I’m increasingly convinced that if things carry on as they are at the moment, Labor is gone in Queensland as a majority government. Their biggest hope remains a shift in voter expectations away from an ALP win, and it seems from the latest Newspoll that Lawrence Springborg’s undecideds might point to a hesitation over the real possibility that he will become Premier. But Labor will have to lift its game, and hope that voters begin to tune in, and that minds aren’t already made up.
At Pineapple Party Time, I’ve had a look at the seats that are in play, arguing that the LNP can win without taking a swag of Brisbane electorates, and more recently, at another couple of bad campaign days for Labor. These aren’t “who won the day” style accounts, but rather critiques of a deeply flawed strategy. William Bowe reports on the Newspoll figures, and my latest post contrasts the ALP circa March 2009 with Peter Beattie’s reign.
Whatever you say about Beattie, I certainly won’t resile from the claim I made ages ago that he’s one of the best politicians we’ve seen in this country. Politically, Anna Bligh is much more congenial to me, but she’s not displaying the same range of leadership and campaign skills Beattie deployed effortlessly. Most of all, she’s failed to establish her authority over the party – an authority which was not guaranteed by the factional machinations which smoothed her path into the Premiership.
That’s a real pity in my book.
Not least because neither major party is doing much to address the genuine problems we have in this state.
Here’s another don’t waste your $34.95 book review, and for many of the same reasons as Mark identified as failures in an earlier 2007 federal election tome from Melbourne University Press – Christine Jackman’s Inside Kevin07.
If anything, Peter Van Onselen and Philip Senior’s Howard’s End: The Unravelling of a Government is an even more tedious read. That might have been evident from the fact that even the now obligatory astroturf “news” stories about the book couldn’t find too much in the way of “shock! horror!” type “revelations” to excerpt, as I observed at the time.
The blurb claims:
In the tradition of Pamela Williams’ The Victory, Howard’s End analyses and makes sense of the result and its far-reaching implications for the people of Australia.
Well, that might indeed be a worthy aim, but the problem is that the book doesn’t do much analysis, and very little sense-making and if there’s anything in it about the implications for the people of Australia as opposed to the future of the Liberal party (such insight filled gems as “rebuilding the Liberal Party after the 2007 federal election defeat was always going to be difficult…”) I’ve completely missed them.
If political journalism is supposed to be the first draft of history, this is apparently the first draft of the first draft. Through 192 pages, the book tediously recounts the events after Rudd’s ascension to the Labor leadership on an almost week by week basis. Mungo McCallum did much the same thing, but at least it was funny. If you’re looking for a reminder of the interminable “perpetual campaign”, then probably you’re pushing the tragic in political tragic a bit further than it normally should go, but you might do better to read Mungo, or indeed click on the archive of this blog. There’s only so much interest in reading exactly what John Howard announced about training policy on day whatever of the campaign, or what Rudd said in a press conference whenever in May. It reads as if someone’s sat down with a stack of newspapers and paraphrased the tedium of day to day political reporting.
But it gets worse. Continue reading ‘Howard’s End: not E. M. Forster but Van Onselen and Senior’
Hunter S. Thompson, who’s repeatedly if repetitiously quoted in Christine Jackman’s Inside Kevin07: The People. The Plan. The Prize., would be turning in his grave.
I’m unable to think of any good reasons for parting with $34.95 for Jackman’s book, which is touted as the ultimate insider account of the Labor Party’s campaign strategy in the lead up to last year’s federal election. As noted previously at this blog, any juicy tidbits have already been extracted in the News Limited papers, and the non-story of Peter Costello’s alleged popularity is still rumbling meaninglessly on as I write. (Incidentally, the fact that quite a bit of research mentioned in the book showing Costello as electoral poison wasn’t selected for “news” stories tells a bit of a tale in itself.)
The book’s importance – insofar as it has any – lies in what is in effect an auto-critique of the standard of political journalism in contemporary Australia, in what its publication says about the strategies of university presses and particularly MUP, and in whether it actually adds fuel to the fire of the “hollowmen” narrative of colourless political apparatchiks it tries to counter. Let’s take those in reverse order.
Continue reading ‘Inside Kevin07′
Newspoll Labor 52-48: Watch the political narrative shift
The first Newspoll of the year has Labor’s 2PP at 52, and the Coalition ahead by one point on primaries at 41, with The Greens steady on 9. By contrast, Essential Research has Labor on a 2PP of 56. Interestingly, in light of what I was saying last week, Essential Research asked respondents about the firmness of their voting intention:
Table borrowed from Possum.
Make of that what you will, but I find it very interesting indeed. One consequence, if you go with the hypothesis about Abbott firming up the Coalition’s base vote, is that Labor voters may also be becoming more confirmed in their partisan choice. We don’t have data on this, except for this one snapshot, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the Liberals’ strategy of opposition to pretty much everything has begun to polarise parts of the electorate.
Of interest also will be the new media narrative. That bit of it which will emanate from the Abbotariat is so predictable it’s barely worth sketching. But Kevin Rudd and Labor won’t be at all unhappy with this result (which, remember, still has them in much the same winning position as in the last election). It’ll fit perfectly their strategy of putting pressure on Abbott to answer questions as if he were a possible PM (arising, for instance, from the Intergenerational Report and the associated issue of healthcare costs, his stance on the private health rebate). As I’ve remarked, his climate change policy, to be released tomorrow, will be framed by the Government as economic pie in the sky, which will reinforce perceptions turning up in focus groups that he’s a risky economic proposition.
And there’s no harm at all in geeing up your own troops in the face of the possibility of an Abbott ascension. That’s the flipside of the Women’s Weekly kerfuffle, which Labor will hope on one hand will play into perceptions that Abbott wants the state to intrude too far into private matters (which the Essential Research polling is showing up), and on the other, will prompt those of us who are very much agin this sort of thing to have a yarn to less committed friends and colleagues.
Update: Possum on Newspoll.
Update: Jonathan Green at The Drum.