Tag Archive for 'bernard keane'

Balance?

Published
by
Mark
4 weeks, 1 day ago
in Disasters, Media and Politics
. 37 Comments

I’m not sure how this one slipped through:

What the longevity of almost all state and territory governments suggests is that it is difficult for an opposition to come to power except through the electorate’s view that it is time for a change… It is unlikely, however, that this will stop the Canberra press gallery working itself into a state of excitement over this year’s national and state votes.

From The Australian today.

In related news, I was somewhat heartened by Greg Hunt’s declining to start ranting and raving over the ’solar panels will burn your house down’ thing last night on Lateline, when effectively invited to do so by Tony Jones. The question followed a story which was clearly framed to build momentum for the ‘Peter Garrett Must Go’ campaign.

I thought, and still think, that Garrett’s position is worth debating, and as Roger Jones noted, the comments thread on the post here has been quite illuminating compared to the media coverage. But I’m not so sure that the press has the responsibility to collude in a campaign to take a ministerial scalp. My memory may well be faulty on this score, but I really don’t recall the same level of intensity and pursuit of Howard government ministers. Given recent admissions by AWB, it might be instructive to go back and look whether Alexander Downer faced constant front page stories on the Wheat for Arms scandal.

Sure, all the ingredients for a press frenzy are there in the insulation debacle, including human interest stories from relatives of those who tragically lost their lives, or workers who were injured themselves. But perspective seems sadly lacking, or even basic research, as Bernard Keane observes in Crikey today.

Abbott and Murdoch

Published
by
Mark
1 month ago
in Media and Politics
. 38 Comments

The News Limited papers have been pounding Stephen Conroy for having met Kerry Stokes while holidaying in Colorado, prior to the Rudd government’s hand out to free to air tv stations. [For the record, Conroy denies the two events are linked or that there's anything improper about his meeting.]

This afternoon, Crikey broke the story that Rupert Murdoch met Tony Abbott while he was in Australia for his mother’s birthday celebrations.

Bernard Keane writes:

There’s now a simple test for News Ltd – whether it covers Abbott’s meeting with its proprietor in the same way as it covered Conroy’s, and whether it demands the same details of Abbott as the Sunday Telegraph demanded of Conroy – what was discussed and what hospitality did Abbott enjoy from Murdoch?

And, most of all, was there a deal made between the two for favourable coverage?

Those are good questions, though it’s a bit hard to imagine how Abbott’s coverage in The Australian could be any more favourable than it is already…

Update: Trevor Cook on Stephen Conroy’s defence of the licence fee decision.

The politics of risk and uncertainty in an election year

Published
by
Mark
1 month ago
in Economics, Europe, Federal Elections, International, Markets, Politics and Sociology
. 36 Comments

Writing in Crikey yesterday, Guy Rundle described the Greek imbroglio as the second wave of the Global Financial Crisis:

So let’s try and make it as clear as possible — the second wave of the 2008 GFC has begun, and Greece is where it started from. The first wave was prompted by the collapse of a series of private investment banks, starting with Lehman Brothers. The second is starting with the deep problems occasioned by the indebtedness of sovereign nations using the broad security of the euro, to be entrepreneurial with their budgets. That’s entrepreneurial in a political sense — thus Greece’s centre-right New Democrats left the nation’s finances unreformed as a way of giving the illusion that the wave of post euro-entry prosperity was solidly backed. Instead the country has simply wildly over-borrowed from its future.

That much is Greece’s problem primarily, and Europe’s secondarily. It becomes a global matter when the degree of exposure of the global banking system becomes clear — hot on the heels of the last crunch, and with nothing resembling a real recovery in-between.

Writing in Crikey today, Bernard Keane concluded that things may not be as rosy as we’d thought in Australia:

The euphoria that Australia has avoided a recession is now giving way to the realisation that as the Government’s stimulus withdraws, there are real questions about just how strong the private-sector growth needed to replace it is.

And the threat from overseas, and particularly the impact of sovereign debt and sluggish economic growth on financial and currency markets, has placed a big question mark over external demand.

Continue reading ‘The politics of risk and uncertainty in an election year’

What’s up with Rudd?

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 1 week ago
in Climate change, Culture, Education, Politics and Sociology
. 55 Comments

Bernard Keane in today’s Crikey email: Continue reading ‘What’s up with Rudd?’

Should Peter Garrett resign?

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 1 week ago
in Environment, Policy and Politics
. 306 Comments

Peter Garrett is in all sorts of strife, over the deaths caused by unsafe foil roof insulation installations under a Federal Government programme.

Writing at The Stump, Bernard Keane argues that the Opposition’s pursuit of Garrett has been lacklustre. A range of commentators have been reciting something along the lines of “ministerial scalps don’t come on a platter” (sometimes accompanied by hilariously clever remarks about Garrett’s bald dome).

Yet none of this goes to the question of whether Garrett *should* resign.

Central, here, I think is the fact that his department was alerted to the possible adverse consequences on several occasions before the scheme went ahead, by both the NECA and state bureaucrats.

Garrett also has form, the ANAM debacle might suggest, for not exercising much oversight of his department.

And the Howard government was regularly criticised for Ministers offloading responsibility for maladministration onto public servants.

Update: Chris Bowen provided the government’s defence of Garrett on tonight’s Lateline.

Elsewhere: Legal Eagle.

King Lear becomes a kingmaker, Hockey’s treachery, and delay is the new denial

Published
by
Mark
3 months, 2 weeks ago
in Media, Politics and Polls
. 29 Comments

It’s probably time to take stock again of the Liberal leadership spill shenanigans.

John Howard has obviously been having a word in a few journos’ ears. Tony Wright penned this piece for The Age yesterday, portraying the Ghost of Wollstonecraft as pulling the strings. It seems Little Johnny couldn’t stand Nick Minchin and the Minchkins getting all the credit for tearing Turnbull down.

I think Hockey’s pilgrimage to Howard on Saturday was staged to suggest that he’s the true heir to the throne, and to imply that Turnbull was an unfortunate interloper. None of those ‘progressive’ hymns in Howard’s broad church! Had they wanted to meet covertly, it wouldn’t have been too hard.

Alex White wrote yesterday on Turnbull’s Cameronisation. If it’s all about following scripts, the Tories’ recent one wouldn’t be a bad one to follow. After all, turning away from the right and talking up green issues has contributed to reviving the UK Conservatives’ electoral chances.

Hockey is obviously keeping his powder dry, so that he can claim he is a unity candidate by not bringing on a spill. That’s the sort of dissimulation for which Howard is famous, but it’s unlikely he’ll be able to bring it off. It’s his second time around as a cuddly frontman for nasty things (think WorkChoices), and he made a hash of it the first time. (See also Peter Martin on his record.) All the talk of some sort of cunning Keating like strategy against the Rudd government’s CPRS forgets that Keating was a superb politician. Hockey is not.

He simply isn’t up to the task, and he probably knows it. He won’t have a lot of credibility as a puppet leader papering over the cracks of a deeply divided party, and it would be risible to think that the events of the last week won’t come back to haunt the Liberals. All talk of Sunrise aside, Rudd’s political machine will eat him for breakfast.

Whether the Liberals would be able to agree on some sort of alternative if the CPRS bills are delayed til February is moot. Certainly all their divisions over climate change will not magically disappear even if Malcolm is whisked off the scene.

It’s not over til it’s over, of course, but speculation has increasingly turned to Turnbull leaving the party and/or parliament. Whatever he decides to do, the ‘dead man walking’ of the press gallery commentary circa early last week (and haven’t some changed their tune?) will come out of all this looking pretty good in many people’s eyes.

Possum’s extremely interesting analysis of the Nielsen poll demonstrates that Turnbull has been appealling to precisely the voters that the Liberals need to be in with any chance of winning the next election – ones currently inclined to vote Labor. I’d have thought that was a lot more meaningful for a serious political party than some sort of ‘protect the furniture and play to the base’ strategy. There’s lots more in Possum’s post which should provide a reality check in terms of how all this has played in the public’s eyes. Liberal MPs and Senators might be well advised to consider that.

Stay tuned for further updates, and you can follow the thing on Twitter as well.

Elsewhere: Some interesting personal reflections on Malcolm Turnbull from Christopher Joye.

Update: New post on firming speculation that Turnbull intends to lead a new party should he lose tomorrow.

D-Day for the Liberals? (And the government’s CPRS giveaway)

Published
by
Mark
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Climate change, Disasters, Howardia, Media, Policy and Politics
. 99 Comments

The Coalition are continuing their marathon climate change/leadership party room meeting after question time today. Clearly, agreement couldn’t be reached within the scheduled four hours. That’s significant in itself.

In developments so far, Andrew Robb has jumped ship, reports Bernard Keane at The Stump.

The government has made its offer on the Coalition amendments. Peter Martin has the text of Rudd’s press release. Writing in New Matilda, Ben Eltham characterises the deal thus:

Billions more taxpayer dollars will be sacrificed on the altar of making the emissions trading scheme palatable for big polluters.

It’s impossible to see this ‘bipartisan’ deal as anything other than a huge transfer from the household sector to the polluters, and one which, at least in the short term, will do nothing much to reduce emissions. The argument in favour is that it should be supported to lock in business and parts of the Coalition, in the hope that it can be improved over time. The argument against ‘pass now, improve later’ is put by Senator Christine Milne at GreensBlog.

In today’s Crikey, Bernard Keane described the CPRS as the worst ever policy process this country has seen. It’s a textbook example, as well, of how politics can completely derail the ostensible intent of a piece of legislation, except insofar as it continues to provide the government with a talking point or two on the actual issue (and that’s not much of an exception!)… So all eyes in the commentariat will now doubt be on the implications for the Liberal leadership. Ludicrous outcomes such as a Kevin Andrews ascension are probably outside the realms of likelihood, but then who knows with this mob?

The issue has certainly crystallised almost all the ructions within the Liberals and between the Nats and moderate Liberals. Continued resentment of defeat, the counter-productive relationship with the media, the tendency to tear down any leader who won’t play the right wing game in all its purity and nuttiness, self-delusion about electoral politics. It’s all there. And none of it is remotely rational in a political sense, or any other.

More to come later…

UPDATE [Ben Eltham]: Sky News is reporting that Wilson Tuckey has moved a leadership spill motion …

Update [Mark]: Tuckey’s leadership spill suggestion failed. Perhaps he shouldn’t rely on The Australian for an assessment of numbers within the Liberal party room.

Update [Mark]: The farce continues, as Coalition members get angsty over whether the meeting should adjourn for a dinner break.

Update [Mark]: I suspect what’s going on now is they’re trying to work out what spin to put on an outcome which is completely chaotic, because both sides disagree as to what happened. If Turnbull, as leader, says that the meeting has decided to accept the deal, it seems to me that all they can do if they don’t agree is to take up Kevin Andrews’ kind offer and make him leader. Or Andrew Robb. Or Tony Abbott or someone. But all the blather about legitimacy surely is just hot air, unless they’re prepared to actually dispense with Turnbull.

Update: Turnbull is giving a press conference, pointing to his strong leadership, and claiming that he’s saved jobs. The Twitter buzz might be as good as place as any to follow what’s going on.

Update: SBS makes about as much sense as anyone could out of the result of the meeting.

Update: What Turnbull should do now.

Question time: The classical philosophy edition

Published
by
Mark
6 months ago
in Media, Philosophy and Politics
. 22 Comments

Parliament goes into recess next week, after a sitting whose most prominent contribution to political discussion was the unruliness of question time (aside, of course, from the usual shenanigans of opposition disunity, which are now customary).

Writing in Crikey yesterday, Bernard Keane observed:

I’ve been watching or listening to Parliament since the early Hawke years and I can never recall Question Time not being made a mockery of.

Speaking as a recovering question time tragic, I’m not sure I agree with that. It’s true if the ritual is compared to some sort of Platonic eidos – as if its essence (dignified accountability and/or razor or rapier sharp wit) must incarnate itself in the chamber on a daily basis. In truth, a lot of the mysticism about parliamentary discourse – and accountability – is just that. If some sort of conception of parliament as a pure space, an agora if you like, for the exchange of ideas and reasoning was a large part of the mythos of nineteenth century liberalism, that doesn’t mean that we should expect that it would have a lot to do with the pragmatics of twenty-first century Australian politics, though its traces remain.

Back in a more Aristotelian world, I think we can discard the Bagehot for a bit, and make some observations about precisely when and why parliamentary tempers boil over. Continue reading ‘Question time: The classical philosophy edition’

A two term strategy?

Published
by
Mark
6 months, 1 week ago
in Economics, Howardia, Media and Politics
. 37 Comments

You could be forgiven for thinking that there is no such thing as Australian federal politics any more. Nothing budges in the polls. As Possum reminds us:

Remember when a party getting 55% in a poll created headlines of impending doom for their opposites? To show just how blase we’ve all become lately, 97% of all polls taken during the Rudd government have shown the ALP to be on a two party preferred off 55% or greater. Even if we just use the phone polls, 91.2% of all phone polls have shown the ALP to be on a TPP of 55% or greater.

Poll after poll, these extraordinary results roll in and we all just go “Oh yes, there’s another one“.

Landslides have become normal. [My emphasis]

The commentary, and the shadow boxing goes on… But surely the whole theme of “this happened, and that happened, and this paper highlighted GOVERNMENT WASTE and Malcolm Turnbull’s approval rating moved by 3%” completely misrepresents what’s actually occurring, because its premise is that people are paying some attention to the Canberra political game. I suspect a lot of us are enjoying a rather protracted holiday from it all after a surfeit of political scares and alarums during the Howard years.

But the opposition, I suppose, can’t just go and take a long ski-ing holiday in Europe. And Joe Hockey has actually announced something that vaguely resembles an election agenda – a promise to slash public spending (he says $14 billion, but Bernard Keane thinks his figures are wrong and it’s more likely to have to be 30 or 40 to reach his GDP share target). It’s the logical corollary of the ‘debt and deficit’ mantra, at any rate.

Continue reading ‘A two term strategy?’

Rudd vs. The Australian

Published
by
Mark
7 months ago
in Media, Politics and Sociology
. 59 Comments

Some time ago, I made some observations on the significance of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard’s attacks on various News Limited papers, and on The Australian.

The thrust of that commentary was that – the immediate antecedents of the stoush aside – there had been a recognition in Government circles that the damage newspaper campaigns can do is much over-rated, and has significantly diminished with a change in the mediascape. This is often ascribed to the internet, but in fact – as with the misconception of the problems facing print media (which lie more with advertising income than declining sales) – its causes are both more profound and of much longer lineage. It’s more that a tipping point has finally – and belatedly – been reached where perception has caught up with reality.

Over the fold, I’ve excerpted some paragraphs (with permission) from Bernard Keane’s piece on this in today’s Crikey. It’s very much to the point, particularly the comparison with Fox News – rather than the “heart of the nation”, the News Limited flagship actually increasingly operates on a business model where a small minority of hardline partisans get their worldview catered for. Politics – in the sense of the partisan stoushing that dominates political coverage – is the concern of a very small minority of Australian voters. For all the claims about “spin”, Rudd’s message is resonating not because of some particular cleverness in its conceptualisation and execution (though that’s there) but because he’s speaking to a mass electorate using the only mass media available – radio and tv – and speaking to concerns that are real. That needs to be recognised.

Continue reading ‘Rudd vs. The Australian‘

A People’s Bank for Australia?

Published
by
Mark
8 months, 2 weeks ago
in Economics, Markets, Policy and Politics
. 47 Comments

A number of economists, including the blogosphere’s own John Quiggin and Nicholas Gruen, today released a letter in Canberra calling for a new enquiry into the financial system. [See the hyperlinks for the text of the letter and commentary from Quiggin and Gruen at their respective blogs.] As Bernard Keane observes in Crikey [article reproduced with permission over the fold], there are much more pressing issues associated with finance than can be encompassed by a ‘debt truck’ (or, to be bipartisanly sceptical, a ’saving jobs truck’). Among the suggestions for items that should be considered by such an enquiry is the establishment of a “People’s Bank” utilising the infrastructure of Australia Post. The economists’ worry is that there is decreasing competition in the banking and finance sphere, driven in part by the consolidation of market power attendant on the GFC and facilitated by some of the policy responses of the Rudd government.

No doubt, as with most of the measures taken to increase competition in the interests of consumers and citizens, the usual suspects will find some reason to decry “government interference” or whatever. Such are the contradictions of neo-liberalism. The ideological patter is all too often a screen for a sort of dirigisme that supports the interests of big business above all others. We’ll see – surely no one could object to these important matters being canvassed in an informed and wide-ranging enquiry?

Continue reading ‘A People’s Bank for Australia?’

CPRS – what’s going on?

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 year ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment and Politics
. 44 Comments

How weird. The government decided to ask the House of Representatives Economic Committee – which of course is controlled by the government – to look into the CPRS. For what purpose, it wasn’t at all clear. But, just as suddenly, they’ve changed their minds, purportedly because Wayne Swan thinks the committee’s terms of reference had become “politicized and distorted”. Politics? In Parliament? Who would have thought?

Meanwhile, the belting that the CPRS is copping continues – one of the more interesting being the open letter signed by a variety of academic economists including the blogosphere’s John Quiggin. The key criticisms are the same as have been made here by various people at various levels of priorities: the exceptionally weak targets, the over-generous compensation to polluters, and the fact that voluntary actions like installing solar panels, or policy measures like the free insulation just displace emissions rather than reducing them. Bernard Keane reports in today’s Crikey email that the government is only now starting to meet with some of the environmental NGOs – namely the Climate Institute and the Australian Conservation Foundation, two of the tamer environmental groups, perhaps trying to gain some support for its plan.

It’s hard to imagine that the government is going to start again with a fundamentally different system like a carbon tax. We’re far too far down the road for that. In any case, as was pointed out on Quiggin’s thread on the open letter, the comparisons being made are between an emissions trading system that’s been through the sausage factory, and a theoretical carbon tax before the rent-seekers get to it. Any carbon tax that actually gets closer to implementation would inevitably be compromised to keep Big Carbon happy as well, and it’s the scale of the compromises that are the biggest problem with the CPRS as currently conceived. I can’t imagine the government abandoning the process either, economic crisis or not. The government invested far too much of its credibility on delivering a carbon-cutting process beginning in 2010 that it surely can’t back out now. So what the hell are they playing at when they announce an inquiry on the topic and then canceling it again?

Blindsided?

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 1 month ago
in Economics and Media
. 31 Comments

[Via Gary Sauer-Thompson] Dennis Shanahan in The Australian claims that the Liberal decision to vote against the stimulus package:

has blind-sided the Government over the $42 billion stimulus package… left Kevin Rudd politically flat-footed and frustrated…and given the Opposition an early advantage….Caught off balance and unprepared, Rudd is cranking up his depiction of Turnbull as being uncaring, out of touch and irresponsible, as the Labor leader tries to claw back Turnbull’s initial break and gain ground in the longer term.

Huh?

Continue reading ‘Blindsided?’

Bored with election speculation? There’s always leadership speculation!

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 1 month ago
in State/Territory Elections
. 18 Comments

In light of the interminable Queensland election speculation – seemingly immune to confrontation with any actual facts – there’s some interest in a leak Crikey’s Bernard Keane had from the LNP:

In the wake of yesterday’s item on problems within Liberal National ranks, an anonymous source claimed that the LNP Shadow Cabinet meeting on 19 January had been given over to debate about Lawrence Springborg’s “small target” strategy, and that there were elements of the party who thought Jeff Seeney might make a better go of challenging Anna Bligh. Just in case, the source assured us, Labor had prepared an alternative strategy in the event Seeney gets up. Springborg, whose electoral record as leader stands at 0 out of 2, rolled Seeney for the leadership of the Nationals just over a year ago.

Mischief-making, perhaps. Swapping leaders at this stage would be an impressively suicidal move for the LNP, but stranger things have happened. Just ask Colin Barnett.

It probably is mischief-making, but it does highlight the fact that the LNP – whose sole raison d’etre is supposed to be unity (as The Borg’s nickname unintentionally suggests…) – is not exactly the happy family they’d like to make out. There’s no doubt that Jeff Seeney still isn’t a happy camper, and his ominous remarks about the influence of fundies in his overthrow gave away a few clues to his future intentions.

It really is all or nothing for Lawrence, though. Seeney arguably had a greater capacity to mount an argument against Bligh, but he was far too “country” and aggressive. Aside from him, the cupboard’s bare. There’s no way the Nats would accept a leader from the Libs – even from the Santoro faction – and it’s not as if they’re particularly attractive prospects. Who’s left if the Borg loses? It’s interesting to ponder…