On Lateline last night, Laura Tingle made a point that she’s been developing in her Friday columns in the Fin Review.
Tingle argues that the parties’ current financial crisis (caused by a drop in corporate donations associated both with the actual Global Financial Crisis and a new reluctance of many shareholders to countenance political subventions) has left them flying blind, without the guidance of the elaborate qualitative polling they would normally enjoy in an election year. That’s worth remembering next time you hear Kevin Rudd criticised for using focus group-speak.
Tingle on The Worm:
And I think it’s also more important in a way at this period of time because both political parties are pretty financially strapped.
They can’t afford do the sort of polling that they did during the last election year in, say, 2007. So they’re flying blind a lot of the time. So something like the worm comes along, really reinforces to them what the messages are, and I think both sides of politics will walk away from this debate thinking a lot about their tactics.
Now, we all know from the more partisan elements in the commentariat today that The Worm is excitable, pro-Labor, not really representative, etc. As I said last night:
…[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, let’s leave the quibbling aside.
For Tingle, the health debate was a pre-campaign test run of political messaging of great use to the parties.
Tingle is right. And [h/t tigtog] Possum has provided an interpretation of the feedback from audience measurement of yesterday’s health debate which potentially has big implications for how political tactics are shaped in the 2010 federal election. (And also a very informative explanation of how it all works.) I’ve posted an excerpt over the fold.
Firstly, if the Ekas provided sample of undecided voters to Channel Nine was a good estimate of the true nature of undecided voters around the country, Tony Abbott is in deep shit. Initial responses to Kevin Rudd were much more positive than they were for Abbott and general audience responses across time were much more positive for Rudd than they were for Abbott, regardless of what each leader happened to be talking about at the time.
Negative turning points for Abbott were also much sharper than they were for Rudd, suggesting that even with the gradualism of the button technology, when each leader said something that the audience didn’t like, they tended to give Rudd the benefit of the doubt until they heard him out (with trickles of negative button presses coming in as Rudd’s answer progressed). When Abbott said something the audience didn’t like, they all pressed their negative buttons early and en masse.
That suggests that undecided voters have a relatively positive predisposition to Rudd and a very short tolerance for Abbott.
More importantly, on the Roy Morgan Reactor results (which I think was the superior piece of technology kit for measuring political reaction), the immediacy of its responses told us a few interesting things.
* The public doesn’t like Abbott’s jokes and theatrics. Whenever he tried to crack a joke, the audience response literally fell in a ditch regardless of the level it was at before the joke.
* When Rudd talks about the boring detail of process, far from turning the public off as some journos opine, the public reaction is actually positive, and not just a little bit positive, but substantially positive.
* When Rudd went negative on Abbott, he usually wasn’t punished for it in terms of audience response. However, when Abbott went negative on Rudd, Abbott nearly always elicited a strong, negative reaction from the audience
* Rudd has much more generic goodwill from the public than does Abbott. As soon as Rudd started answering any question, the audience response started out in net positive territory. When Abbott started answering any question, the audience response started out around zero – sometimes a little positive, sometimes a little negative.
One of the most important things it demonstrated – and something that the polling has been suggesting for a while now – is that Abbott has very little political room to move and his support appears to be generally soft.
Update: tigtog at The Drum.
Well said Mark.
I watched the entire “debate” yesterday, and was amazed that later that evening that some news reports were making it out to be a “close call” with a slight advantage to Rudd, rather than the complete disaster for Abbott that it was.
Especially, that bit when Abbott had that awful outburst of his fake sarcastic cackle. That was cringeworthy. God knows how he thinks behaving like that is going to somehow appeal to some people.
reb, I think Abbott was literally playing to the gallery – the press who were the audience in the room.
Mark, it also struck me from excerpts I heard on the radio that Abbott was doing that, in much the same way as Bob Hawke played to the same gallery in the first part of his televised debate with Andrew Peacock (which he lost) during the 1984 Federal election campaign. Peacock won that debate by addressing himself to the television audience whilst Hawke was addressing himself to Peacock and the pundits, and it seems that Rudd has, whilst Abbott hasn’t, learnt from that bit of ancient history.
Abbott’s performance was, I thought, incredibly bad. You expect a professional politician to have a sense of where the public are at, whether or not they lack polling resources. If they don’t have that antennae, they’re cactus.I think the cgent comparison is not Abbott/Latham but Abbott/Hewdson. Hweson started off well (until PJK did him on the cake). Abbott started off well (unless the media tarts had really got it wrong, and now Rudd has made him cactus. (I’m not sure how he did it, but it was brilliant.)
Yes, that was exactly what he was doing, Mark, and of course it got the response that he expected.
Apropos of my last comment, maybe Rudd just let Abbott be Abbott. After all these years he’s probably got the measure of the man well and truly. And if that’s so, it ain’t a pretty picture Abbott has painted of himself and we, the people, don’t like it.
I think that’s right, Paul.
… though the media narrative continues to spin its tawdry tale at The Punch:
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/its-time-to-kill-the-worm/
Rudd has not yet made him cactus, because as far as the election goes, we are still in the pre season playing practice matches.
But just as the dud footy teams in the pre season remain duds in the season proper, because they are objectively no good, so will Abbott. He is who he is. Nothing can change that.
The Liberals have just a few months to put a coherent health policy. History shows that it can’t be done. LPers with a long memory might recall the 1990 election campaign when Peter Shack, the Liberal shadow health minister, announced in the middle of the campaign that they (read: he) just couldn’t put a policy together, and abandoned the effort. It was incredibly damaging to the coalition and effectively ended Shack’s career.
A Peter from the next generation of Liberals, Dutton, faces the same fate.
@9 – Sam, there was a similar moment in the 2006 Queensland state election when the LNP released its hospitals policy, and Rob Messenger pretty much admitted it was cooked up on the back of a beer coaster (literally, I believe). Bruce Flegg, the ex-Liberal leader and doctor, had effectively gone missing in action. Similarly, in 2009, Springborg’s nutty thought bubble of longer trains which wouldn’t fit most platforms was a transport policy thought up in about a milli-second. It’s enormously damaging – something similar happened in the last NSW election.
The Coalition will pay a heavy price for the policy laziness of Abbott, Dutton and others on its front bench.
Why can’t Abbott summon a Health Policy as deftly as his Parental Leave scheme materialised?
Oh, perhaps because it needs to be serious plan and not just a fanciful thought-bubble to placate the sheilas.
Reality disagrees with our narrative! Repeal reality now!
The level of unreality that the Press Gallery has climbed to reminds me of a large and noisy cat stuck up a tree. Instead of just climbing down again, it will yowl until the Fire Dept. arrive to lop off a branch…
Mark, Chris Uhlmann was also bringing up kill-the-worm sentiments on ABC Newsradio radio this morning – I’m working from memory but his words were to the effect that he couldn’t really believe that a room full of voters would really have a visceral reaction when a politician says something, where he felt the appropriate response should be a yawn and a cup of tea.
At least he didn’t claim to speak for anyone but himself. But it was utterly rank cynicism.
I reckon someone should use tghe phrase “Worm-eaten narrative” in a post this week.
Just suggestin’!
I agree with most of the commentary and with your analysi,Mark. Leaving aside the pretty obvious media bias against and personal dislike of Rudd, the combination of yesterday’s unedifying performance by Abbott with the kind of rough shod school yard bully-boy sounding rhetoric from his team leaves a really unfortunate impression amongst ordinary people. For all his failings Turnbull (with a team including McFarlane for example)looks more viable.Abbott did think he was playing to his supporters in the club audience yesterday – and it was cringeworthy, and it did fall flat out here in people land. But it’s also clear to folks outside “the beltway” that the gallery is by and large a closed circle in which journos tend to speak/write to each other and get caught up in the ‘memes’ they themselves collaboratively generate.I wish journos would go take a cold shower, a few steadying deep breaths and spend some time thinking about how they might avoid getting entangled in the next breathless anti-Rudd rush. What’s going on at the moment serves NO-ONE well.
Actually back in 2006, Peter Debnam was a great deal more unstable than Abbott has ever been. Recall that he used Parliamentary privilege to dump on Bob Debus and had to apologise to the House, and then used an Australia Day address to attack multiculturalism.
Abbott’s got a long way to go yet before he can match the NSW State Libs for erratic brain-snaps.
“What’s going on at the moment serves NO-ONE well.”
Exactly. The question is: why is it going on?
Answers in 50 words or less please, without referring to ‘lazy journalists’.
Andrew #13, I commented on similar lines about Uhlmann here.
The flaw in the theory that the Worm is biased is that 7 ran a similar ‘Worm’ with a set of undecideds chosen by Morgan. Yet the result in reaction was pretty much the same as the 9 Worm. That seems to rule out the possibility of bias in audience selection.
Woops! Just read Possum’s thread. Seems like there was a difference in responses (and also Morgan did a broad cross-section – not just ‘undecideds’.) The response on 7 was even tougher on Abbott than the 9 Worm (I only had the benefit of seeing the ‘summary’ of the 9 Worm, which seemed generally to agree with the 7 one).
Have to agree with Possum and all others that Abbott is in deep trouble on this showing. The Gallery are clearly living in another dimension. It was never close.
Of course none of this would be a surprise to Nicola Roxan. She was miles ahead of Abbott in the last election debate where he displayed the same surly demeanor.
It’s funny that for the commentariate the 7 worm never existed in the first place. I guess it’s just too difficult even for them to argue that two different worms using two different methodolgies could both be biased, so you just pretend the other didn’t exist. The worms!
The worm is always correct.
The worm has intoned that Abbott will lead the Libs to vermicular doom.
Do the Libs have the time or the talent to replace Abbott with a worm-friendly leader?
I doubt it.
“Do the Libs have the time or the talent to replace Abbott with a worm-friendly leader?”
I think they have gone to ground, Katz.
As Jesus Christ said, “Where THEIR WORM dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”
Welcome to hell, Liberals.
Thanks to the Worm…
…the Liberal’s would-be King goes a-progress through the guts of a beggar…
The Worm cannot be returned to slumber. By the measure of mountains, it is a small thing, no more than a range of hills. An earthquake might swallow it. Yet its power surpasses comprehension. No upheaval or convulsion will hinder it. Against any obstruction, it will feed and grow mighty until it consumes the essence of the Earth. Then all life and Time will cease. Naught remains for us except extinction
It’s not just Abbott who has been stripped naked, it’s also large sections of the media who have shown themselves to be so arrogant that they assumed they could influence the thinking of the Australian public with their vitriolic writings since Rudd came into Government. Malcolm Farr (who I sometimes think is able to give a not so biased report on politics) seemed to infer that there would be a potential “that the debate becomes a gang-up on Kevin Rudd….). Surely he is not suggesting some pre-arranged agenda for the media. Why would he even entertain the notion that the media present for the debate would “gang-up” on anybody, let alone Kevin Rudd?
Today’s announcement from Nick Minchin fortuitously brings with it a chance for Tony Abbott to announce a reshuffle of his front bench, which he would have been loath to suggest prior to the election, let alone the day after he would so soundly trounced.
The comment quoted above was from Malcolm Farr’s blog yesterday prior to the Debate.
Now do Frank Herbert, Norto
Yeees. Footy players interviewed after king hitting unsuspecting opponents in front of multiple cameras offering unending replay often offer up little more than “I had a brain explosion” by way of explanation. In so far as their brains go they are probably correct and little enough happened to provoke except they couldn’t resist the opportumity for a good sucker punch.
I reckon Abbott’s real brain explosion is yet to come and when it happens its gonna be a bewdy. Oh, the anticipation is exquisite.
I think the MSM have become so accustomed to the Coalition being a bunch of talentless, useless, policyless fools that they feel they have to give them a leg-up otherwise the political landscape would be hopelessly one-sided.
Labor can survive on its own merits – or at least look after themselves when they get into trouble.
The Libs seem to need all the help they can get.
Liam, I have all six in the series but they’re all at home!
And now Kingmaker Nick Minchin is quitting! meaning there can be a reshuffle of the deckchairs.
Wife thinks it was an Annabel Crabb reference to the Union of Socialist Nematodes regarding the worm in Rudd V Howard days
Go the USN
@ 34
Barnaby Joyce for Leader of the Opposition in the Senate?! Let’s see the Worm plot that one …
Damn! Not only are the circumstances of Minchin quitting unfortunate (apparently his son is injured), but it’ll mean the Libs have a chance of getting sane and electable.
Wrenching this thread back to worms, I’ve got a post up on The Drum today -
The Great Debate Game: Winning over the worm. http://bit.ly/aAIfJI
Abbott addressed the journos in the gallery instead of the watchers on the telly in his opening speech, and that was it – essentially game over so far as the worm went.
P.S. thing is, even if Abbott realises/believes that this is why the audience response was so bad, I don’t think he has it in him to effectively perform for a television audience next time, because he doesn’t operate that way – Abbott needs the immediate responses of the parliamentary party or the press gallery to play off, I don’t think he has what it takes to address an invisible audience that gives him no feedback without miscalculating his delivery.
I dont even buy the “he’s a good parliamentarian” routine the MSM has invented lately to buttress other worm-eaten narratives.
Ive seen him in action – he’s no Keating. Not even Costello level.
Katz @23, the Libtards are a talent-free party. I didn’t see the debate, but read Shamaham’s desperate attempt to award some points to Smuggles, because he hasn’t got a health policy! My response to that is why TF was he debating health policy with NO policy? Mind you, it does confirm his “authenticity”. Roflmao!!
I think I know what’s happening here. It’s not journalistic laziness or bias as such, but more about the preconceptions they bring to the political arena.
I happened to watch the start of the debate on ABC before I realised Nine and Seven had the Worm. Once I knew that, I had to satisfy my curiosity. Up until that point I thought Abbott was doing ok – that may have had a lot to do with the way the press corps were reacting (hearty laughs accompanying every Abbott jibe at Rudd). But as soon as I switched over it seemed obvious to me that Abbott was awful – the Worm made it crystal clear.
On later reflection, it occurred to me that the assembled press operate in the same bubble I was in for the first part of the debate. They make their judgments based on their preconceptions of Rudd and Abbott; preconceptions they endlessly reinforce through hearing each other talk. It’s very easy to modify or solidify your opinion, to suit the environment you operate in. And only a very small further step to start believing it too.
The Worm was an unwelcome burst of reality for them, and they’re having trouble processing that. They’ve been dismissing Abbott’s failings for ages now, especially as regards his preference for criticism over policy development. Seeing this immediate, unfiltered reaction ought to make them sit up and question some of their presumptions. But it doesn’t look as if it’s going to.
Some of them (Keiran Gilbert is the main offender, I think) just refuse to believe what they saw; most just look for a mitigating factor or an excuse to explain it away. There’s been some honest appraisals, but in the main the narrative drifted inexorably from “Rudd won” to “Rudd only won because…” to “Rudd won according to some, but…” to “Rudd was always going to win and Abbott exceeded expectations” and so on until a position is reached that most closely matches the reality with their preconceptions.
Right now, they’re having a terrible time accepting that the Worm represents real people, and that there’s really no external factor that’s going to skew the reactions Labor’s way. They’ve divorced “The Worm” from “The Reaction”. But really the two are the same thing. And when they say they want to get rid of the Worm (well, that’s mostly Liberal talk, I suppose), what they’re really saying is that they don’t want to know how the public are reacting to it; it makes them uncomfortable because it doesn’t fit with what they “know”.
It’s interesting, I must say. Having a real-time reaction going on helps to demonstrate how much the message gets massaged through the medium. It would have been easy for any journalist to skew the assessment of the debate any way they liked – if it hadn’t been for that meddling Worm. That they’re trying to do it even in the face of that is very instructive.
Update: tigtog at The Drum.
@42 – interesting thoughts, Ville.
“the journalists are fascinated by Tony Abbott” – there’s much in that, though the reasons elude me….
Apropos my worm related
Italian suppositoryinnuendo on a previous thread,it must be finally said:Tony – Go Eat Worms!
Nobody likes you, everybody hates you,
You should go eat worms!
Big fat Labor ones,
Kevvie, Lindsey, Wayney ones,
Even red Julia might squirm!
Just bite off their heads, and suck out their juice!
Make those leftie worms pay!
You could bike for miles, swim off in the surf -
Worms could fuel your gettaway!
@42 – I agree. Good post, Ville. A few things I’d like to add:
“It’s not journalistic laziness or bias as such, but more about the preconceptions they bring to the political arena.”
“They make their judgments based on their preconceptions of Rudd and Abbott; preconceptions they endlessly reinforce through hearing each other talk.”
It *is* journalistic laziness and bias. Their job is nothing but to manufacture and reinforce political preconceptions. PR wise and editorially (follow the money paid to persuade), this is not a naive process – it’s a deliberate, and increasingly clumsy and transparent, strategy to keep the public from thinking outside the narratives they’ve created. Witness that stupid anachronistic segment on Insiders about the week’s political cartoonery.
“what they’re really saying is that they don’t want to know how the public are reacting to it;”
In the same vein, I don’t think it’s just denial from the Coalition that they lost, and that many people viscerally don’t like Abbott, etc. Right now, what they really don’t want is for someone sitting in one of their marginally held seats, who probably would’ve voted Coalition out of habit, to finally *wake up* to the fact that a hell of a lot of people think that way. It’s human nature to be curious about, and respond to what the people around you think – no different from the ‘vibes’ felt in those studios full of people operating the worm controls. Swinging voters want to be winners, not losers.
Was Tony Abbott really that cocky and stupid enough to walk into this debate without realising Obama’s tour cancellation meant the US health reforms were about to be voted through?
Can you imagine Tony Abbott walking into the White House and shaking Obama’s hand? Is Tony Abbott, not to mention his preposterous self-caricature, the international projection of Australia, and Australian political culture, she/he wants these days?
Oops, last para should have read something like:
Can you imagine Tony Abbott walking into the White House and shaking Obama’s hand? *Can your average swinging voter?* Is Tony Abbott, not to mention his preposterous self-caricature, the international projection of Australia, and Australian political culture, she/he wants these days?
Devine Opines:
The worm is a moron. The Channel Nine host Tracy Grimshaw ought to apply an IQ test to her audience of “undecided” voters before she gives them a licence to press buttons.
Goodness! Don’t tell me Miranda is one of those dreadful elitists who dump on the Ordinary Australian? Get me the smelling salts!
O Tones thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the PR storm:
Has messed with thy head
oh budgie boy:
And his wiggling for Rudd
Does thy cred destroy.
LOL, Helen @50. I’d always regarded The Worm as a gimmick but if it can rile Devine, it must be good for something!
Possum and other Psephs have given pretty good argument for the feedback value of the Worms in the absence of other costlier market research. When’s Ten, SBS and the ABC going to join the party?
Poor Miranda is very upset that reality doesn’t coincide yet again with her prejudices, set as they are in concrete.
So if the worm is a moron, then so obviously are all those who dared to operate it defiance of Miranda’s wishes.
Is there such a thing as class action for defamation?
Oooo! Helen @50, sounds like Ms Devine has seen the election result in a vision and doesn’t like it. Such invective directed at Mr and Ms Undecided Voter. Maybe she thinks her scorn will terrify them into endorsing Smuggles. Bwwaahahahaha!
Would a fainting couch help, Helen?
I agree, Nick, Ville @ 42 has nailed it. The worm represents “a real-time reaction (which)..helps to demonstrate how much the message gets massaged through the medium.”
What an appropriate nemesis for Abbott’s hubris – a worm. It’s astonishing that the MSM have so sycophantically encouraged him and “his preposterous self-caricature” as you so aptly put it. If public opinion is represented in any sense by that worm it has well and truly turned against our shallow and self congratulatory media which to date has failed to understand its mood.
We have a more than competent PM leading an able and talented team who’ve worked with almost unprecendented unity to bring us triumphantly through a world shattering crisis. Are they to be given due credit for this? It seems our carping media prefer to champion a fag end of an Opposition led by a fitness freak.
Some of those journos should be eating their words while Abbott eats worms.
There’ll come a time when Ms Devine’s brain will explode with all the unresolved contradictions that she manages to juggle week after tedious week.
Actually reading that article, particularly the bit about her poor thumb, made my brain hurt, so imagine the state of the cranium of the person who actually writes this stuff every week.
Maybe she and Paul Sheehan should start a self help group over at Fairfax.
Adrian, they’d also need to include Gerard Henderson in the group.
Yes definitely Gerard, and whoever the dill is that they employ to pontificate on Federal politics on Sunday. Paul Daley???
“It’s astonishing that the MSM have so sycophantically encouraged him”
Patricia WA, I’d venture Labor PR agents in the press would have needed to do little more recently than simply drive that caricature of Abbott home. Lib PR was obviously seeking to brand Abbott as the sporting Aussie anti-wonk, who says what he thinks, doesn’t take himself too seriously, the laughing larrikin, yada yada.
In response, Labor PR hits on, okay, why don’t we just run with it? We can really pile it on. We can feed the media with even more OTT ridiculous semi-naked shots of the guy, one after another, after another – until the public is well and truly sick of him, and his ceaselessly egotistical promotion of himself.
Was it the Libs or Labor who commissioned that piece (courtesy of laura) in today’s Age? It makes no strategic sense to me for it to have been the Libs.
(Just throwing it all out there as worm food for thought. A built-in part of the narrative is always that people are sick of one narrative or another
)
Gawd! Its almost obscene.
Talking of obscene narratives, whyowhyowhy have I been unable as yet to find a vid on YouTube of the Abbott Cackle?
*pout*
tigtog, if I weren’t so lazy I could probably arrange that, being as I recorded the debate. (Haven’t watched it yet. Should I bother? I mean, I already know Abbot’s a tool.)
Here you are tigtog .
Nick @ 60 – you’ve cheered me up no end! Great to think of Labor PR encouraging the iron man image and the media focus. After all his being in the spotlight all the time does leave government free to get on with their job without too much scrutiny. I am hoping though that Greg Combet is going to come out soon with some overview of the insulation program putting the accident/mortality rate figures into the context of normal annual stats.
There’s nothing wrong with being fit, of course, but the way Abbott goes at it leaves little time for reading whether for leisure or political briefings, or for his personal life either. And it’s not his travelling that gets in the way of his sex life! Having been a distance runner myself for many years I know how obsessive many people become. Abbott not only runs, he cycles and surfs too, as wells as fighting fires and saving lives! Do you think he is trying to avoid something? Or compensate perhaps?
PS couldn’t catch Laura’s lead to the Age, but found the story about Abbott and Lent via the ‘too much info’ thread – was that it?
This is it PWA. Tony dressed from the right that day.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/fitness-a-key-part-in-abbotts-life-says-bishop-20100325-qxpc.html
AAAAARGH My eyes, can I unsee!?
My bad, Helen. There should have been an explicit worm warning.
Thanks for the vid link, adrian!
All joking aside, Abbott’s dedication to his fitness regime is one of the least objectionable things about him. He’s just doing the same thing he’s been doing for the last several decades – running, swimming and cycling regularly. It’s easy to point to physical vanity, but fitness has other rewards and keeping fit is not a bad thing in itself (as Patricia WA said).
An argument can be made about the sheer number of hours he puts into race events that are not about fitness per se, and how at least some of those hours could otherwise be spent on actual political work, but I don’t know how well that will run in a public sphere that is generally fond of larrikin sportsmen.
The media’s breathless fascination with his lycra moments is what is most mockable here, and the sheer number of lycra shots is something that even fans of larrikin sportsmen may well feel is too much. If the media is being reverse-spun by Labor PR, that’s a game very well played.
I’m afraid you’ll have to poke your eyes out, Helen (as will I).
That was horrible.
We saw a lot of one liners from Rudd and the worm went wild. I think Abbott raised the most valid point though and that is this governments record so far. Not much substance from the PM, just the same flowery rhetoric, similar to his election campaign. It’s easy to sound like you’re going to change the world but not so easy to deliver. I think this government needs to be judged on its record to deliver and that’s not too good.
I’d say in 2 years the gov. has achieved more than Howard and co did in 10, Donald@71.
I am really not sure that the Liberal talking point of Rudd being ‘all talk no action’ is going to fly because like the other made up stories it is not based on reality.
The worm would hate that just like the burning houses and unnecessary school halls palaver.
Donald,
Would you rather have – inciting race hatred wink, wink, (cf, Cronulla riots), bloodymided destruction of the union movement, politicisation of the ABC to the point they’re a bunch of rightened rabbits, persecution of single mothers and the disabled, racist comments about Aborigines and refugees, children being traumatised in detention centres, demonisation of the poor and disadvantaged, policies towards women whose only aim was to keep them barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, family courts who have no choice but to grant partial custody to a father who is a child molester, wholesale destruction of the social fabric of universities, a Liberal PM who wouldn’t know what the truth was if you hit him in the face with it,a Pm who participated in alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity and got away with it, the removal of the right of habeas corpus … need I go on? Rudd did none of these things.
That *laugh* is is so fake. There was a little article in the tabloid Herald-Sun today questioning whether Abbott was spending too much time on his fitness regime and not enough at his desk. Could be be media worm is starting to turn.
Anthony Nolan @31: “I reckon Abbott’s real brain explosion is yet to come and when it happens its gonna be a bewdy. Oh, the anticipation is exquisite.”
I reckon you might be right!
Abbott aint the cool cautious type, as we have already seen. Exposure of the opposition’s policy vacuum is only going to get worse as campaigning continues. The polling figures will probably slide remorselessly.
Desperate measures will probably backfire, as they often do.
Eventually…”light blue touchpaper and stand well back”…BANG!
Reckon he might go in style?!!
Helen, I too was taken aback?/surprised?/affronted? by Joe2′s lead into the picture of Abbott unclothed. Ever since he displaced Turnbull we’ve seen scores of similar shots and every time I sense my distaste. I’m no prude, I like fit men of any age and during a long and eventful life I’ve seen plenty of them in various stages of undress, both privately and publicly on beaches. So I have been a bit puzzled by my reaction, and by the reaction of other women like yourself.
I don’t think it’s because of his politics, which admittedly we do not like at all. Nor is he ugly, deformed, overly hairy or muscle bound. In fact, he has a good body. His posture is natural and entirely appropriate to the activities in which he was earlier engaged, as is his dress e.g. lycra for biking, wet suit for surfing, bathers for beach etc.
I’d be interested in other women’s response to my hunch which is simply that any public figure of the left or right should not make public appearances in a state of undress, much less be photographed and televised addressing us in beachwear. It’s not only inconguous, but it’s in poor taste and against common etiquette e.g. if we turn up to a ball in slacks and sneakers we earn social approbrium.
As a public figure I think he should observe the social niceties and do what most of us would do if someone turns up at our front door if we happen to be sunbaking in the back yard, like slip on a skirt or shirt. I think he has a responsibility to behave according to generally accepted social norms and appearing unclothed before others outside the family circle is not how most of us behave. Even my nudist friends have a natural modesty with others.
Am I off beam here?
Patricia WA @76, agree that there is nothing wrong with Abbott’s appearance, per se, or with a desire to stay fit. However, I suspect that women are intuitively picking up on something else. He is flaunting himself.
For example, say you go rafting with a bunch of men and women you don’t know, then you all have to get out of the wet suits, towel down and put on normal clothes. Some men just dry themselves off and put on their jeans, quite naturally. You discreetly notice that they are attractive. Some other men pull down their wet suit top and parade around with their hairy chests, bragging on and on about the day, and making a production out of towelling themselves off, while sauntering about and making sure that all the women get an eyeful of their physique.
Do we notice? Sure we do. Does it give some of us the creeps?
As to your other point, totally agree that parading about in red cling film does not look very Prime Ministerial. His brutish behaviour in debates also does not look very statesmanlike.
We might wonder what sort of image Australia would be projecting, if perish the thought he were elected, and continued to behave “naturally” as himself in international events? Sauntering about half-naked and arguing aggressively with all and sundry…
PS to my comment at 76 I see today the notice at our local gym not only insists on appropriate footwear, i.e. closed and fastened, for obvious safety reasons, but also insists on ‘appropriate dress’ as a courtesy to others. So bathers are expressly forbidden and a T shirt or singlet must be worn at all times.
Wouldn’t the same rules apply to Abbott at his gym? So why wouldn’t he understand that he gives offence to the public at large when appearing semi-naked in our living rooms? I think you’ve pin-pointed the real issue, Elise. He’s flaunting. In the same way he draws attention to his sex life; even referring to its limitations is a form of exhibitionism.
This probably belongs on the ‘too much information’ thread.
While the leaders themselves aren’t engaging twitter particularly effectively online, the twitter stream following the debate was alive with comments.
I wonder how many times thought,the undecided will change their minds between now and the calling of the election.