Perhaps one impact of the never-ending election campaign is that the seedier and more sordid aspects of how politics is played are coming more into view. There are a few things bubbling along which are in fact inter-related. Talk It Out criticises the focus on polls and writes a great post about some numbers the Howard government would rather have us forget, and which The Dear Team Leader and the Subprime Minister may not have at their fingertips for radio interviews and door stops. Andrew Bartlett, who’s rightly been bemoaning the lack of focus on any of the legislation pushed through the Parliament last week, also turns a critical eye on what’s dominating political debate:
On the eve of a crucial federal election, with both the government and the Senate in the balance, our national political debate is reduced to front page news in the Sunday Papers repeating gossip about a government Minister, married with kids, who is allegedly visiting gay bath houses and having gay affairs, followed by petty political squabbling over who is actually responsible for peddling the gossip.
Gossip, smear and baseless assertion get much more traction when it is combined with the ‘theatre critic’ style of political journalism which is rather more common than I would like – and which is certainly not confined to Australia alone
And of course, the focus on polls and the horse-race is part of that style too. But importantly, it’s also about attempting to influence the dynamic of the contest rather than any sort of real analysis, as Possum parsing Pearson demonstrates. All this stuff is intertwined, and “policy” is increasingly about unbelievable numbers too (“working families” or “deserving pensioners” to get 670 trillion dollars announces Rudd/Howard). Counted out of the equation, “new leadership” and “fresh thinking” notwithstanding, is any accountability for where we are now and where we will be going in the future.
It probably doesn’t pay to bemoan too much I suppose – I’d been resisting having a go at the absurd amount of attention and credence given to piddling gaffes on tax rates, candidates’ names, total amounts of Budget tax cuts, etc. But when a story on who leaked the ‘gay Minister’ gossip comes in on the TV news ahead of a former USA Vice-President talking about the political impact on the USA of Australia ratifying Kyoto – one of the key (and seemingly ever-shrinking number of) differences between the alternative governing parties on offer come election time, I think a bit of bemoaning is not uncalled for.
Agree, Mr Bartlett.
But onto happier news (though not for some). The latest Galaxy poll is just out, 56:44, down just 1 point in a month.
Bye bye, Mr H & Co. Do leave the silver behind.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22468466-952,00.html
Kudos to Andrew Bartlett for drawing attention to the 30 pieces of
silverlegislation passed in the last senate session. One that particularly concerns me is the one that gives the Feds the right to tap emails without warrants. This is obviously an attempt to copy the situation in the US, where Bush gave himself powers to break the FISA laws, and which was subsequently struck down by the Supremes as unconstitutional. Now, at this point I’m wondering, given the similarity of the legislations in Australia and the US, and given the unconstitutionality of the US warrantless wire-tapping, what are the chances that the Australian legislation is also unconstitutional? Are there any constitutional experts around?I find Rudd’s campaign rather disappointing, but I cant help but think, that this is ultimately what it takes to beat Howard. You have to out-Howard him, which is sad and hopefully just a one-off.
This election is to be contested in the shadows of the economic and financial equivalent of a nuclear holocaust. The credit crunch will soon relegate to the category of trivial irrelevance any party’s visions of “broad, sunlit uplands.”
The Libs cannot, with credibility, square the circle of the fundamental contradiction between deteriorating industrial relations conditions of wage and salary earners and the increasing stress of personal indebtedness of many recently acquired Liberal voters.
The Libs have very little to offer for the future besides a fresh round of
liesnon-core promises.The ALP has not yet begun to play on the gnawing sense of insecurity of indebted persons. It is undeniable that this issue is a negative chord, so the task for the ALP will be to play it without sounding too alarmist and without appearing to gloat about the predicament of persons caught in the indebtedness trap.
The looming credit crisis spawned by the US residential home market meltdown will inevitably make the situation worse and any genuine promise to fix it prohibitively expensive.
This issue has to be handled with enormous care by both sides.
With horseflu now cancelling the Magic Millions sale, and races cancelled in Sydney on the weekend, there has been very little pressure on the Minister for Horseflu to explain how the Quarantine cuts over the life of the Howard Government have contributed to this situation.
A Government cheersquad member sums it up through rose coloured glasses:
He might also be able to explain the importation into Australia of fire ants and other exotic pests during the Howard resume as doing a good job but it is doubtful that the Australian public see quarantine as a success of this Government.
Imho Rudd doesn’t have to be more royalist than the wicked king to win. He simply has to do the right thing. Help make the place a democracy for a start. We are not a democracy – we are a Governor-generalate. This must not stand. Then Rudd could do the right thing by our first Aussies.
So far he has not. Then Rudd could junk this terrible panopticon idea for the new bureaucratic caste. The Department of Homeland Security. What sort of lunar right wing Mandarins are going to wind up running this horrorshow?
Rudd has said he will wind down the war but will he wind back the state? The state itself is a form of war on the poor. No party can afford to ignore this much longer as the state colonizes every part of everday life. Resistance is fertile, resistance is growing and so help me resistance will beat them!
Full spectrum resistance will win!
When I interviewed locals about the upcoming election (will it ever start or is Howard hoping we will go away) two issues were highlighted besides Iraq and Work Choices. 1. Housing: rents as well as prices. 2. Cost of living: everyday prices. Diesel had just hit $147.9 per litre. A week later it’s $149.9. Howard would be well advised to call the election before both of these haunt him through the campaign. The Broome Voices videos are at ‘Labor View from Broome’ http;//laborview.blogspot.com/. Take a look while you’re waiting for the PM to face the voters.
Glenn Milne refers to the bathhouse gossip in the following way:
“Now Mr Rudd himself faces scrutiny in light of what’s known in Labor circles as a “s*** sheet” being circulated in an attempt to bring down a minister for being gay, a lifestyle that the ALP publicly supports” and, “…veteran political journalist Laurie Oakes said the Liberal Party was behind a “fact sheet” about a Howard government minister”
This story is being reported and given resolution in the media as about nothing more than “dirty politics”, with a lot of tut-tutting about smearing and dirty sex. Well, I am as tired of all the sex-related dirt as anyone else, but when it comes to electing a government, I want to know the facts, once the innuendo is out there. You cannot just trot this stuff out, and then say, move on, nothing here except pollies being pollies. Journos are really failing us if they expect this to wash.
According to Milne, homosexuality is a “lifestyle”, supported by the ALP as if its some kind of pathetic indulgence. If I were a homosexual voter I would be very cranky with the Poisonous Dwarf. This is a seriously contestable proposition being circulated as fact by a big time columnist in a national broadsheet.
Further, if this story is true, then I expect the gay community would be very interested in finding out the way in which this particular minister has voted on issues of importance to them, such as marriage laws and other deliberately discriminatory government policies. That is, the issue becomes one of dishonesty and hypocrisy, and voters should be allowed to make their own judgments on whether this man is fit to serve. In the USA any number of homosexual scandals have recent years forced various congressmen to resign under charge of hypocrisy and dishonesty.
Secondly, according to Laurie Oakes, who is generally regarded as a reliable source, the dirt sheet came from the Liberals. Now that is an important story in itself, but it has been ignored so far. If the Liberals are leaking against themselves then it reveals a serious rift within the party, with loyalties crumbling and fear on the loose, and it shows that they are willing to throw one of their own to the wolves, just in order to suggest that the ALP is into the smear game too. I want to know who is responsible for the dirt sheet, and the implications for Liberal Party cohesion going into the election. I am getting a bit tired of journalists who claim that their obligation to protect their source overrides the public interest. We have seen this in the Brissenden Costello kerfuffle, and in relation to Jason Katsoukis story on the Gillard dirt sheet.
Essentially, leading commentators in the media are acting like prima donnas, as if they are the story (how principled am I). Its about time they came clean and gave voters the chance to make up their own minds. And if that means wading through some more dirt, then what’s new?
“If the Liberals are leaking against themselves then it reveals a serious rift within the party, with loyalties crumbling and fear on the loose, and it shows that they are willing to throw one of their own to the wolves,…..”
Both the SMH and Adelaide Now have articles about John Howard and other ‘senior Liberal officials’ ringing up retiring Lib. MPS in certain seats and asking them to run again.
Calling special executive council meetings etc.
Because ‘secret Lib. polling’ has shown massive swings to the ALP.
For example, according to Adelaide Now, ALP candidate Karin Bolton in the SA electorate of Grey has a swing of 15-20%, enough to bring home the bacon [just, the Libs. have a 13.8% margin].
According to Adelaide Now, the current Grey candidate for the Libs is ‘so unpopular’ that Howard rang him up yesterday and ‘prevailed’ upon him to stand down in favour of the retiring Lib. member, who decided to stay retired late yesterday.
Maybe he can see the writing on the wall.
The interesting thing is that both articles cite ‘senior Liberal officials’ for this attempted intervention and similar attempts in 5 other seats with retiring MPs.
So who are these ‘senior Liberal officials” and what is their motivation?
I read the Milne piece yesterday in the BrisVegas “Sunday Mail”, and noticed that the alleged “sh*t-sheet” was presented as of ALP origin, and hence a problem for Kevin Rudd. But Laurie Oakes suggested he got a copy of the “sh*t-sheet” from a Liberal source.
Now I dunno if it really was of Liberal origin, but even if so you can bet that Milne won’t mention it or correct any impression that it came from Labor. I still recall Milne’s allegation of “Rudd was warned against doing inappropriate things to the strippers” allegation that Milne dredged up, a claim disputed by all in attendance and without any apparent evidence. Just a dirty smear thrown out there, with no evidence, and never mentioned again once it becomes obvious that it was a pile of bull.
I’m curious about other’s views on the importance of the polls in influencing opinions. Are people more likely to vote for a party because opinion polls suggest the party has majority support.
It sounds a bit silly, but then again I’ve always thought the huge level of support for Essendon and Collingwood football teams in Victoria is in part about people wanting to identify with popular teams. And I can’t help noticing the importance the Libs or their tame GG columnists put on spinning poll results and the apparent view that if voters can be made to believe that support is shifting back to the LNP, then it will happen.
But then it gets complicated, with the ALP regularly talking down the polls and telling us what a tight election it’s going to be. And I can’t believe that any voter doesn’t have at least one objective reason for the way they vote.
Now the Minister for Horseflu’s problems just got worse with Eagle Farm and Doomben horses now infected.
And the WA Branch of the ANF want Shrek to save them from the evil ACTU and ALP.
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,22472459-948,00.html
I no it doesn’t need pointing out but Milne is a f-ing disgrace.
Well said Grace Pettigrew. More at Crikey.
http://www.crikey.com.au/Crikey-Says/20070924-Crikey-Says.html
Frank, wasn’t the ANF the mob in charge of nurses when they were poorly paid slaves living in nurses quarters with rules for their lives more related to a religious order than employees? Perhaps the ANF have learned nothing over the past 40 years and are pining for the good old days.
Thanks for the link Joe2. As Crikey (and Christian Kerr) says:
“Sleaze and dirt are component parts of the fabric of Australian political reportage….But if a few more journalists had the guts to reveal the dirt behind the dirt, as Jason Koutsoukis did two weeks ago, rather than acting as the conduit for smear and innuendo, as Paul Sheehan and Glenn Milne did over the past two days, a lot more politicians would be a lot more reticent to spread the muck.”
The fact is these toads in the media are presuming to act as unelected gatekeepers for information peddled by unnamed political sources. Who gave them the right to decide what I need to hear about in electing my representatives? Oh, this is just fluff, but this might have enough legs to run, and I must not tell who told me. Pthffft.
The media is complicit in peddling this sleaze, just enough to titillate, but not enough to get caught for defamation, and all in the interests of increasing their circulation profits.
What sickens me is their faux outrage about sexual sleaze in the political arena when its OK to have it plastered all over the media elsewhere in other contexts. And the presumption by these egotistical toads that they are somehow qualified to decide what we hear and what we don’t hear about. I would not write a character reference for Glenn Milne for quids.
These pathetic little toads are inserting themselves into the political process and should be held to account by the voters demanding to know their sources. And any toad who comes up with the “protecting my sources” defence should be laughed out of the court of public opinion.
The fact is that there is a titanic struggle going on behind closed doors in the federal liberal party to figure out what they are going to do with themselves when they lose this election. Tip Costello lacks the balls to lead the party and everyone hates him anyway, so he will be out the revolving door in a flash. Dolly Downer wants the job and so does Malcolm Turnbull. Did Milne leak just enough for Downer to be smeared? That points the finger at Turnbull, who was very active in the recent leadership fuss, and is the only one with the talent to lead the party after defeat.
(On the other hand, it might be other way around, and Dolly leaked against Turnbull, because it was in Sydney after all, but would he be that stupid when he is the one who wears fishnet stockings?).
If any of this is remotely so, then Milne is actively dabbling in internal party politics, regardless of the national interest and his duty to his profession, and his journalism ticket should be extracted from him by force if necessary.
This morning, still a bit sleepy, I heard a little of Fran Kelly and Michelle Grattan on RN having their chat. It kind of roughly went like this…
Fran: gee how about that headline in todays paper; that is not a good look for Rudd is it?
Michelle: no it not something useful when a tough election campaign is yet to be fought.
Fran: have you seen much of this gloating around the traps?
Michelle: no
Fran: Well it certainly something that Mr Rudd will need to be careful about .
Michelle: yes Fran.
After a little bit of work I think I have found that scary headline “Labor’s cocky victory dance” from here..
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22475072-5001021,00.html
We have two senior journalists talking about a headline from a crap sensationalist paper, as if it was important. Even after the more senior had commented that she had, personally, heard nothing in it. Spare me please. No wonder I wake up grumpy.
ps.. do not miss the leading poll run by ‘the terror’, that is based on its own manufactured headline.
Yep, joe2, here is Steve Lewis of the Daily Terror manufacturing the anti-ALP story for the day:
“Revelations that Labor MPs are actively discussing who will fill lucrative positions will play into the Government’s hands.”
So Steve rings around asking who might get what job, finds some backbench idiot prepared to slag off, and suddenly we have “revelations” that will “play into the government’s hands”, served up on a platter. And worthy of repetition by the claquers at the ABC.
I might suggest that the parliamentary press gallery should take a good long look in the mirror some time, if that didn’t appear to be their only daily exercise. Talk about self-regarding.