Tonight sees the only debate of this election campaign – live at 6.30pm AEST.
Attempts to negotiate an independent commission to determine the scope and rules of three debates failed this term. Academic research has demonstrated that the rather cursory debates in Australian federal elections (a very recent tradition) have little impact on voting intention, and media commentary on “who won?” almost none. Yet, politicians regard them as key to entrenching, or regaining momentum. Nevertheless, tonight’s event is unlikely to be as influential on the campaign as the debates were in the recent UK election, particularly in the absence of Greens leader Bob Brown.
We could benefit from the much less rigid format employed in the US for presidential debates, and there’s not much likelihood that either Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott will go off message, or of a lively contest over policy. We’ll see.
Rules for the debate are here.
The Twitter hashtag for the debate is… #debate.
Update: ABC 24 is urging people to use the hashtag #ausvotes. I don’t know if that implies they’ll be putting some tweets on screen a la Qanda, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
I’ll be live tweeting the debate here.
Update: My take on the debate is here.
Interesting point about the lack of impact of the debates. Evidently Nick Clegg from the Lib Dems in the first UK debate won. His party was going places. In fact the swing predicted by the commentators to them as a consequence failed to materialise from memory.
Gillard and Abbott will be on script. Platitudes of reaction.Slogans for bogans as Laurie Oakes puts it.
‘Moving forward, takign action will get a few runs. WorkChoices is dead, and Labor has nothing to offer but a rerun of 2007. The Liberals migration policy is actually less radical than our current policy which is rapidly reducing immigration. we have an action plan for climate change, Labor has a talkfest. It’s about a sustainable population. We are the best on border protection. We saved the economy from recession because of our stimulus package. Wasteful spending. Interest rate rises.Our brave boys overseas. Blah, blah blah…’
I vote for the worm, not the two grubs.
So pissed off about missing this but I’ll be too busy sticking my head in the fridge and repeatedly slamming the door.
Update: ABC 24 is urging people to use the hashtag #ausvotes. I don’t know if that implies they’ll be putting some tweets on screen a la Qanda, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
I’ll be live tweeting the debate here.
The Liberal Party ads launched tonight feature no images of Tony Abbott, and almost all of the images used are of women. Key lesson from Week One?
I imagine the key lesson is that they were only in with a chance if Turnbull had been leader!
Interestingly, he was up in Brisbane campaigning for Teresa Gambaro this week (and tweeting from a CityCat). She joins the growing list of Liberal candidates eschewing any mention of their leader.
I suspect KRuddMP is the only Labor candidate not featuring Julia Gillard in their campaign!
Interesting story in Sunday Mail today about how much the two Sunshine Coast MPs, Peter Slipper and Alex Somylay, hate each other. Slipper was a Howard/Abbott guy, and Somylay was a vocal Turnbull supporter. Turnbull came up to the Sunshine Coast to visit Somylay’s electorate, even though it has a 15% margin. I think there is more to Turnbull’s northern forays than may meet the eye.
THE MARK OF THE BEAST POST
That is interesting.
The LNP always have the ability to shoot themselves in the foot. They’re stuck in a nasty vice this time around because they’re stuck with deadwood MPs because of the “grandfather” provisions in the amalgamation arrangement, and lousy candidates in Labor seats because any good ones are waiting for safer seats next time when all the old timers can be knocked off.
@4 – Yep, noticed that!
The Prime Minister’s latest tweet.
http://twitter.com/JuliaGillard
Live tweeting the lead up here:
http://twitter.com/LarvatusProdeo
“Slogans for bogans”
LOL.
Let the festival of the cliche begin!
Mark @ 8, I looked for the link but the C/M web site is so dreadful. I think it was Somylay who took a photo of Slipper having a snooze in the House of Reps, which gives a sense of what their relationship is like. If ever there was a case for voting Labor in order to make Sunshine Coast electorates a bit more marginal, this was it.
This post was written by mark bahnisch, who has written 666 posts for Larvatus Prodeo.
It’s 6:45 pm. Julia just said she “stared down a strike by teachers.” That is her summation of the MySchool-NAPLAN debacle. She is trying to paint herself as some kind of anti-unionist. WTF?!
Yes Silkworm, that was the definite impression she gave when the NAPLAN debacle was going on.
WTF alright, but don’t know why you’re surprised.
No, I’m not surprised. It’s all part of her pandering to the right.
That worm! Woen love Abbott serving it up to Gillard on the her botched asylum seeker policy. Again, WTF?
That should read: Women love Abbott serving it up to Gillard on the her botched asylum seeker policy. Again, WTF?
Faaaaaiiiirrr Dinkum, Marge!!! Oooooohhh Norm, Get orff yer arrrrsseee?! Fairrr goo Lurrv, I’m wootching the footee, yeah?!
These two are hopeless.
The worm loves Tony Abbott. What a farce.
Not all of the archives have been ported over yet.
So far:
Worm hates “moving forward” slogan”? ZOMG!!!!1!
goes up for solar
Downnnnn for citizens assembly gabfest
Thinks Tones is full of BS on population.
Kinda restores one’s faith in the public, no?
Abbott: Getting debt and deficit under control is the best thing we can do to bring grocery prices under control. The worm loves this. WHAT A FARCE!
Someone should do some research in to the prosody of these two– I suspect they’re using performance enhancing drugs…
Cutting company tax rates will reduce grocery prices. It hurts, it hurts.
“Chris, I’m an optimist…” Julia’s completely “smashed”. Poor ol’ Tone’s struggling away on only 3 cylinders. Tragical.
The worm hates the idea of a community consensus on climate change. Better.
Listened on the radio for a while but have turned it off – it really is a sign of deep and profound social illness that people like gillard and abbott have any sort of influence within a society.
My impression – Abbott was by far the better performer during the 10 or 15 minutes I listened (whilst cooking dinner for the family).
tony respects the electorate.
w000t.
Gillard is pointing to a possible turn-around in public perception on climate change for the Federal election in 3 years time! WTF!?!?!
“imperfect laws”
“a period of stability”
what a cock!
Come on everyone, it could be worse – it could go for 2 hours.
Abbott’s channeling the Australian population. He learnt that from Cardinal Pell.
“The worst aspects of Work Choices…” This is so-o lame.
Believe, believe, believe…. Gargh.
I really really hate this man. Every time he speaks he makes me feel ill.
Abbott: “[The Australian soldiers] should stay there until the job is done. And that job is to ensure that Afghanistan is never again a safe-haven for terrorists” ?! What a nutter!!
Who knew that there was a status update limit on Twitter? That’s me done!
So we had 50 minutes on immigration and personality politics…
The women in the audience are rednecks and racists who want Tony to turn back the boats.
Full respect to all of you watching the debate – I can’t bring myself to switch it on.
Having watched that I think we can all agree that the right thing for leftists to do is to vote 1 Liberal, to show Julia how left wing we all are.
Laurie Oakes has given the debate to Tony Abbott. WOOT!
Barry Cassidy is doing his finest Bram Stoker’s Dracula on ABC…
I couldn’t stand the sound on Channel 9, so I watched a top gear repeat.
So true Mark. Post ‘debate’ disection on ABC even duller and moe pointless.
It’s awful, Chris. I wish they’d get someone other than “formers” and talk about something other than the horse race.
Boring debate. Tho, Gillard was able to expose effectively what a fraud Abbott is when it comes to the migration levels.
The questions & issues raised were far too biased towards assisting Abbott.
Australia is more than just border protection, immigration, climate change.
The audience of males on both Ch. 7 & 9 demonstrated a level of misogyny & Lib/Nat/Libertarian views far beyond the women in the audience based on their worm movements.
The lack of pain via the worm (on both channels) inflicted on Abbott for his knifing the ETS agreement demonstrated inconsistency in that audience. How can a leader of a party’s views be believed on climate change, even his criticisms, if he was one of the main characters to put a bomb under climate change related legislation?…and is well know for referring to climate change as “absolute crap”.
The audience looked ridiculous here. Nor did they demonstrate the dislike for Abbott that we know many have. Something stinks.
On the whole I’d have to say that Julia Gillard is good at exposing Tony Abbott for the BSer he is…and taking issues beyond the black & white, knows how to inform an audience…but she needs more questions that focus on Labor strengths.
Far too much focus on fear-mongering & xenophobic-related issues. The panel should be ashamed of themselves.
The idea that “Abbott won because no won lost” is bogus. Doesn’t surprise me that tricky dicks on SKY pushed this. I recall the same media pumping up his fantastic debating abilities not long ago. Think parliament.
Prior to this debate they’ve treated Abbott like some kind of disabled speaker. Pathetic.
Alot of corporate media deviousness & perception manufacturing tonite & in the last 48 hours. As we woulda expected.
I’m glad tho that Abbott has been shown up for BSing on the immigration numbers.
I do reckon Gillard coulda been livelier.
We expect Abbott to play the “softly spoken scumbag” routine. Hiding his HYDE. Until he gets power. Like Howard many years ago.
N’
The ABC thru’ a west Sydney RSL Chris Uhlmann and Annabel Crab have given the debate to Phoney Tony. Go figure!
“Chris Uhlmann and Annabel Crab have given the debate to Phoney Tony”
Yea real surprise…the attention-seeking mainstream media want to force Gillard into another debate.
N’
If anyone needed proof that Gillard is a right winger it was tonight.
1. Gillard listed as her strongest example of standing up for something as “staring down a strike by teachers.” Shame. She parades her anti union pro scab labour policies as her strength. Teachers have experienced her extremist anti union policies. Other unionists be warned.
2. Gillard attacked Abbott for wanting to increase company tax on Coles and Woolworths. Once again we see Gillard defending big business over workers. Just as she did with miners.
Gillard could be heading a Liberal team. Abbott was the moderate.
I will be preferencing Abbott.
Gone off him a bit, have you?
Given your posts on other threads I thought you were peas in a pod and you’d be voting for him outright.
“Gillard could be heading a Liberal team. Abbott was the moderate.”
Cuts, cuts, cuts…no extra money from miners…drive the boats back…more troops into Afghanistan…no abortion pill Abbott…is the moderate?
Now that’s funny. I take it you thought GW Bush was a moderate too?
He also cycled.
Another “compassionate conservative”. Did a great job of driving his country off a cliff.
N’
No Greg. Never have voted conservative and never said I would. But they will get my preference this time. I am an ex ALP member and have voted Green too (no longer). Gillard is simply more extreme than Abbott and far more rehearsed and lacking in any belief. The difference is that unions and activists will fight Abbott but will go soft on Gillard even though she does the same thing. Long term Gillard will crush unions by making them irrelevent.
It’s a phoney election, so it had to be a phoney debate. Whoever won would be a phoney but in this case it was phoney Tony according to Laurie Oakes, although he seemed deeply unimpressed with both.
Update: My take on the debate is here.
The irony of the worm giving the climate change debate to Abbott. To a man who doesn’t believe in it. Diabolical issue.
No Adrian it’s not a phony election. It’s the election that’s due.
Just watching the end of 60 Minutes, with the aging Peter Harvey aligning himself with the rednecks on immigration.
Spana, Weren’t you already voting for Mr Workchoices? Seemed pretty clear you were.
I don’t know where this theme of people discussing their voting intentions came from. It really would be nice if we could try to stay on topic.
I watched 10 seconds of Gillard’s measured oration and flicked over. I knew it would be worse when Tone came on.
I hope it occurs to everyone here that we are getting excited about how absolutely weak, pathetic and ineffective our potential leaders are rather than getting excited about how strong, decisive and effective they are.
Oh dear, we are all cynical, aren’t we?
I thought Abbott did better than expected and to all intents and purposes it was a dead heat.
Which means that by the time of the election it doesn’t matter a damn.
Chris Uhlmann think Tones won because he didn’t lose. I’d say if he’s behind in the polls he lost because he didn’t win.
Uhlmann clearly doesn’t like Gillard much.
The voters in Penrith just showed that no-one would change their minds as a result of the debate.
Yes, Abbot did better than I thought he would, Brian. No fits of manic laughter or sly smiles. Watched the worm for some of it – and there was again a very large gender gap with Gillard.
The voters in Penrith (from the seat of Lindsay, of fake Labor leaflet fame) struck me as being all paid-up party members. Would have been nice if they could have found some genuine swinging voters to talk to.
Shit boring debate. I actually took a phone call towards the end and found I wasn’t in a hurry to get back to it.
The only thing of interest was the worm’s highly gendered responses. I think we can thank the women of Australia for Gillard’s coming victory by miles.
Second, the issues: worm was trying to burrow to Hades through Gillard’s entire recount of the Rudd ‘episode’(presumably to escape the saintly “I made this sacrifice for my country” theme).
Also loved the worm’s work on Tones’ population tilt – it is fair to call that ‘worm-eaten’ at this point.
Loved also the work rising for solar and actual examples of action, even the car stuff – but burrowing fearfully at any mention of ‘citizen’s assemblies’.
Go the public view!
Yes, Abbott is behind in this election. Not gaining any advantage during the debate is a loss in the sense that one more opportunity to bridge the gap has been lost. I think he is screwed anyway. I can’t see anything happening over the next few weeks to close that gender gap much.
Newspoll figures are out nad it shows 52/48 Labor. Preferred PM showing Gillard 50( down seven) and Abbott 34( up seven. Obviously taken over the weekend which means after the anouncement of climate chnge policy.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/coalition-gaining-ground-as-julia-gillards-rating-drops/story-fn59niix-1225896774195
Imagine a hypothetical TV political debate scale: The summit is JFK with an A-, and the nadir is Sarah Palin with an F.
On this scale I give Gillard a solid B, and Abbott a C-.
The Monk relied on talking points and sloganeering far, far too often. He was too negative, even by the standards of Australian politics. (Sadly, the MSM takeway will be that Gillard was also clichéd, as she did explicitly address ‘Moving Forward’ at the beginning of her opening statement. But she all but dropped that dreaded expression from the rest of the broadcast.)
Gillard was more optimistic. She was skilled in both formats used. You listened to her and you knew this is a person who knows how to read a prepared text and knows how to speak off the cuff.
Abbott did nothing but give the impression he was struggling. Whenever he wasn’t able to take the opportunity to break in and attempt a cross examination of the PM he was, well, pathetic. That is, he wasn’t very good at the two presentational formats he’d agreed to give his best in. I refuse to score his little trangressions into stoushing. This isn’t talkback radio, Tony.
Policy wise I didn’t learn much. IMO Gillard scored the best and most unexpected hit on substance when she accused the Opposition of wanting to do the exact same thing as the Rudd/Gillard government when it comes to reducing the migrant intake to around 130,000. Didn’t see that coming. I suppose this is what happens when you’re out of govt., lacking public service expertise, and you release a ‘white paper’ the very same day as your leader is to defend it for the first time on TV.
My advice to Gillard would have been to drive home the fact that Abbott Liberalism is all about not wanting to pass any legislation whatsoever on climate change or IR. That is, they’re a do-nothing party in those pivotal areas. That kind of attack is the best way to defend your own snailpace agenda vis-à-vis AGW (the citizens assembly is rubbish). And forget about the good old fashioned pro-worker tubthumping scare campaign over Work Choices—the best way to hit Abbott over that one issue is to convince swing voters and free market spruikers that he is just plain apathetic about workplace relations. If you make him look defensive (as you did) then you credit him with at least being engaged. There’s nothing wrong with letting the tory voters know dear leader doesn’t care much for taking on the terrible unions.
Exactly why you need to use such panicky anti-Work Choices rhetoric in a debate where you take half an hour to even mention the little fact you lead the AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY is beyond me. You own the IR consensus in our national life, prime minister. You don’t have to use a debate in order to tell the anxious-wage-earners-who-aren’t-swing-voters-this-time their backs are to the wall (that’s what the new targeted advertisisng is for). It’s not as if you spent as much time attacking the Opposition for being against the stimulus, aka the real job saver.
And if you want to highlight the fact business taxation will be 3% lower under your administration than under the alternative party you might as well talkup the fact Abbott’s maternity leave tax is the only real scary Big New Tax out there. Once again, if you don’t care to say you lead the ALP you might as well mention the fact you have much more corporate support for your new tax than Abbott has for his new tax. Just go the whole hog as a post-ideological pol. You’re obviously not doing this debate for the sake of disenfranchised Labor Movement people or other Leftwingers. And you’re very good at none-tribal politicking, prime minister. Kind of like how Hawke was.
Lefty E, that can only be logically true if you will accept the corollary, which is that if the unthinkable happens then we can thank the men of Australia for the incoming Rule by Abbott.
If the corollary is unacceptable, it can only be because you are seeing the male reaction as the norm and the female as some kind of lesser and weird-arse variant. Which is, of course, one of the fundamental assumptions on which patriarchy rests.
Exactly, Dr. Cat. And it’s been beyond interesting for me to see so many ‘progressive men’ here who’d rather preference a misogynist than a woman, to ‘teach Labor a lesson’. Thanks guys.
I watched the debate last night waiting for the Abbott-car-crash. Surprisingly it didn’t happen – I guess he’s had a lot of training lately.
Fine – its not about Gillard, its about the policies she’s endorsing and I’d take the same line if it was Rudd still in charge. I don’t have an attachment to the ALP – if what’s required to get some decent policies in the mainstream is for the ALP to slowly disappear in the middle and the Greens become the second major party then thats what I’ll support. Rewarding the ALP for moving to the right will only encourage them to go even further in the future.
Can I just point out that it’s against the comments policy to impute motives to other commenters, and to make aspersions based on their perceived political or other beliefs?
Also, the topic here is the debate. If you want to discuss something else to do with the election, take it to the latest open thread.
Chris, even if the Greens could become a major party and I suggest that that is exceptionally unlikely, it will take a very long time to get there. Depending on which poll you read the Greens are at around 12%, on a par with or a smidgen over the Dems at their most successful. We cannot wait a decade or more for climate action. Whichever way you slice it, if your main concern in Climate,it would be far better for the coalition to lose. An Abbott loss could see a resurgent Turnbull as Opposition leader and prepared to get an ETS through. It will be a piss poor ETS without a shadow of a doubt but it will be a start.
@su, please see Kim’s moderation comment. This thread is about the debate. Your discussion with Chris should be taken to an open thread.
“Lefty E, that can only be logically true if you will accept the corollary, which is that if the unthinkable happens then we can thank the men of Australia for the incoming Rule by Abbott.”
Quiet agree Pav. It clearly does mean that.
(…erm… am I embroiled in some debate I’m totally unaware of?)
Heh.
@ Lefty E – you lucky lucky bastard. I wish someone had telephoned me in the middle of the debate. Would have livened things up somewhat.
On the winner – Annabel Crabb gave it to TA on the basis that he wasn’t as bad as expected. Just goes to show that a woman really does have to be twice as good as a man to be thought half as good /snideness
All in all it was quite disappointing really. Julia had a few good moments but it felt like it never really got out of first gear. The David Attenborough thingy afterwards was good though.
“am I embroiled in some debate I’m totally unaware of?”
Always, esquerdista. Always.
Good, just checking.
I disagree with this interpretation. A lot of people are expecting Abbott to implode at some point and so every time he speaks in public without doing so its seen as sort of a win for him. If the debate was Abbott vs Rudd I think we would have seen the same interpretation.
I’m a bit surprised that Labor hasn’t agreed to more debates to give Abbott more high profile opportunities to shoot himself in the foot.
Labor isn’t agreeing to more debates because in this election they are running scared. They are even scared of themselves. They are scared of policies, scared of the elecorate, or certain parts of the electorate.
Any party with half decent advisors would agree to 20 debates because sooner or later Abbott would implode, as you say, wheras Gillard will not.
I don’t know why people expect Abbott to do something spectacular, or why they think it would have any impact on the election if he did. He’s been around for a long time and I suspect most people have a pretty fixed opinion of him by now. Or to put it another way, I struggle to think of something he could plausibly do that would alienate voters who are currently inclined to support him.
The election is very much Labor’s to lose and always has been. Remarkably, they seem determined to give it a shot.
PC @69: I thought it was really interesting how the pink and blue worm were neck and neck through the entire contest and that at no stage did one worm get ahead of the other. Now there’s gender equality for you.
I was really pleased to watch it without the worm, just quietly. Twitter was fun, too.
I suspect Bob Brown probably won last night’s clone battle yawnfest.
Mungo McCallum at Crikey today, telling us how he really feels: