It’s quite extraordinary that the obvious reason for John Howard’s correction of his answer in question time yesterday hasn’t been mentioned. Howard answered a question from Rudd and appeared to express scepticism about links between carbon emmissions and climate change. It’s clear as day from his answer that he was telling the truth about the fact that he misheard the question. He’s obviously alluding to Rudd’s tv appearance with a drought/climate change link sceptical farmer on Monday night’s news programs:
Mr HOWARD—It is not only remarks made by people in this parliament. There is a farmer I know who is sceptical about that connection as well! But we can debate. Let me say to the Leader of the Opposition that the jury is still out on the degree of connection. What matters is what you do about it. It is not an academic debate; it is what you do about it.
Rudd later made much of this, and it’s true that Howard is open to attack on these issues. But commentators, both in the media and blogosphere (for instance Tim Dunlop), aren’t stating the obvious. Howard suffers from hearing loss. He obviously misheard the question, and had the debate of the day before in his mind.
Of course, neither is he – because to say so would remind people of his age and reinforce the contrast between Rudd’s energy and relative youth and a government that could also be dismissed as tired and old.
I don’t know whether Howard’s disability is the new FDR wheelchair. As a person with a disability myself, I think there’s no problem pointing it out, and I don’t think that hearing loss necessarily has any material bearing on someone’s ability to do their job. I don’t think he should be wary of talking about it. But I do find it passing strange that no one mentions it, and also the contrast between this slip of Howard’s and the treatment of Kim Beazley’s mistakes last year which led to endless speculation about his health.
Much was made of Howard’s deafness in the late ’80s, during his first stint as Oppsotion Leader. There were hints of it when Latham was in his pomp about mid ’04. If these poll results continue, if Costello gets ahead of himself, it will come up again. Elephant in the room? More like something just below the surface that is only revealed, and starts to stink, when the tide goes out.
I’m surprised his hearing loss hasn’t been a bigger issue, particularly since “nobody told me” is his standard defence.
kim – it was pretty clear to me last night that Howard was not telling a porkie when he replied.
The answer makes sense if you factor in a mishearing as about the drought.
Politics is a rough game, as Howard knows as a skewer and skewee, and humanness in the form of stumbles is fodder whereas in normal life it is not only forgiven but barely noticed.
Witness Big Kimbos reference to Rove. I’d want and expect my federal pollies, let alone a leader, to have his mind on Rove from USA rather than Rove from The Telly.
The media, and in this case the blogs aren’t behaving any better than MSM, like to take these small everyday tics and to cynically run them into Mt Rushmores.
Howard’s (pretty severe) hearing problem is a matter of much talk in the deaf / hearing disabilities sector. There is a huge disapointment at his refusal to mention it at all and / or to be photographed so that his hearing aids are visible. Meet him in person and you soon are aware of the hearing aids and of his need to be addressed from the good side with clear lip movements.
Journos know about it and should be cutting him some slack on this drought issue.
OTOH I have a grudging admiration that the Oz press hasn’t “outed” him on hearing. It’s one of the more admirable qualities of the Oz press to respect privacy of pollies.
I would prefer though that Howard talked a bit about his hearing problem, if only to show that the handicap hasn’t stopped him but particulaly to encourage the thousands of people who should wear hearing aids but don’t due to concern with vanity or fear of ridicule.
In the country that invented the Cochlear Ear it’s a bit sad that our leader can’t “out” himself.
I really can’t stand Ratty, however, I think that it’s pretty clear he misheard the question as well.
I think that the opposition has plenty to work with now, and needs to leave this one alone.
The Cabinet room is fitted with one of those audio-loop thingies (sorry, don’t know the technical term).
Wouldn’t know myself, but I’m reliably informed that if you are in a meeting with him, his advisers will tell you to make sure you speak up.
Late last year he continued to speak in Question Time while the speaker repeatedly asked him to resume his seat. Tony Abbott had to reach forward and tug on his coat to let him know.
He is quite seriously hearing impaired.
Appears to make up for it with an uncanny ability to read people though.
Just popped into the 7 11 across the road from work to get a drink and noticed that the front cover of the Daily Tele has a headline: “Howard: I hear you” or something similar and a full page colour photo of the PM cupping his hand to his ear.
Mention it Kim, and you’ll be pilloried by the punditorship for discriminating against
Alan Jones gaysdisabled people.He’s gettin’ so old that when he appears on the news it’s like having your great-grandaddy appear on television. Listening to his voice lately, you can hear the characteristic Howard accent (high voice which occasionally cracks) slipping into the generic old-man voice (tendency to drone, a whistling tone, slightly slower than the normal speaking voice.)
ABC Lateline tried to do a gotcha on Howard, saying he’d backflipped (or similar). They were wrong, he hadn’t backflipped or contradicted himself; the relevant passages they quoted from Parliament weren’t in contradiction with one another at all. It was pure spin from the ABC.
For some reason I can’t find it on their website! I wonder why … ?
Richard Farmer in today’s Crikey:
“I am a sceptic of the connection between emissions and climate change’?”
Is this the relevant part of the question that JH is supposed to have misheard?
How do you get ‘drought’ out of that?
Read both out loud.
Do you hear anything that sounds like ‘drought’?
I have a hearing loss [mild] which is more significant in the presence of distracting background noise. Which I reckon parliament would provide.
But I don’t think I would ever intrude drought into that question.
There are other possibilities.
Force of habit of thinking for example.
He has been a climate change denier for a long time and may have jumped to the wrong conclusion about what was said not because he misheard but because he mis-thought and mis-spoke.
No big deal either way but I’m not sure the misheard explanation is valid.
I think, as Kim said, he probably had his mind on the vision of Rudd the night before getting embarrassed by the farmer (who turned up on Lawsie yesterday morning) expressing scepticism about the climate change and drought. If you read his answer, it doesn’t make any sense otherwise – he’s obviously talking about the drought, and thinks that’s what he’s been asked. If he was denying a link between emissions and carbon change, the “getting on with it” claim wouldn’t make sense either. I take your point (and I haven’t got perfect hearing myself so I know what you’re talking about), but probably his hearing loss is really quite severe.
I think it was an early retiree from the Bush crime families administration who described the chimp emperor as a,’ blind man in a room full of deaf people,’ though it was Rumsfeld who had a Dickens of a time hearing questions and who has now also been retired.
Look I don’t mind a lame duck leader.
It’s the lame duck with leperousy, deafness, blindness, halitosis and a machine-gun that we need to worry about.
Yes Mark, thats what I was trying to suggest as ‘mis-thought’.
So I’m suggesting its not a hearing problem so much as answering with what he wanted to say even though it was inappropriate.
Many of us, in conversation and particularly argument, have what we want to retort on our mind and ready to come out of the mouth before the other person has finished speaking.
We are not listening [as in taking note of what they are saying as distinct from hearing sounds clearly] to them, just getting ready to answer.
I think that may be what happened here.
But really, overall, its a storm in a teacup isn’t it?
Christ I was just about sick when I read Farmer in Crikey,do you mean to tell me this little liar and his cheer squad would do anything to get at Rudd, I bet they have there rats trawling through his garbage bin if Rudd had a disabilty they would be hounding him over it or doing the usual quite word to selected jurnos.
Please if Howard dont like it leave,but dont cry crocodile tears the man deserves everything he gets and then some
Aussie Bob at Surfdom puts the blatantly partisan view:
http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/2007/02/07/explains-a-lot/
I had no idea Howard was so deaf. I am guilty of picking up the ball and running with it re his jury is still out comment in parliament yesterday, and I commented at Barista towit–it was later that I read it was a bona fide mistake on Howard’s part. My guess would be that it was a Freudian slip, a wishful lapse back to a time, not so very long ago, when you could get away with such a comment feeling righteous and smug, if somewhat unsettled in your sublime ignorance. This climate change business is not going to go away and Howard knows it. It will require real leadership, which is a thing he cannot supply.
Warren Entsch said that there was so much noise in the chamber that he could barely hear the question himself. Then they replayed it. Other than Rudd speaking, the only thing you could have heard would have been crickets. But there weren’t any of them.
Entsch, not for the first time in his career, was flat out lying and caught red handed. I wonder what the media reaction if the roles of the political parties were reversed. But we’ll never know, will we? Because they play favourites. Nothing new there.
The fact is that Howard is playing big time catch up and, it must be said, as an old man. It is only going to get worse for him as he finds himself up against a much younger, much more nimble and infinitely smarter and more savvy opponent. In other words, it is going to get worse. Exponentially worse.
Do you know what the REAL elephant in the room is? It is not his deafness. It is his forgetfulness. He simply forgot what question he was answering and that, my learned friends, is a symptom of getting old. No doubt about it.
The Howardistas have just played the hearing card. How long before they play the age card? Will they dare?
It was a major gaffe for Howard. He’s got hearing probs big time. He’s finding it difficult to remember what policy he’s supposed to be defending passionately. He’s taken to flailing and slurping and there are suggestions that his hygiene is not so good. He has no friends but he gets a lot of mail.
I heard he was up on the roof of Kirribilli the other night signaling with a flashlight. And what’s that tune he’s always whistling? We have a right to know.
i predict a prime ministerial fall in the coming months – up the stairs or down.
on world news a few weeks ago, they had a longish wide shot of ratty doing his daily constitutional, and either his hips or knees are going. it’s going to be a long campaign, thankfully rudd is way too smart to show up his elders in any crass way. he’ll let the media do it for him.
once people start laughing, it’s all over, red rover.
when rudd meets with murdoch six weeks out from election day…..with costello yanking on his leash like a demented cattle dog & downer hiding in a snowtown vault as congressional hearings into AWB bribes get into full swing, and ruddock tries to deport David Hicks to England (“his grandmother was English”)……Ratty will take a nasty tumble….off the gangway of the HMAS Kanimbla into Sydney Harbour.
finally.
Mark, i also noticed the Terror’s pic of ‘old man Howard’ cupping his ear – but didnt realise they were outing him re: his hearing…….even so, I dont think they would have chosen that particular shot of him looking like Uncle Arthur, even 3 months ago.
Interesting remark about visual acuity. It could well be true that he is busily reading behaviour while everyone else responds to what he said.
Time for the kagemusha.
I’m not sure, jo, that was their intent but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.
How many more bad polls before Costello’s press secretary arranges subtle shots of him jogging along Lake Burley Griffin?
For the record Howard is one year older than I am and the same age as Phillip Adams. In some countries he’d be viewed as barely old enough to begin leading the country.
I’d say he definitely “misheard” but I’m a bit with Hannah. I was a ware of his hearing problem, but it has never showed up before in parliament in the sense of mishearing a question directed specifically to him. So I’m inclined to think it was a problem of his mindset and perhaps his reflex line of attack leading to a bit of conceptual realignment.
I’m also with FXH in thinking it would be nice if Howard could talk about it a bit as Janette Howard did recently on cervical cancer.
I don’t see Howard’s age as a problem physically, but our culture looks for someone a bit younger, being in power for four terms makes him vulnerable, and the issue of climate change looks as though it might have legs.
What pleased me was that Rudd in responding to the farmer didn’t use a put-down but gave a technically correct answer, whereas Macfarlane and Turnbull have both made technically incorrect statements today about sea levels.
But we might talk about that more in a post about the IPCC Fourth Assessment report (soon, I hope).
btw Turnbull and Garrett are going to have a debate on the 7.30 Report tomorrow. Should be worth a look.
Turnbull seems to take the view that we are too small to make a difference, so mitigation is someone else’s business. So we need to adapt and here the biggest problem, he says, is water.
I’m sure he’ll be a good debater, so it will be interesting to see how Garrett goes.
With respect, it’s complete nonsense to suggest that he misheard. Not even Howard has claimed he misheard. His aid works fine, which is why he never “mishears” (past examples, please?).
Howard misunderstood, i.e he made a mistake, got clean bowled, stuffed up, as even he himself has admitted (since the actual sound of the question bears no resemblence whatsoever to an alternative interpretation that could be “misheard”).
It happens to everyone, sooner or later, or now and again, ask Karl Beazley, or Kim Rove, or whoever …
Everybody, and I mean everybody apart from in Scandinavia and California (the only two civilized places on the planet) are using that pathetic excuse.
Look, I understand that we are mere apes, but sometimes you just wish we could get something right first time. Just one thing. (And if we were ever to get one thing right, this is the big one, it’s the one to ace.)
Flannery on Lateline said the Chinese refuse to do anything because the US won’t and we won’t.
Agreed, wbb, totally pathetic.
Could you just repeat this thread again. Thanx
It’s handy rhetoric.
Although I probably shouldn’t judge. When I water my hydrangeas even on the even days, I like to tell the neighbour when her head pops up and who’s a bit of a stickler, that my old hydrangeas won’t be the reason Melbourne runs dry.
From the top? Or was there a particular bit you couldne catch right, Nabs?
I didn’t quite catch that bit about the bit I couldn’t catch right bbw.
Look, (And Listen) unlike many here I have a certain respect and grudging admiration for Howard. He’s behaved just like I’d want my chief employee to behave during real shit hitting fan stuff like Port Arthur, the Asian Currency meltdown, the Bali Bombing and the Boxing Day Tsumani. And tactically he’s a very effective (and damn lucky) pollie.
My big gripes with him are manufacturing and/or enhancing fake crisises for political opportunity and utterly blowing the resource boom bonus on electoral handouts instead of on ICT and TDL infrastructure. We had a golden opportunity over the last decade to utterly rewire and relink the place – real nation-building stuff – and he blew it. Not to mention getting us involve in that Mesopotamian fiasco. You’ll notice the rest of the world dosn’t think any the worse of Canada and NZ for deftly sitting that one out.
And now he’s visibly (and audio) impaired. Regardless of where you boogie on the political spectrum, put a fork in him, he’s done. No more energy, no more vision, no more sound. Time for Costello, Abbott, Turnbull, Rudd, Gillard and Garrett get it on. Sure they’ll fight like cats and dogs, but at least it will be over new bones in a new century.
It’s now more than time to give Howard some token Board memberships, a think tank sinecure or two, a decent advance for his memoirs and the majestic bronze statue he deserves in a Canberra park full of uninhibited pigeons. Then the rest of us can all get on with the 21st century.
“It’s now more than time to give Howard some token Board memberships, a think tank sinecure or two, a decent advance for his memoirs and the majestic bronze statue he deserves in a Canberra park full of uninhibited pigeons.”
Or alternatively, for the world to provide him with small digs in The Hague where he can rehearse lines like “i do not recall”,”that is not what i heard”and that old favourite “i have no recollection” while he tries to explain away his complicity in that dicky Mesopotamian thingy.
If John is fumbling, it’s because he is being advised badly on climate change. It is Turners who is advising John. Turners doesn’t understand climate change because Turners doesn’t understand science. I should know. I went to school with him. Turners was brilliant at history and politics, but he was hopeless at maths and science. All the Liberals are.
I also met Peter Garrett on one inauspicious occasion. It was at a meeting to discuss the formation of an Australian Greens party. Myself and another Green were thrown out because we already belonged to a political party, which happened to be the fledgeling Sydney Greens. The instigator of this action was Peter Garrett. The hypocrite should have excluded himself, as he belonged to the Nuclear Disarmament Party.
Peter Garrett cannot be trusted, as Bob Brown knows all too well. The problem with Peter is his ego, but a secondary problem is that in many ways he is doing it all for Jesus.
The 7.30 Report should be interesting tonight.
I made this comment over at Club Troppo on cs’ thread about the Howard deafness gaffe:
I’m well on the way to complete deafness. This is due to repeated glue ear episodes as a kid. I’m eligible for a hearing aid but haven’t bothered as yet because I can lip-read fairly well and also took the time to learn Auslan a couple of years ago. There will come a time, however, where I’ll have to bite the bullet and do something about amplifying my hearing. I’m lucky I work in a job where my environment is quiet most of the time. Teaching high school wasn’t so easy, believe me.
Ken’s description of partial deafness is spot on, and I’ve always had quite a bit of sympathy for Howard because of it. Deafness not only means opening your mouth and inserting your foot from time to time (which is what has clearly happened here), it also means not being able to sing and – as you age – having flat, atonal prosody (something that’s getting worse for Howard over time).
Is all we need, a goddamned debate. That’s what blogs are for. This thing doesn’t need debating – it needs bipartisan action.
If it’s good enough for the states and feds to get together over the Murray – it ought to be good enough for the Canberra parliament to come together over CO2 pollution.
That’s not how politics works – but this case should be an exception. There is nothing left to debate.
progressive Co2 caps
Co2 trading
massive funding for alt.energy to catalyse the transitional period – bugger it if a few losers get funding – as long as national focus is put on the area and it all gets a hefty kick start
Is the PM more than 85% impaired?
Re Turnbull vs Garrett debate. Turnbull wedged Garrett twice.
1. Turnbull quoted Garrett from the late 80s saying higher economic growth meant more greenhouse gas emissions. To have zero greenhouse gas emissions means we have zero economic activity (a strawman), and that Garrett was in favour of less economic growth and lowering our material lifestyle.
2. Turnbull advocated nuclear energy, saying Garrett opposed it yet supported ALP position of selling more uranium overseas. When O’Brien asked Garrett about nuclear energy, Garrett totally evaded answering the question, instead choosing to talk about promoting solar, geothermal, wind, etc., and using Kyoto to do it.
O’Brien should have pressed Turnbull more on Kyoto. Turnbull, as usual, was blustery and evasive on this.
Garrett could have taken the opportunity to point out the costs of nuclear energy (hidden carbon costs in start up and decommissioning (a la Caldicott), problems of waste disposal, increased terrorism risks, etc.). Garrett knows all these arguments, but ‘petered’ out.
We are left wondering what position Peter Garrett really holds on nuclear energy. Is he there to placate the green movement, and allow the development of uranium mining once Labor gets back into power? Has he sold out to corporate interests, as Hawke did before him?
Someone needs to hold Garrett’s feet to the fire. Is Turnbull the only one who can do it?
I’d like to hear Bob Brown chiming in on this. Maybe Brown vs Turnbull vs Garrett in a three-way joust. Maybe throw in Caldicott too.
I think that you’re letting your view of Garrett cloud your judgement, silkworm.
Turnbull – yesterday’s man yesterdays man
Garrett – The future
Garrett made Turnbull look tired and almost disinterested, lacking detail and conviction.
While Garrett neatly evaded the nuclear question he showed a grasp of the issues that eluded Turnbull, without crapping on like most politicians. Indeed I think his greatest asset was how different he looks and sounds from your average pollie. To me it was a no contest, and bodes well for the future
Yep, I think Adrian is closer to the mark. Garrett did well. He understood that we need to act now and that if we do it right we can make money out of it.
Garrett knows what he thinks about nuclear, but he has to contend with Martin Ferguson and Joel Fitzgibbon who are rampantly pro-nuclear. Rudd has promised a debate but has virtually said they’ll be doing what Beasley had decided last year. That is selling it but not using it ourselves. Garrett is saving his comments for the internal ALP debate.
Silkworm, Howard decides their climate change policy. Turnbull is learning a few lines to support it. But he has nothing to offer. If he ran into the environment by accident he’d immediately call the SES to get him out. Luckily for him the session ended just as Garrett started up on the Barrier Reef and Kakadu.
LOL.
Do they even have “environment” in Vaucluse. I believe they only have lawns, grounds and in Turnbull’s case, the estate.