Tag Archive for 'Coalition'

Northern Territory election result analysis links post

Published
by
Mark
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in State/Territory Elections
. 20 Comments

There’s a fair bit of analysis of and commentary on the Northern Territory election results around the blogosphere.

The Poll Bludger is progressively updating late counting, while Tim Dunlop discusses the low turnout. Antony Green also looks at the impact of absentee votes and is critical of the administration of the election and Andrew Bartlett discusses the coverage of the election, and has some other interesting observations.

I noticed the usual predictable “it spells doom for the Rudd government” and “no it was fought on territory issues” dichotomy being produced in comments by pollies yesterday. I doubt that either Julie Bishop on one hand or Chris Bowen and Stephen Smith on the other were really following the election closely and that they are speaking with any authority on this matter. It’s always possible that they were privy to some internal polling, but unlikely in my judgement. I’d prefer to get some information on the dynamics of the contest from someone who’s actually an informed Territorian, so I’d take a lot more notice of Ken Parish’s take on the campaign and the result at Troppo.

Continue reading ‘Northern Territory election result analysis links post’

No news is good News II

Published
by
Kim
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Media and Politics
. 10 Comments

The supposition I had - shared by Lyn at Public Opinion - that even the diehard Milnes and Shanahans of News Limited might give up on their “Costello for Saviour” campaign in the absence of anything actually happening has been spectacularly shattered. Our Dennis - in perhaps the longest column he has ever written - piles speculation on top of speculation on top of speculation and - well, you get the picture. Labor is probably a oncer because this might happen if that happens and that might occur if this happens. Unbelievable.

No news is good news at News

Published
by
Kim
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Media, Politics and The Web
. 21 Comments

What do you do if you’re a columnist for the Opposition Organ and nothing is actually happening in the Peter Costello Leadership Story? Write about Chrissy Pyne’s Facebook status updates as if they’re news, that’s what! Score one zero for the Liberals in the Web 2.0 politics sphere, I guess.

Liberal frontbencher and staunch Costello supporter Christopher Pyne used his Facebook site to kill the speculation, writing: “Christopher Pyne thinks Peter Costello’s position is clear and unchanged since November and wishes everyone would move on and get stuck into the ALP. Who arehopeless!”

Well, thanks for that, Dennis. Paul Keating probably killed off the Great Pretender for the time being more effectively, but I suppose it is hard to keep writing the same columns and stories about a quintessential non-event day after day. We’ll miss the comedy value. I imagine we’re about to see the switch flicked back to that other “media narrative” - “the Rudd honeymoon is over” now.

The Great Pretender II

Published
by
Kim
4 months ago
in Media and Politics
. 33 Comments

If you read between the lines of Peter Costello’s in house columnist/propagandist at News Limited Glenn Milne’s column today, and add in Tony Abbott’s words of praise for The Great Pretender on Lateline on Friday, and the story that came from “nowhere” about Cossie knocking back a 2 million buck a year job, the Liberal leadership narrative is becoming pretty clear - signals are being sent that the party’s Right, and particularly Nick Minchin, want $weetie in the leadership.

But let’s be clear about two things:

(1) Costello is still doing his usual petulant thing - signalling that he’ll only take the leadership if asked. Whether or not a 10 month sulk while his party lies in smoking ruins is a mark of a clever politician or just a massive and self-centred ego is - as they say - a question for the party room.

(2) The Liberal Party right are turning to Costello in order to fend off Malcolm Turnbull. So any suggestion that the former Treasurer is some sort of moderate, or indeed that he might have his own agenda, can probably be put to bed. He’ll be the captive of the denialist hardliners just like Brendan Nelson is. And that - all his past feints to the moderates aside - would be entirely consistent with his history as a politician - a natural right winger, but a lazy one with few ideas of his own, and no eye for political strategy. Turnbull is unlikely to take any second coming lying down.

Liberal lunacy V (Whiteboard edition)

Published
by
Mark
4 months ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment and Media
. 11 Comments

The Liberals’ position on an emissions trading policy - and climate change - is so obscure that the results of their meeting the other day can be reported in some papers as a defeat for Nelson, and in others as a quixotic victory. Tempers are running so high that the Shadow Cabinet recommendation wasn’t put in writing - lest it leak - and the meeting did policy by whiteboard. But the proceedings leaked anyway. Here are some highlights from Louise Dodson’s story in yesterday’s Fin Review.

It took five hours, a lot of fierce debate and a deal workshopped on a whiteboard, but the coalition party room finally agreed to support Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson on climate change.

…

The party meeting started with the words “climate change is real” being written on the whiteboard. But even this statement could not produce agreement. Backbencher Dennis Jensen said he could not sign up to that statement and it was then removed and replaced by “we give the planet the benefit of the doubt and support action on climate change”.

…

Sources at the meeting said almost all Coalition MPs spoke during the meeting, with one-fifth of them sceptical that there was human-induced climate change, three-fifths of the view that the opposition needed to sort out the position and move on for political reasons and one-fifth arguing against a commitment to an emissions trading scheme specifically by 2012.

Reality and unreality in the pundits’ world

Published
by
Kim
4 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Immigration, Media and Polls
. 17 Comments

Let’s take a look at today’s political “news”, News Limited style, and the ongoing construction of the “media narrative” that according to the press gallery gang, is the only news fit to print.

As noted here, The Opposition Organ spent a bucket of dosh to add extra questions to Newspoll, and chose to run with “Voters Want Costello” as its front page headline over the (presumably less welcome to the masthead of denialism) numbers on climate change, showing overwhelming majorities attributing climate change to AGW and support for an ETS, with a big majority for “not waiting on the world”. So that’s establishing the news agenda through polling to feed the current “media narrative” - centring on the Liberal leadership and Peter Costello lovin’ in particular. And selectivity in emphasis. Then we get selectivity in reporting. The numbers in Newspoll, as Possum points out, don’t show that the voters the Liberals need to persuade are particularly persuadable by a putative Costello return:

The Coalition needs ALP voters to shift to the Coalition, yet ALP voters have a breakdown of 15% more likely and 20% less likely. If Costello became leader, he might not lose voteshare, but neither does he look like he would gain much based on these results.

But Dennis Shanahan doesn’t mention that.

Let’s go back a bit and remember, as Mark pointed out in his review, that the extracts from Inside Kevin07 that kicked the Costello talk off were themselves highly selective - one bit of research done before Rudd became leader and highlighted while the other internal polling and focus group research showing Costello for PM being about as appealling as a piece of wet lettuce was studiously ignored. And let’s not forget either that the “Costello the Saviour” narrative basically depends on the publication date of a book! Leadership calculation by publishing schedule! Melbourne University Press and book distributors hold the nation’s future in their hand!

Then, the big showdown Bolta talked up on the Coalition’s emissions trading scheme stance comes - and Nelson gets rolled.

Meanwhile, the Labor government has basically done away with mandatory detention.

I would venture to suggest that is rather more important than all this other confected nonsense.

Continue reading ‘Reality and unreality in the pundits’ world’

Liberal lunacy IV

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 1 week ago
in Climate change, Developing world, Energy, Environment, Howardia, Markets and Policy
. 16 Comments

For once, Craig Emerson wasn’t indulging in spin or hyperbole on Lateline last Friday when he claimed that there was a new emissions trading scheme policy every day from the Liberals. For Monday’s edition of Liberal lunacy, we reproduce Bernard Keane’s commentary from Crikey today (with permission). Continue reading ‘Liberal lunacy IV’

Liberal media lunacy III

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 1 week ago
in Climate change, Disasters, Economics, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Media, Politics, Science and Sociology
. 32 Comments

While it’s reasonable to ask, as Lyn at Public Opinion does, whether tracing every twist and turn of the opposition’s twisted trajectory towards some sort of agreed position on an emissions trading scheme, is to pay too much attention to a “policy cycle of sometimes less than 24 hours [which stretches] the notion of novelty a little far.” However, it could also be suggested that the interest lies in watching the moment that a “media narrative” switches, and as with the Costello crud, observing the process of constructing one, as a few bits and pieces of disconnected nonsense get tied together by assorted columnists and reporters and woven into a new thread that will then become - hey presto! - conventional wisdom, dignified as such on Sundays by the usual Insider suspects. You can shine a light on the way the press gallery mob do “the wisdom of crowds each other” by building a story arc, which then shapes the way the story is moved on.

Continue reading ‘Liberal media lunacy III’

Liberal lunacy II

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 1 week ago
in Climate change, Energy, Environment, Howardia, Markets and Media
. 58 Comments

Brendan Nelson’s office is denying reports - discussed on an earlier post - that he will be having a “showdown” with Malcolm Turnbull and Greg Hunt over the Coalition’s stance on emissions trading.

Some were reporting yesterday that Nelson would next week “take on” Malcolm Turnbull over climate change. His office claims that is “nonsense” and, given his tenuous hold on the leadership, it does seem unlikely he would be seeking a showdown with anyone. But he and Turnbull are “consulting”, which suggests he is trying to inch the party as far as he can towards a more sceptical line, in a bid to keep everyone happy.

However, Nelson is apparently “negotiating” with Turnbull to “harden” the Coalition’s position, and in an attempt to keep the denialists in his ranks happy, came out with this gem:

Now Nelson’s rhetoric is sounding more sceptical again. “I see there is an emerging body of scientific opinion which questions the role of carbon in all of this, but I’m strongly of the view that we give the planet the benefit of the doubt,” he said yesterday.

Sure, scientists differ about the degree and speed of global warming, but if it is not caused by carbon, why on earth are we contemplating support for an emissions trading scheme at all?

Quite. And that difference is between more catastrophic and slightly less catastrophic outlooks. Continue reading ‘Liberal lunacy II’

Liberal lunacy

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 1 week ago
in Climate change, Energy, Environment, Markets and Media
. 47 Comments

Tim Watts has posted at Tree of Knowledge on Andrew Bolt’s claim that the forces of the hardline right in the Liberal Party are planning to monster Malcolm Turnbull and Greg Hunt and push for an oppositional stance to the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme. Brendan Nelson’s latest confused comments about delaying the ETS might be some confirmation of this, but on the other hand Nelson’s line on climate change is a moveable feast at the best of times, and Turnbull was singing from the same song sheet today. Watts is no doubt right that such a stance would be political stupidity on the part of the opposition, but it’s just as likely that the story represents wishful thinking on Bolt’s part, obsessed as he is with climate change denialism. However, nutty calls from the Nats for a Royal Commission to examine the science certainly do highlight the continuing divisions within the Coalition.

Continue reading ‘Liberal lunacy’

ETS or business welfare?

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 1 week ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy and Environment
. 32 Comments

Peter Martin has an excellent column today pointing out what’s wrong with the dollops of dollars which are to be handed out to polluters under the Rudd government’s “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”.

Australia’s existing coal-fired power stations won’t need the compensation anyway. They will be able to pass on the extra cost of the emission permits. They will be encouraged to. It is how the scheme is meant to work.

Eventually the higher price of power will prod some of us to use less of it, and eventually wind and commercial solar power generators will become competitive against coal because they won’t to buy emission permits.

Martin effortlessly and elegantly skewers the arguments for compensation.

He also refers to the GST. It’s interesting that this whole exercise has been framed as “economic reform” and compared so often to the GST. It would seem that it’s that template and that framing which has given overt permission for a rent-seekers’ paradise, and as Martin argues, has created the extraordinary situation where the profits of pollution are essentially being treated as property rights.

Continue reading ‘ETS or business welfare?’

Peter Costello the saviour

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 1 week ago
in By-elections, Media and Polls
. 39 Comments

The raw ingredients of the right wing media narrative du jour have been stewing for all to see in a curious potage in the columns of The Australian over the last few days. That narrative? Take a pinch of “Rudd is symbolism and spin” (originally coined by one John Winston Howard), add a dollop of Nelsonian petrol populism, throw in Ute Man, and you’ve got a recipe for self-delusion - that Peter Costello will not ride into the sunset of international finance but rather rise again to lead the conservative forces back to their rightful place in the sun, their brief winter of Ruddian discontent dispell’d by glorious… something.

Former Labor Senator John Black, among whose exercises in psephological tea leaf reading was the prediction that Peter Beattie and Labor would crash and burn in the 2006 Queensland election, has redeemed his own subsequent prediction that Kevin Rudd and Labor would romp it home in Gippsland, by seizing on some leaked National Party polling reported by Glenn Milne. Ute Man has spoken.

So you can forget using the present national opinion polls of voting intention as a means of projecting the next by-election result.

Well, yeah, you can, because Labor isn’t running in Mayo, and probably won’t in Lyne. But, wait, there’s more: Continue reading ‘Peter Costello the saviour’

Emissions Trading Green Paper thread (& links post)

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change, Economics, Energy, Environment and Markets
. 194 Comments

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong will be releasing the government’s Emissions Trading Green Paper today at the National Press Club. The Minister’s address can be seen on ABC1 at 12.30pm. The Green Paper will fill in some of the blanks left remaining after the release of the Garnaut Review’s interim report last week. No doubt it will also set the tone for the developing political debate over the next few months, and a key to how that debate will proceed politically is a poll by Essential Media [link to pdf] which suggests that the Coalition’s “wait for the world” message (if indeed that is their message!) is the wrong one.

As to the substance of the Green Paper, Crikey has set out a number of benchmarks by which the policy could be evaluated. These, of course, are open to debate, and indeed it’s worth recalling that the whole purpose of a Green Paper is to stimulate debate and consultation while signalling the parameters in which the government wants to shape policy.

No doubt there will be substantive contributions here and throughout the blogosphere and the media later on today (and links in the thread are most welcome), but you’re also most welcome to start discussing the Green Paper right now!

Relevant links over the fold.

Continue reading ‘Emissions Trading Green Paper thread (& links post)’

Guest post by Senator Rachel Siewert: Award modernisation - what’s going on?

Published
by
Guest Poster
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Howardia, Industrial Relations, Poverty and Women
. 9 Comments

This issue is something I’d planned to write about but have lacked time to do so. Some very important changes to the legal regulation of working conditions are being made in this country largely beneath the radar of media scrutiny - outside the business press. So I’m happy to post this contribution from Greens Senator for Western Australia, Rachel Siewert. - MB

Senator Rachel Siewert is the Australian Greens spokesperson on Industrial Relations.

Massive upheaval is occurring to Australia’s standard employment conditions and minimum wages, with little to no understanding or public attention.

The ‘award modernisation’ process currently underway in the AIRC, following a request from the Workplace Relations Minister, Julia Gillard, will impact on all Australian workers … either directly through loss of conditions or indirectly through lowering the base from which agreements can be made.

While the Rudd Government likes to compare its IR policy with Work Choices (…so it can say things are slightly better than they might have been), a better way of evaluating their policy is to look at the industrial relations system that existed in Australia before the aberration of Work Choices. On this test the Government is failing to provide adequate protection for workers.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Senator Rachel Siewert: Award modernisation - what’s going on?’

No comment?

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change, Media and Polls
. 8 Comments

Tomorrow’s Newspoll - as just reported on Lateline - basically contains no news. 55/45 to Labor on the 2PP, and 65/14 in Rudd’s favour on the PPM, with Nelson down a statistically insignificant 1 point. So a Poll with no News. Will News Ltd - who “own” the poll - report it this way? Or could we be about to have a perfect test case on the manufacture of confected commentary and non-existent news? Let’s see.

Update: There’s the usual poll deconstruction thread at The Poll Bludger, and there’s a somewhat more interesting poll out from Essential Media which shows a majority of Coalition voters disagreeing with Brendan Nelson’s proposition that Australia should wait on the rest of the world before acting on climate change.