Tag Archive for 'Dennis Shanahan'

Climate Denialism whack-a-mole

Published
by
dk.au
1 month ago
in Activism, Authoritarianism, Climate change, Disasters, Environment, Howardia, Life and Politics
. 48 Comments

It’s hard to ignore resurgence of the ‘Australia shouldn’t do anything until everyone else does’ meme, most recently by the National Party. Dennis provides another variation on the theme, spinning this fair and balanced question in the latest Newspoll:

Currently, the federal government intends to introduce the carbon pollution reduction scheme in 2010. Under the carbon pollution reduction scheme, the price of energy sources, such as petrol, electricity and gas may become more expensive. Do you think the federal government should delay or should not delay the introduction of the carbon pollution reduction scheme beyond 2010 because of the recent financial crisis?

Push poll much?

Climate Denialism is usually shorthand for someone who denies the truth of the basic science of global warming, but I think a more relevant redefinition is Climate Recalcitrant - someone who doesn’t believe that we can get organised to do something about the problem. What the Nationals and Dennis have in common are a desire to trash 15 years of global negotiations, bury their heads in the sand and yell ‘head for the hills (or the barracks)’! Continue reading ‘Climate Denialism whack-a-mole’

Turnbull poll bounce? ACNielsen 52-48, Newspoll 55-45

Published
by
Kim
2 months, 1 week ago
in Media and Polls
. 39 Comments

ACNielsen has Labor behind the Liberals on primaries 42-41, the first time the Libs have been ahead of Labor in the Nielsen poll since September 2006. Labor leads in the 2PP 52-48, and Kevin Rudd leads Malcolm Turnbull on PPM 56-33. Rudd led Brendan Nelson 65-19 in the August poll.

The Liberals have gained 3% on the primary vote and 3% on the 2PP since the August Nielsen poll.

I observed the other day that Possum had calculated opposition leader change bounce averages. It’s for Newspoll, but here it is for purposes of comparison:

…the average Coalition bounce from a leadership change was 5.7% on the primary and 6% on the TPP.

Speaking of Newspoll, The Poll Bludger reports rumours of an early release for the one that normally appears first on Lateline tomorrow night. I wouldn’t be at all surprised, as otherwise the OO will be reduced to writing their new narrative on the basis of a story in The Age. So get in quickly for Possum’s guess the Newspoll bounce competition.

Update: That was quick. Dennis gets to write his story on the basis of the poll he owns. Newspoll has the primaries favouring Labor 42-38 (down 2 and up 1 respectively, and within the MOE as Shanahan notes). The 2PP is 55-45 in Labor’s favour. It was 56-44 last time. Without mentioning the ACNielsen poll, Shanahan has actually written a story that would fit its findings better than Newspoll’s, having to construct his narrative out of the frippery of the PPM where Rudd leads Turnbull 54-24. As The Poll Bludger observes, this matches the Galaxy Poll in the News Limited tabloids on the weekend.

So if we do the comparison with Possum’s calculations, the Turnbull bounce is almost non-existent. Heh.

In reality, we should wait before passing judgement, but it’s fair to say that the previous trend is still very much apparent. Rudd’s losing some of his shine, but Labor’s vote is holding up well.

Continue reading ‘Turnbull poll bounce? ACNielsen 52-48, Newspoll 55-45′

B… b… bounce?

Published
by
Kim
2 months, 2 weeks ago
in Media and Polls
. 18 Comments

Oks, there’s got to be some way to work this into a drinking game. Just to prove that political tragics are rooly cool like the kidz on West Wing and not strange nerds really.

Possum has enabled a feature on his blog where you can guess the size of any Newspoll bounce that might occur now that Malcolm Turnbull is Oppo Leader. Wisdom of crowds and all that. No mention of any prizes (hint! hint!*) - at least you can make a buck from the betting markets…

So saying, the average Coalition bounce from a leadership change was 5.7% on the primary and 6% on the TPP. This compares to Labor’s average leadership change bounce of 3.6% on the primary and 1.7% on the TPP. The total average leadership change bounce was 4.6% on the primary and 3.8% on the TPP across the 6 historical examples we have available.

And I’ve got my own idea for a bit of crowd sourced political commentary. Let’s pretend we’re the press gallery and set a % which, if not met, will be decried as a setback, or completely unrelated and probably because of the current position of the moon in the lunar cycle, depending on what mood Dennis Shanahan et al are in. And then we can set a % sufficient to ensure the production of headlines like “Australian politics has fundamentally changed”, “the honeymoon is now over”, “Turnbull reinvigorates Coalition” etc, etc.

Be your own press gallery. Write your own political narrative.

Ps: If Turnbull can’t get 5% on the 2PP, he’s toast. Peter Costello is willing to be drafted. ;)

*Update: Now there’s a prize!

Newspoll Tuesday: Labor 56-44

Published
by
Kim
3 months, 1 week ago
in Media and Polls
. 14 Comments

Ok, in the parallel universe that is press reporting of polls, we get this from the West Australian:

Extensive Olympics coverage over the past two weeks may have pushed politics out of the minds of many Australians and be responsible for the minimal changes in the latest Newspoll of voter sentiment and no improvement for the coalition.

Right. Yep. Because the natural order of things is that the Coalition vote should always be rising and its failure to do so is an aberration to be explained away by… stuff that happened in the same fortnight. Whatevs.

Meanwhile, Dennis Shanahan puts it all down to the waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for Costello to release his book. Which, by the way, the ABC is giving free publicity to by televising a National Press Club speech by the former Treasurer on the day of its release. What’s with that?

But note the common assumption that the Liberals should be gaining were it not for their leadership woes. Really? How do they know? Because they do. It’s not argued. But it’s there as the background assumption on which all the rest rests.

Elsewhere: For actual commentary on the poll, go visit Possum and the Poll Bludger’s crew in comments. The Poll Bludger also links to the rather interesting Essential Research poll (Labor 58-Coalition 42) which shows that there’s a 7% negative differential between state and federal ALP voting intentions among its sample.

Can Peter Costello win when Brendan Nelson can’t?

Published
by
Kim
3 months, 1 week ago
in Economics, Media and Politics
. 14 Comments

Poor old $weetie must have been feeling attention deprived. The “will he, won’t he?” stories had run out of any possible oxygen, so he opened a Senator’s office, and attacked the Labor party on economic management. The drooling in the News Limited punditariat started on cue, with Costellologist in Chief Dennis Shanahan immediately pointing out that while the Great Pretender had said he woudn’t challenge Brendan Nelson, he hadn’t ruled out being drafted into the leadership. Of course he didn’t. He’s always wanted everything given to him on a platter.

All the schtick about some leadership draft ignores the fact that Nelson - although he’s been reminded ad infinitum that a dignified handover would lead to some fabbo outcome for him like becoming the next Lord Downer - will probably fight, if indeed as the same pundits previously speculated, he has to at all, because he’s been briefed by Costello on his intentions. But I suppose an attention span longer than a day and paying some attention to what you’ve previously written is beyond their ken.

The other theme here from the cheer squad (they give you “balance and fact”, remember!) is that Costello supposedly came out with some masterly (remember the front page about last year’s “Master Class Budget”?) economic critique of economic management Rudd style. Err, he didn’t actually. Continue reading ‘Can Peter Costello win when Brendan Nelson can’t?’

Howard’s End: not E. M. Forster but Van Onselen and Senior

Published
by
Kim
3 months, 2 weeks ago
in Advertising, Blogging, Books, Writers & Writing, Federal Elections, Howardia and Media
. 27 Comments

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’

It’s the weekend so it must be Costellology time!

Published
by
Kim
3 months, 2 weeks ago
in Howardia, Media and Politics
. 7 Comments

I forget who first compared the breathless expectation that the News Limited meejah and the Liberal party are indulging in over Peter Costello’s non-decision making to Kremlinology, but in the wake of the thousands of words wasted on idle speculation and the interpretation of signs from the Great Pretender last weekend, this weekend we get… thousands of words wasted, etc.

Hint to Liberals: Your problems are much deeper than leadership. You need to do a lot more in opposition than “defend the Howard record”, particularly when doing so ties you in knots so tangled that… well, consider Joe Hockey last night. You need to realise that if Costello becomes leader, he will have to display more “economic credibility” than “hey! wasn’t it the good old days when I was Treasurer?” - the configuration of economic issues is different and the world has moved on. And in the process your messiah has been reinforcing his reputation for indecision and indulging his enormous ego and sense of entitlement. And, guess what, if you change leadership, it won’t be the end of your leadership troubles.

Oh, and John Howard is unlikely to go away either. Continue reading ‘It’s the weekend so it must be Costellology time!’

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.

Newspoll 57-43

Published
by
Kim
4 months ago
in Media and Polls
. 35 Comments

Newspoll has Labor up to 57 from 55 last time (within the moe) and Nelson flatlining at 14% PPM. Commenters at the Poll Bludger’s thread predict that it will be spun by News Limited as a cri de coueur from the public for the imminent return of Peter Costello the Great Pretender. Probably.

Update: [by Mark] You can read about the additional questions asked about liberal leadership, Peter Costello, climate change and support for an emissions trading policy at Possum’s place.