As anticipated, commentariat memes very quickly emerged after the Great Health Debate – “Abbott was disadvantaged because he didn’t have a policy”, “Abbott came out swinging”, “He was authentic”, “Rudd played to The Worm”, “It’s not important anyway”, “No one watches daytime tv”.
Presumably the press gallery wizards got these stunning insights direct from Liberal spinners, or maybe Laurie Oakes. But, it’s always interesting to see how quickly and unanimously these memes develop, and how they reinforce the existing ‘media narrative’, which brooks no contradiction.
However, most of those claims are themselves deeply contradictory. It’s interesting, for instance, to contemplate how relevant most of the self-referential commentary from the media is, if no one actually takes any notice outside election time. Perhaps, on their own logic, they should all shut up shop?
But let’s take a look at one of the elements of the ‘it doesn’t matter’ cluster of themes (would it have mattered, incidentally, had it been credible to declare Abbott the winner?), with a little help from Essential Research:
Do you support or oppose the Federal Government’s plan to take over the responsibility for funding hospitals and health services from the State Governments?
Males were more likely than females to support the plan (61% v 56%). Support for a Federal takeover was highest amongst 55 – 64 year olds (67%).
79% of Labor voters, 46% of Coalition voters and 55% of Green voters support a Federal takeover for funding of hospitals and health services.
27% of Coalition voters neither support nor oppose the plan and 22% oppose it.
[Table courtesy of Possum]
Now, let’s have a think about something former Howard advisor Grahame Morris said tonight on the 7.30 Report.
Morris articulated a more colourful version of the ‘no one watched’ line – it was just political tragics, a few journos, and people waiting at home wanting to watch Days of Our Lives. A more colourful, and more arrogant version. Everyone else, apparently, everyone who counts to Morris, is at work.
But who’s likely to be watching day time tv? Join the dots…
It’ll be interesting to see what the ratings actually are.
Let’s not forget too, for all the quibbling over The Worm, there is not really such a thing as a pure undecided voter. And let’s not forget that the health plan has close to majority support among Coalition voters, and that over 1 in 5 Coalition voters are undecided on the policy. And, remembering that Kevin Rudd actually won the election on the back of the same lines The Worm liked in his debate against Howard, I’m not at all sure that Abbott’s fans should make a virtue of the fact that voters are turned off by his shtick.
So I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that the only way voters are influenced by the debate is through the commentariat and the journosphere. I’m sure Rudd’s office took some care in researching the reach and demographics of day time tv.
Update: The ratings are in.
Exactly, Mark. This was a victory for Rudd any way you slice it. Abbott did the whole thing on his terms, and paid the price. Punditariat be damned, Rudd is also working on his own narrative, playing directly to the people who matter; voters.
And Abbott gets the cheap laughs from the journos!
“Abbott was disadvantaged because he didn’t have a policy”… Presumably the press gallery wizards got these stunning insights direct from Liberal spinners…”
I’ve been away from Oz politics for a few years, so maybe I forgot how things work down there, but you’re telling me the guys own party used “he has no policy” as spin.
Interesting.
Yep.
Wouldn’t the people home to watch daytime tv, who’d have the inclination to watch the debate, be expected to have a disproportionately high percentage of what possum terms generation blue?
paul, that’s my point in quoting the cross-tabs from Essential Research.
Older voters already have the highest degree of support for this policy, and insofar as there are more Coalition voters among that demographic, that’s reaching the 22% undecideds, and perhaps making the 46% in favour think again about whether they should actually stick with the Coalition.
Remember that Rudd had better support among that demographic than he now has; this may be one way of turning that around.
That was what I was seeking to convey (aside from the fact that many others at home will be part time or casual employees, and/or parents).
Sorry to labour the point. But your further elucidation has made me think more about it anyway so Thanks
No probs at all!
Morris was ‘incredible’ in the strict sense of the term. Yet if I was running the ALP strategy, I wouldn’t have Hawker upfront. Keep the powder dry, and let a ‘disinterested’ observer make the same obvious points.
Abbott was hopeless.
I agree, wpd. I don’t think Hawker does the ALP too many favours when he steps into the spotlight. He’s too much the machine man. If it has to be someone who’s got such strong Labor connections, someone like Tim Gartrell would be better.
Morris was indeed incredible! You wonder if he believes his own bluster. I was struggling to see how Howard ever won if he was the person advising him…
I agree. A terrible performance.
Of course he doesn’t He’s not a complete dill. I just can’t understand why the OBC proceeds down this track.
Or maybe I can.
Mark, Laura Tingle made a telling point on Lateline tonight about how the worm helps to influence the snap judgments of what she described as a “roomful of journalists”.
The transcript not up yet, but Tingle again demonstrated why she is one of the clearest thinkers in the Canberra press gallery
@13 – Ben, in Queensland, without daylight saving time, I’m just about to watch Tingle. I have so much respect for her – she’s worth far more than the $3 it costs to read her in the Fin. She’s the person in the gallery who has by far the best insight. If there was any justice in the world, she’d get the sort of acclaim Paul Kelly does.
The point I just heard her make in the intro was that the worm was a bit of a substitute for expensive qual research the parties can no longer afford. She’s previously pointed out that with donations tanking, the parties are flying blind in the absence of the sort of research they’d normally be able to pay for. Good focus groups, etc., are very expensive.
Also waiting for Tingle.
Not sure that Tingle was ‘spot on’ but at least she wasn’t ‘incredible’.
Ah … La Tingle. Always insightfull. The Crown Jewel of the MSM.
Mark@10# – Hawker has indeed been out and about this last few weeks popping up like a groundhog in a few places. Pity – strategists are better beavering away. Let the peculiar Mr Morris and friends rabbit on.
The question for me from today is- why do our journalists need to rely on a worm or some other polling indicator to validate their story. Don’t they have their own take on whats presented to them? It is possible that a cogent viewpoint might be just as valid as a worms.
The 7pm project pointed out that the worm was controlled by the old, the jobless and students.
Then again they did point out that Abbott with his laugh sounded less like the next PM and more like the next Bond villian.
I’d just like to point out that I watched the debate at work
Oh, and the wannabe King-makers of the MSM mgiht like to ask themselves two pertinent questions:
a. what kinda douchebag calls a debate on health policy, and turns up with a few heckles and lame insider gags in his backpack?
b. Will you make a fool a right tit of yourself -again – backing said douchebag?
… who, incidentally, all have votes worth just as much as anyone else’s!
But, actually, I think that the audiences for The Worm are from a broader sample.
@17 –
Fascinated, most journos don’t seem to me to have much of an understanding of either political strategy or the intimately related art of discerning how the public will react to stuff. So they look for proxies – The Worm, the almighty Newspoll, etc. What we get as “their own take” is all the bullshit that currently constitutes press gallery wisdom.
There are some exceptions, but not many, and I really think there are very few indeed who have much of an idea about what goes down well with voters and what doesn’t, or more charitably, they get so caught up in the game they forget it most of the time. You can see that in the ritualistic “in a week where paper x reported y, and political event z occurred, and question time concentrated on a and b had c on the ropes, the polls did this” – when it would be more correct to stick with the accurate perception from today that most of this stuff is ignored by voters. Except they also forget that voters do pay intermittent attention, and are often more influenced by less mediated forms of communication – as I was saying in the post.
It’s as if they were all inculcated on the ersatz vulgar Marxism of ‘media effects theory’. Perhaps they get that in Journo School. Who knows? But there’s an irony when they believe that the bourgeois press can wholly determine what the folks think! All evidence to the contrary to be excluded…
It’s quite incredible when you think about it.
@20 – John Quiggin predicts Tony Abbott will be the new Lara Bingle.
Those of us who would rather have watched Days of Our Lives were not disappointed. Tony Abbott turned it all into a daytime soap opera, villainous melodramatic laugh included. All he needed was a moustache to twirl.
And Rudd, of course was the hero whose teeth sparkled in the sunlight, the Royal Navy hero who defeats the bad pirate.
He’s the Stefano DiMera of Australian politics!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefano_DiMera
He was also Massimo Marone in The Bold and the Beautiful. Exactly like Abbott in the Libs, he dropped out of B&B because the story line was going nowhere.
Mark @ 10,
Pretty much the only night I watch the Agenda show on Sky News is Monday night’s because Monday’s panellists are always Bruce Hawker & Grahame Morris. It’s actually half entertaining and the more I see of Morris the more I see John Howard with the short sharp hand flapping movements, the stumbling speech and the quivering bottom lip. He often becomes quite hysterical too. I’m not sure he’s meant to be taken seriously.
Hawker always seems pretty straight down the line but as you’d expect never deviates from the ALP script. Tim Gartrell is on there every now and then too and started on the SA/Tassie election coverage Saturday night but supposedly he got pulled from the rest of the night after the Auspoll exit poll fiasco that seriously embarrassed Sky News (I commented on that poll in the SA election thread) and supposedly has them reviewing their relationship with Gartrell/Auspoll.
Treading my usual haunts I came across this rant from one of my favourite left-liberal-Democrat shock jocks (yes there are one or two). It’s the kind of craziness that warms the heart but nevertheless doesn’t allow you to suspend belief far enough to accept it.
Keith Olbermann — The Destruction of the GOP
Still, the sentiments and the passion are something I return to everytime I shake my head once too often at the condition of American discourse.
Tuned into 7 hoping for a bit of escapism via Inspector Frost, only to discover they, too, were covering it. They had their very own Worm with Gary Morgan along to explain it, but presumably for copyright reasons could not call it that. Instead, Seven’s Worm was called a “Pollygraph”. Interesting choice of name compelling me to think of that notorious ‘Lie Detector’ thing beloved of Americans.
Mark@23, does that mean we have to endure the sight of Abbott in the shower?
Graham Morris’ bloke speak ‘- Tony Abbott has got to where he is by being himself and the last thing he ought to do is to listen to other lunatics as to how he should handle himself.’says it all.
I agree that Laura Bingle, I mean Lara Tingle, is a great asset to the media.
Chris Uhlmann was doing his comradely duty on ABC News Radio this morning, explaining how the Worm is overly excitable and makes much ado about nothing.
Zorronsky,
Abbott got to where he is by being Howard’s pet Pit Bull.
Now the pressure is on, the actual vacuum that exists in Tony will become more exposed.
‘listening to other lunatics’, presumably meaning Abbott is also a lunatic? Well, its good to see somebody in the Liberal Party realising what kind of nutter they’re offering as an alternative PM. (Though PJK said it before Graham Morriss, of course.)
Rudd’s main points weren’t about his policy anyway so the excuse that Abbott didn’t have a policy is crap. Doesn’t he have any ideas? What does he have to say about how health should be improved? He doesn’t need a policy to tell us who he is. It was Rudd’s broad philosophical statements that excited the worm and it was Abbott’s cheap negativity and carping that sent the worm into despair. I think the worm wants politicians to speak like grown ups at the very least. In the broader world we are trying to stop bullying but the style of Abbott is to bully – not a good example… He can get away with it in parliament but not when addressing the nation.
I guess at least Abbott didn’t bring along some budgie smugglers – I nearly vomited when when one of the news networks reported that he was auctioning a pair to raise money for life saving. They didn’t mention if they had been worn.
I only heard a touch of Graham Morris this morning. He said Abbot won by a whisker, because even though he performed badly, had nothing to say and was outclassed by the PM, a third of people still thought he won.
Which is a variation on the ‘we won by coming second’ meme.
d
I was curious to know what the far-right wing Daily Telegraph thought of it all and decided to navigate there using the top stories link at the bottom of the Oz page. Unfortunately that didn’t work since the ‘Terror’s five top stories were:
1.UFOs buzz Sydney – and here’s the proof
2.Threesome request sends man wild
3.Richard Pratt’s daughter speaks out
4.Keira’s out and Penelope’s in new Pirates
5.Ignore PC madness over Slater low act.
Further evidence to me that political engagement is currently at a low ebb and that neither abbott’s demolition in the debate nor the outragous political biases of News Ltd have any capacity to change anything at present.
Jenny, if you had probed further into the Terror, you would have learned that Piers Akerman thinks the worm is superficial.
In precisely the same way our high-quality finance journos explain the behaviour of the ASX
wormI hear Hawker and Morris on ABC Sydney once a week. They are better there than on TV, I suspect, as the questions tend to be related to how they do spin rather than getting them to be spin doctors. And you don’t have to look at them.
@39 – that’s interesting, Darryl, because last night it was Rudd by a whisker.
He must have
carefully reflected on his initial judgementbeen pulled into line.Update: The ratings are in.
Susan @ 37 – thank you for saying that. It was buzzing incoherently in my mind but you’ve put your finger on it. Abbott could have used the time to talk about what he was for at the level of principles (which is mostly what Rudd did). He could even have used his time to sell the great things he did as health minister (no smirking up the back!) and defending the Howard legacy – there must have been some big announcements/improvements to dredge up – eg. Better Oucomes in Mental Health comes to mind.
I notice that poor little Smuggles was pouting to his sycophants in the press that Rudd was bullying him.
And I love the idea that not having a policy is merely a disadvantage. F*cking disadvantage! What are these people thinking? Imagine if Rudd had turned up without a policy to debate!!
Susan @37, the really great irony is that as a former Minister of Health, Smuggles is so bereft of ideas about the health portfolio. You’d think, with five years’ experience under his belt he’d have a little more to offer than jeering on unrelated matters!
I hadn’t given it a thought until it was mentioned at another place. The one area you’d think he’d have the drop on Rudd and the best mark he could get was a big fat F! Looks like Ratty injected him with Howard Hubris.
All those endomorphines from over exercise have addled the Mad Monk’s brain. Saw somewhere that some Libs are getting mighty concerned that Abbott is spending so much time doing so much exercise he hasn’t got the time to do his job as Opposition leader. The health debate sure proved that. Tones should remember that when it comes to playing to the camera, from a NSW perspective, Christina Keneally does it so much better, and she does the work as well.(And, unlike Abbott, may very ewell get the votes to prove it at the NSW state election. Mind you, her problem is a bit like Abbott’s. She’s surrounded by a lot of drongoes.