaps if he had done the right thing at the start, rather than waiting until more workers had died and houses had burnt down then he would not deserve half of the “kicking” he has received.
Andrew Reynolds – Given the normal rate of accidents in the insulation installation industry, do we know that more people (per installation) have denied as a result of installations funded by the government under this program than would have died anyway in the normal course of events?
If not the government does not deserve a kicking. I do not recall the media doing any sort of analysis on this last week.
The general public don’t have 1% of the interest in political minutiae as the press gallery; despite some of the polish being knocked off it the ALP government will be given a ‘fair go’ by the electorate and comfortably returned; probably few people in Australia will ever warm to Rudd in a personal sense but an intelligent hard-working person ticks a lot of people’s boxes for what they want in a PM and will continue to do so.
Nothing to see here…
Katz, you are living an illusion. Of course Rudd looked calm and collected because he was trying to win an election and he didn’t want to do a Latham. Also, a smart operator isn’t necessarily a good one. Look at history and the record of some of the most intelligent leaders the world has seen. Intelligence doesn’t mean ‘good’. Also, be aware that many people see Rudd’s calm and collected approach as being as cunning as a rattle snake. On my last point, would you prefer that an opposition didn’t try to hold the government to account on the insulation scheme? It would be negligent for an opposition not to oppose it strongly. Maybe you would prefer a dictatorship.
Interesting tssk. I take your point about the ABC, but I think there comes a time when the government needs to say enough is enough.
The election campaign will be dirty in the extreme and the media pack will throw everything at the government, safe in the knowledge, in the ABC’s case that there will be no consequences for their outrageous partisanship.
You are right there is no use in the government bleating about the ABC, so I’d like to see a 50% cut in funding in the next budget and then we might see some of the highly salaried partisan hacks having second thoughts about their dire performances of late.
The only downside is that we may have to see a cutback in quality Australian drama, cutting edge comedy, insightful current affairs and quality Australian docos. Oh wait…
Adrian. The ABC does know there are consequences. They know now that when the Coalition comes back in they will be investigated for anti Liberal bias.
I think Rudd needs to stay the course and let the ABC have editorial freedom even if it’s against his own best interest. All this pressure will help keep him and the ALP honest.
Doug. You are right but wrong at the same time. yes the percentage of accidents/fatalities is tiny given the size of the program. However I doubt anyone here would be able to look the parents of the four deceased in the eye and tell them that.
When the election comes and these families talk out…I think that will take Rudd down.
Also Abbott has been really successful with the solar panels jibe. You know that was a Howard program. I know it. But most of my mates are talking about it as if it were Rudd’s screw up.
Doug,
Given that the number of registered installers went from 200 odd to 7,700 over the period, I would find it very unlikely that the death rate (per installed unit) had not risen, and I am sure that if this were the case the government would be making this case.
That said, if you have evidence that the death rate per installed unit has not increased I would be interested to see it.
Check Possum Pollytics best estimates in Crikey last week. Also understand there is soemthing in the Financial Review in the past couple of days but haven’t actually spotted that one.
Didn’t Possum look at that last week?
Doesn’t matter though. If Rudd bought up the statistics he would be torn limb from limb by concern trolls.
Adrian’s on the money, in my view. When the election comes into view, and people need to think seriously about not just rejecting Rudd but accepting his opponent, Labor will be returned in similar standing to last time.
Otherwise, there is nothing more boring to me than the whole “The MSM is biased against (insert my party)!!!1!1!!1!one!1″ stuff.
The AFR, picking up on Possum’s piece, ran a good article on the weekend from Geoff Winestock quoting fire brigades data showing there were 115 house fires in 2009 caused by bad installation. That was up from 75 fires in 2007 BEFORE the scheme was oeprating.
Taking into account that about 1.15 million houses have been fitted with insulation as part of the government subsidy scheme, compared with about 60,000 installations in 2007.
So installations increased twentyfold over two years, while fires due to installations increased by just over 50 per cent.
Put’s it into perspective I would have thought.
Rudd has pushed Abbott from criticising the program to demanding the government accept responsibility to alleging the apology is insincere and that’s probably where it will sputter out. Yet another Abbott bang degenerating into a whimper. When Rudd was successfully attacking Howard he also was building an impression it would be safe to vote for him (Rudd). Don’t think Abbott has done too much on this front, unless I’ve been missing something.
Yes Andrew @ 16, I suggest you peruse Mr Denmore’s aforementioned article for some enlightenment.
I stll can’t stop thinking that a large part of the motivation of the Coalition, corporate MSM and the ABC in conflating this insulation saga (which led to Rudd’s contrition) was to bury as much as possible the Coalitions rejection of the Youth Allowance and Medicare Rebate in the Senate last week. The rejection of these bills had the potential to be very damaging to the Coalition given the regressive nature of their position but instead these issues recieved virtually no coverage whatsoever (esp. mas media tabloid). In fact in Thursdays edition of Murdochs Adelaide Advertiser not one sentence of coverage appeared about the Coalitions rejection of the Medicare bill the previous day despite it including half a dozen other federal politics stories. The real power of the media is not what they say (and how they say it) but what they choose to say (and not). Of course members of the public could have got some coverage of the passage of these bills if they’d watched the ABC’s Order in the House but that was aired at 12.30 am on a Monday morning. Conveniant that!!!
ajm. What you missed were the polls where Tony Abbott is now even with Rudd. This should be a worry. I would have preferred Turnbull as PM rather than Abbott.
Hey, the poll where Abbott was supposedly level with Rudd was a Tavener poll in NSW only that showed a primary vote lead to Labor of 42 to 39. How this translated into an even 2PP vote is anybody’s guess, but it certainly wasn’t explained under the screaming headlines.
However tssk, you have illustrated perfectly the problem with taking anything the MSM says at face value.
tssk @24 – A SINGLE poll (not “polls”) taken by a non-mainstream political polling company of only 609 people and only in NSW! Gimme a break! Even then most of the other outcomes of the poll were favourable to the government.
I was under the impression it was Newspoll. This was the poll cited on The Insiders wasn’t it?
@ 27
No, Insiders cited the poll referred to by ajm. They tried to squeeze some juice out of it but came up short; it’s got zero street-cred.
Taverner – SMH article
Ah, my mistake then. Does explain why they were all questioning some of the methodology involved.
But not why ABC ran the report about the so called damaging poll for Labor all day on the so called News.
And of course ignored a positive Morgan poll, and a reasonably positive Essential Research poll. They have no shame, but it appears to work.
I’m glad I never watch Insiders. Obviously save myself a lot of unnecessary stress. Ditto Lateline.
I had stopped watching it as it was a waste of time. Damn them making podcasts available!
Saw Julia Gillard being interviewed tonight on the 7.30 Report and finally realised just how brilliant Rudd’s tactics are. The confessional/contrition/ mea culpa act has entirely consumed the Canberra Press gallery and the MSM. It’s perfect. None of them are bleating on about the insulation scheme and he has merrily lead them all down a dead end street. Even if the dopes regain their footing what are they going to do?? Keep rehashing?? The public (god bless em)have the attention span of gnats and a bored readership won’t read if the topic is boring. You could see that Abbott was livid about having the oxygen sucked out of his momentum as the press clamoured to take a shot at Rudd. Got to hand it to his minders as they seem to understand the fame game better than anyone. There is no such thing as bad publicity, only what you do with it once the ball is in your court. The spotlight is back on Rudd with his shiny new (and no doubt contentious) Education policy and all the debate that will flow from that. Anyone who reads the Letters page of any newspaper will know how education issues play out in the community. After that ebbs it will be new Health policies which is another Labour stronghold. The funniest thing to see is the Coalition running the lines of Rudd being a cunning politician ala Rudd’s attack on Howard from the last election. Sooner or later the Press Gallery will turn the blowtorch on Abbott and Co and they will snap crackle and pop all the way up to the election.
Daisey May – exactly what I was thinking – you could almost see her gloating that they’ve got the MSM back on to the government’s issues leaving Abbott blathering about Rudd being insincere (remember how well the personal attacks on Rudd worked in the lead up to the 2007 election?). The average Joe or Joanne isn’t really worried too much what politicians say about each other – they know it’s all a game. So now the government is back to talking about substantive issues and all the opposition is talking about is other politicians. Nice “thank you” to red Kerry at the end said it all.
Rudd and Gillard would have to be delighted that we are back debating the “black armband” view of history. It will bring readers of this site back to Labor, however reluctantly.
To get a sense of where Christopher Pyne is focused, this from The Australian Online:
To which Julia Gillard only needs to say, “We are focused on what is best for the children and for our nation.”
Game, set, match, Julia.
So Christopher supports charters of rights? Somebody better have a talk to him! My memory’s a bit rusty, but wasn’t Habeas Corpus on of the major rights “guarranteed” by Magna Carta. I’m sure some former immigration detainees would have some opinion on how effective that is in the 21st century Australian legal system. I can’t help thinking that the Coalition are following Paul Keating’s advice – they’ve thrown the switch to vaudeville! Come to think of it, no better person than Christopher…..
Terry, if you take up debating as a pastime, you’ll swiftly discover that adjudicators do not award points for announcing “I’m right, they’re wrong!” then sitting with folded arms.
My safety advice to teachers: Don’t try to ram crap like that down my kids’ necks. I send them to school to learn core skills, not mythology.
Is Krudd trying a “rope a dope” strategy?
Colonial voters chose by referendum a constitution that was a mixture of the British and American systems with a few indigenous flourishes, such as universal suffrage, state interventionism in wage fixation and welfare provision, and institutionalised racism.
By this free and remarkably democratic act, colonial voters tailored foreign systems to their own requirements. Heritage had nothing to do with it.
Pyne is dog whistling furiously with his mythologising of Australian history.
SATP, be careful, there is a crackdown on “feral parents” in Victoria:
Linked text
Seriously, though, if you were debating Christopher Pyne, you’d need to know which Christopher Pyne you were debating. Like Julie Bishop, he morphs into something else every time there is a change in the Liberal leadership.
I’m surprised Tony Abbott didn’t come out wearing his bike shorts when he accused Kevin Rudd of “creating a diversion”.
Indeed, Terry. I was wondering what Pyne would have said about the history curriculum had Turnbull still been the leader.
It will become increasingly harder for the Coalition to accuse the Rudd Government of being “all talk, no action”, and at the same time launch a lightning rejection of every policy initiative they come out with, at the speed with which Christoper Pyne was able to get through a history curriculum document that the teachers say has too much content in it. If this tactic continues, they will start to look more exposed than Tony Abbott on Manly Beach.
… Particularly since a lot of the ‘inaction’ comes from their obstructionism in the Senate.
Not having read the National Curriculum proposal (Hell, I paid no attention to my own school curriculum and don’t aim to break a lifetime habit now) but I would suggest at least one module/component/monthly class/whatever on British history – in particular how the English and then the Brits steadily and incrementally dismantled the divine right of Kings, with occasional outbursts of picturesque violence. Now that’s an educational and fun lesson for all ages throughout the ages.
Leaving aside all the politics is there anyone who can truly say that the colour of their skin does not make a difference in this country? Hundreds of years of hatred, loathing , suspicion and derision of a people based solely on their skin colour is just sick and disgusting. I’m glad that Australian society is being made to see the heartbreaking damage that has been done and that attempts are being made to heal the heartache. All children from an early age should be taught that the colour of skin that they are born with is a joy and a blessing and something to be celebrated. All this talk about it being “a black armband view” or a “politically correct” view of history is just pathetic. As if the bare facts of growing up with a different skin colour and all the horrors that attend it were not bad enough we have politicians running around claiming that its all really a bit of a con job and the reality is not really that bad. There is not much hope for the the generation above us in these matters and my own has been a tremendous let down. My only hope for change is young people coming through who seem to be much more comfortable with concepts of race and gender. I hope that the Rudd government can make some headway in race relations in this country but I am not holding my breath.
And someone above mentioned the Glorious Revolution. Now that should be taught in schools. The why, how and what for? of a bloodless coup mounted by businessmen. Understanding how that worked, and could work again, is useful knowledge for 21st students anywhere.
More useful lessons from British history.
When the powerbrokers have a crap member of Royalty cornered, they’ll sign or suffer anything. (Eg: King John the Last, Ed 2 and 8).
Lawmakers in the right mood can bypass the courts to order your execution.
Beat up on on guild/union/craft movements or their contemporary equivalents at your peril.
Financial speculation can be surprisingly risk free provided you all discovered mutual masturbation together at school.
Get the Scots to handle the machinery. And the Welsh to handle the other frontier savages.
Be serious about mob-handed protection for your international transport, distribution and logistics networks.
And only be invaded by civilisations with better judicial codes and plumbing.
Don’t get me wrong, I find British history very interesting, having read a lot of Eric Hobsbawm and E. P. Thompson when I was an undergraduate. But my hunch is that this is not the sort of “British history” Christopher Pyne is talking about.
Mind you, I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on the Pyne Mind, although I never remember him being a kind of Quadrant circle curriculum warrior during the Howard years. As I couldn’t be bothered watching QANDA last night, I’m unaware as to whether a clue lies in his understanding of the arts.
There are other lessons from British history:
An efficient espionage system is a very useful thing.
Don’t side with the second most powerful nation unless your power makes the crucial difference.
Having a pretend constitution is not necessarily a bad thing.
The art of survival is the ability to make intelligent concessions.
Divide and conquer.
When the future looks bleak heritage is a great comfort to the
cannon foddersubjects of the realm.Although it would be difficult to get any public traction with the argument, has anyone put together any figures about the number of bills blocked by the Libs in opposition compared to the ALP’s first term in opposition? (Obviously the BoP situation was a bit different.)
If the UK polls are to be believed, and Old Mother Brown can hang on to power at No. 10, despite his temper tantrums and looking like the corpse in “Weekend at Bernie’s” there would be another interesting thing to be learned from British history.
Terry @ 52 you missed one of their more intelligent programs, not so entertaining but certainly absorbing in terms of looking at a very strong Peter Garrett hold his end up very well. Yes, Grace Pettigrew, he is indeed a fine human being – all that talent, intelligence, eloquence and very much in touch with his own and others’ feelings. That said I imagine he’s a very good hater too!
Very relevant to this thread too for an insight into how even he like Gillard and Smith are on the same song sheet about Rudd’s mea culpas. All three, I think, maintain his sincerity and interpret his apology in terms of his expectations for himself and the party not yet being achieved and a determination to do better from now own. Of course they’ve all had a chance to mention in passing some of their real achievements to date as well! I haven’t yet done my round-up (if only that had a capital R and worked like it does on weeds!) of the major papers on the net so I don’t yet quite understand where the murmurings of dissatisfaction are coming from within the party I heard referred to yesterday.
By the way, Gillard on 7.30 Report was brilliant, beautiful and somehow slightly less harsh on the ear. Is that me making allowances as she showed herself throughout a very good team player, genuinely loyal to her boss? But how can she lose by being that?