Tag Archive for 'Federal Election 2010'

Polls show privatisation hurting Bligh, and Rudd

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 4 days ago
in Federal Elections, Politics, Queensland and State/Territory Elections
. 8 Comments

Possum has obtained the polling conducted by UMR for six Queensland unions on the impact of Anna Bligh’s privatisation plans on Labor’s vote. It’s not good news for Bligh, and he suggests, not good news for Kevin Rudd either:

These figures suggest that the Bligh government’s asset sale plan will reduce the ALP’s two-party preferred vote share at the federal election in Queensland by up to about 2%. That is a significant impediment to Labor winning and retaining seats in Rudd’s home state.

His conclusion is interesting:

That level of generic political outlook suggests that not all is lost for Bligh. When combined with asset sales being the dominant issue that is chasing votes away from Labor, with the union movement agitating for the program to be overturned and with Bligh’s program spilling political consequences across into the federal election sphere — the option of a back flip with a triple pike on the asset sale program must be filling the minds of Labor politicians everywhere.

I suspect that the polling doesn’t properly disaggregate the influences of the actual privatisation decision and the perception that Bligh did an almighty turnaround from her election rhetoric, because the choice between the two options is not a particularly salient one given that they’re inter-related. So a backflip would undoubtedly be good for Rudd (or a bit of old-fashioned distancing, as he did with Peter Beattie’s unpopular council amalgamations). But I suspect the jury is still out as to whether Bligh could turn around her fortunes. Given that she’s not the most flexible politician in the world when it comes to changing course, a new Premier might be the answer for Queensland state Labor.

Rudd’s health policy

Published
by
Mark
2 weeks, 5 days ago
in Federal Elections, Government, Health and Politics
. 63 Comments

Kevin Rudd has released his health policy at the National Press Club.

Essentially, it encompasses a phased takeover of responsibility for activity based hospital funding by the Commonwealth, with 30% of GST revenue to be diverted directly to hospitals. Funding would flow to individual hospitals, with local authorities being funded to treat individual patients, and the establishment of national standards of care.

Primary health care will become the sole responsibility of the Commonwealth.

Politically, it buys the Commonwealth a possible fight with the largely unpopular state governments, and appears to short circuit the state health departments, leaving them with residual functions for the less glamorous administrative functions of hospital systems. It also incorporates the local focus Tony Abbott has championed, with flexibility for clincal and funding decisions to be made at hospital or regional level. The Commonwealth would become, in effect, a regulatory and activity based funding body, rather than ‘taking over’ hospitals, but the threat of a referendum remains.

Subsequent announcements between now and the election will focus on extra beds, doctor and nurse training, support for GPs, and the introduction of electronic patient record monitoring.

The AMA is supportive; the Coalition opposed.

Detail of the National Health and Hospitals Network Plan can be found here.

Update: Bernard Keane observes at The Stump that the plan comes with a snappy slogan – “funded nationally, run locally”.

Update: Melissa Sweet analyses the announcement at Croakey.

Update: The transcript of Kevin Rudd’s Q&A at the Press Club is now available here.

Rudd unwhacked

Published
by
Mark
2 weeks, 6 days ago
in Elections, Media, Politics and Polls
. 61 Comments

Newspoll came in last night with essentially a status quo result, with both parties one point up on primaries (and the 2PP changing one point down each way to 52-48 because of a measured fall in The Greens’ primary.)

I doubt that Kevin Rudd ever expected the ‘whacking’ in the polls he trumpeted. Rather, this was part of the rhetorical structure of the weekend of apologies – convincing the public that he’d already taken his medicine, and that they should think again about the government’s virtues (which he, and Ministers, have used the sorry-fest to remind everyone of) and think harder about the Coalition. A very similar line has been working wonders for Gordon Brown of late.

In other words, rather than offering the proverbial commentary on the polls, Rudd’s remarks are part of a set piece of political manoeuvring aiming to draw a line in the sand, and to establish a contrast between the government’s new policy announcements (the national curriculum and health) and the opposition’s negativity. That’s potentially quite an effective play when everything we’ve seen of of Abbott et al over the last few weeks has been pure opposition.

Incidentally, I’d repeat the point I’ve made a number of times before – among all sorts of other influences, commentary on the polls has an underlying and perhaps unexamined premise that a Liberal majority is the natural state of affairs. Otherwise, it’s hard to explain the narrative of trouble and crisis when Labor is still comfortably ahead. It’s as if the Coalition ever overtaking Labor spells doom and destruction for the Rudd government. It would not. It’s worth underlining the fact that governments are often behind in the polls, and come back to win elections. John Howard frequently appeared headed for defeat in each electoral cycle after his first win.

Trevor Cook provides a useful reminder another point of comparison – to the Rudd opposition of the late Howard years.

Speaking of which, those who talked about Howard’s comments and policy changes around the time of the Aston by-election in 2001 were making the better comparison than the chorus of ‘Beattie reborn!’ songsters. The difference, of course, is that Howard appeared headed for a genuine whacking in early 2001, while Rudd is sitting pretty.

While we’re talking polls, I’d also recommend a squizzy at Possum’s fascinating tables on the Essential Research questions about the assessment of leaders’ attributes.

Torquemada in Lycra

Published
by
Kim
3 weeks, 6 days ago
in Federal Elections and Politics
. 32 Comments

Tony Abbott, we’re told, is “real”. Able to mix with the battlers (just like Joe Hockey, another product of the North Shore Jesuit Fathers, and just like yet another, Barnaby Joyce, the accountant in the Akubra), he’s “authentic”.

Kevin Rudd is real too. He really is a wonky, nerdy bureaucrat. Perish the thought that we would want to vote for someone who knew something about policy?

But why is it assumed that the persona doesn’t mask something else? Could Tony Abbott be the one spinning a web of symbolism? Wasn’t George W. Bush the candidate we’d rather have a beer with?

[Rhetorical questions in the mode of KRudd.]

Now, I haven’t read Tony’s tome. Be interested to hear from anyone who has. But, Geoffrey Barker has, and he wrote this in the Fin Review today:

Continue reading ‘Torquemada in Lycra’

Abbott takes a stand in defence of private health

Published
by
Mark
4 weeks ago
in Federal Elections, Health and Politics
. 24 Comments

This week in Parliament Labor will gain another double dissolution trigger, as the Coalition has vowed to stop changes to the threshold for the private health insurance rebate. Labor will be keen to draw a parallel between this move and Abbott’s tenure as Health Minister, arguing that less money will be available for public hospitals. The ALP will also no doubt utilise Barnaby Joyce’s previous equivocal comments on the measure to ram home the point about fiscal indiscipline from the opposition.

Kevin Rudd’s health policy is likely to be the centrepiece of the government’s plan for re-election.

Meanwhile, writing at The Age, Kenneth Davidson provides a very good argument for not subsidising the private health insurers at all.

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’

Do the polls support the political narrative? Or; how to build a commentariat-bot

Published
by
Mark
1 month ago
in Federal Elections, Media and Polls
. 69 Comments

I’ve previously highlighted Dennis Shanahan and Malcolm Colless as barometers of the new new political narrative (‘Rudd in trouble! Gloss comes off! Action Man Tony Off To Vigorous Start!’). Michelle Grattan provided another twist on the mechanics of constructing such a story on the weekend.

Rudd’s political style, whether his prolixity or his obsession for control, was always destined to be viewed more harshly when the politics became tougher.

Eventually it might work, but it’s not so far, because Abbott, blemished as he might be, is seen as ”authentic”, just as people are starting to ask ”will the real Kevin stand up?”…

But the dynamics have changed, the government is worried and the public, for the moment, seem to be hoping the underdog makes it a contest.

There’s lots, lots, more, and in fact the whole piece is something of a mind dump rather than a considered analysis. But what’s worth highlighting is the elision between “the public” (referenced anecdotally), the polls (alluded to) and “people”. The story is largely written in the passive voice beloved of such authoritative pronouncements – stuff just happens, and it’s unclear who thinks that it has, and who has been doing the doing. Who is doing the viewing of Rudd in the para I’ve excerpted? What is this destiny?

What it really adds up to is a picture of the commentariat-bot at work.

Not everyone is as artless as Alexander Downer, claiming to detect a sea-change in public opinion on the basis of random airport encounters, quickly morphed into “people think”, and “people say”, but the underlying illogic is the same. Public opinion has changed because the commentariat says it has. The absence of much hard data, or even reference to such data as exists, only serves to highlight the constructedness of the narrative.

For a corrective, one might try Possum.

Continue reading ‘Do the polls support the political narrative? Or; how to build a commentariat-bot’

So, what exactly does ‘direct action’ mean?

Published
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Mark
1 month ago
in Federal Elections, Health, Howardia, NSW Government, Polls and Queensland
. 22 Comments

Tony Abbott’s second policy release since becoming leader also carries the ‘direct action’ badge – the underwhelming ‘plan’ to institute local boards for public hospitals in Queensland and New South Wales mirrors the Coalition’s climate change policy in highlighting this theme.

The politics of this message are potentially quite effective. Small, bite sized initiatives portrayed as community based and focused around individuals and localities are meant to provide a big contrast with Kevin Rudd’s approach to governance. It’s designed to play into the attack line – “Rudd promises the world, but his grand visions just result in a bureaucratic mishmash”, and this theme is also meant to resonate with the notion that Rudd once was able to empathise with voters’ day to day concerns, but is now off in some stratospheric space alien to the proverbial kitchen table.

In short then, the contrast arises from dressing policy up as both ‘direct action’ (it could happen overnight, not after fifty reviews and a round of COAG committee meetings) and achievable and realisable (it’s not about fixing the planet, but about making a difference).

The irony, of course, is that Action Man Abbott’s threadbare policy cupboard is in reality full of big government boondoggles chosen for their purely symbolic value rather than their chance of achieving anything much. The cynicism of targeting policy to particular states where Labor governments are deeply on the nose and impacting on Rudd’s polling can’t really be disguised by the Howardian rhetoric of an ‘intervention’.

Whatever happened to the vision thing?

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 1 week ago
in Federal Elections, Health, Media and Politics
. 84 Comments

George H. W. Bush was famously incapable of projecting what he termed “the vision thing” in his unsuccessful campaign for re-election in 1992, but at least he knew what he needed to, but couldn’t, do.

I noted the other day that Dennis Shanahan was something of a barometer for the current state of the ‘political narrative’. I should have remembered that an even better one, whose often indecipherable columns frequently seem to be pure stream of consciousness, is Malcolm Colless.

Writing today in The Australian, he seems to think he is delivering some sort of killer punch:

Returning from Copenhagen, where he failed to make any ground, Rudd calmly began unveiling a whole series of new visionary canvases depicting future challenges around issues such as health services, population growth and the need for greater productivity to support an ageing community.

One thing that impressed me about Rudd on Q&A last night was that he quite rightly conveyed the message that the government, any government, can’t fix everything. That’s surely just truth, but Tony Jones response in the interchange on the alcopops tax and the drinking age showed the media reflex where the government is expected to have solved every problem yesterday in spades – “But then they’re just drinking something else”. As Rudd pointed out, the stats actually show a fall in alcohol consumption in younger demographics, but apparently that’s immaterial if a policy measure which has some impact doesn’t act as if it’s a magic wand?

What, exactly, is wrong with debating what sort of infrastructure, skills and services are needed for a growing population now? If you stop to think about it outside the drum beat of the political narrative, it’s a hard question to answer.

Kevin Rudd won the 2007 election, in part, because he could articulate a longer term vision. John Howard didn’t have one for even a single term, let alone one for the nation. What sort of Australia would Tony Abbott like to shape? We simply don’t know, if we were to go on his current public statements. His timescale is the eternal now, the cost of milk, today’s political opportunity, a soundbite from question time. Lost in the endless stream of applause for his being “pugilistic”, “authentic”, “interesting”, etc. is any debate about what he might actually do as Prime Minister, let alone any public debate on what are urgent questions which we must address as a nation.

Sure, Rudd can be criticised for raising expectations about a quick fix to the health system. But why are so many so critical when he actually does have to negotiate his way through a complex policy domain with multiple stakeholders? What would Tony Abbott’s “decisive” or “direct action” on health actually imply? Do any of the commentators even stop to think about what the answer might be?

Shock! Horror! Political journosphere shocked by the ALP playing politics!

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change, Federal Elections, Media and Polls
. 98 Comments

Ben Eltham has a wrap up of the week in politics at New Matilda. It’s certainly fair to say that it certainly didn’t go all the Coalition’s way. What surprises me about the commentary we’ve seen in the lead up to and after the resumption of Parliament is some sort of default assumption that Tony Abbott would release his climate change policy, and happily elope with the voters, and that’s the last we’d hear of politics in an election year. Dennis Shanahan is, as always, indicative:

THE Rudd government has an unhealthy obsession with Tony Abbott’s obsessions. As parliament prepares to resume on Tuesday for the first sitting in an election year, some Labor ministers are spending so much time reinforcing adverse stereotypes of the new Liberal leader they run the double risk of appearing to be in a panic and of actually validating his policies and leadership.

KEVIN Rudd’s emissions trading scheme is dead but he can’t let it go. Politically he should shift ground to alternative action on climate change, blame Tony Abbott for the failure of a scheme previously favoured by Liberal leaders, and use the global failure to agree on a concerted plan as a reprieve before the election.

There’s some sort of bizarre alternate reality here, where the Opposition is constantly at the centre of events, and any sort of response which doesn’t play to the ‘media narrative’ from the Government is somehow electoral poison.

It’s just nuts. I suspect, in part, it derives from a belief that if the Liberals could unite behind one leader, all would be plain sailing from there on in. In fact, as one week of Barnaby-isms demonstrates, even without leadership speculation, they’re still shambolic. I think there’s still some sort of weird assumption that the Liberals are the natural party of government, and that the electorate are finally waking up to the mistake made in 2007; hence Labor is represented as being panic stricken after a single poll where their two party preferred vote is 52-48. (John Howard’s first term government, by contrast, spent a large part of the time behind in the polls.)

So we also get a bizarre perception that Labor is some sort of immovable object, locked in behind last year’s politics, and unable to shape the political landscape. This is reinforced by constant generalisation on the basis of anecdote – “voters are concerned by debt and deficit”, “Rudd is untrustworthy”, “climate change skepticism is on the increase”, very little of which has much support in any relevant polling. And the descent of Rudd’s own approval rating from its stellar heights is seen as an avatar of doom, without any particular attempt to correlate it with the party vote.

All very odd.

Like I said early in the week, watch the political narrative change.

What does a conservative leader of the Liberal party look like?

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Climate change, Economics, Elections, Howardia, Markets, Philosophy, Policy and Politics
. 16 Comments

… and no, I won’t be posting a photo of Tony Abbott in any form of swimwear to answer that question. But it’s interesting to observe the blue thread that runs through all of Abbott’s pronouncements – a mindset that Father Knows Best. The answer to the question posed by Ben Eltham in New Matilda, writing on the Coalition’s climate change policy [see this post for LP discussion] – “have the Libs lost faith in the market?” – is surely that conservatives don’t necessarily have faith in it. The Howard government’s practice, in many respects, was as much conservative as neo-liberal, if not more – an increasingly large state, a dirigiste approach to doling out public money to corporations, all manner of attempted pro-family social engineering, and so forth. To some degree, the era of 80s bipartisanship on ‘economic reform’ left an institutional and legal bias towards economic liberalism in state institutions; Treasury, the Productivity Commission, competition law, and so on. But with a lazy Treasurer, for most of the time, Howardism only used economic liberalism as a fig leaf.

I think what we’re seeing now, with Tony Abbott, is that fig leaf being discarded.

We’re back to old fashioned paternalism – faith, country, and trust in your betters. And in the economic sphere, Abbott, who knows nothing much of economics, is happy for the state to sit down and carve up the pie in consultation with his preferred interest groups. All this is really classic National Party stuff.

What’s perhaps astonishing on the surface, at least, is how little we’re hearing from the so-called libertarians and classical liberals about Abbott’s lack of faith in the market. Could it be that they’re mostly more interested in anti-Labor partisanship than their own ostensible creed?

Newspoll Labor 52-48: Watch the political narrative shift

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change, Economics, Federal Elections and Politics
. 41 Comments

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.

Great big new tax scare campaign game: Two can play

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change, Economics, Federal Elections, Media and Politics
. 34 Comments

Both the Government and the Coalition are publicly committed to a 5% emissions reduction target. Tony Abbott claims he will get there via ‘direct action’ and avoid the ‘great big new tax on everything’ – his characterisation of Labor’s ETS.

Kevin Rudd today:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is warning voters that the coalition’s approach to climate change will be very costly.

He says the policy, to be unveiled by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott on Tuesday, will be a large tax with very little environmental impact.

‘One huge mega tax from Mr Abbott to fund his approach to climate change,’ Mr Rudd told the Nine Network.

When in doubt, muddy the waters?

According to the Abbotariat, the big problem with the Government’s approach is supposed to be that the public doesn’t, on the whole, understand the detail of the ETS. Kevin Rudd is betting that no one understands what Abbott’s proposing either. Labor’s line will be that Abbott’s claims that he can fund over 10 billion dollars of policy (according to the Department of Climate Change’s costings) through unspecified efficiencies are spurious, and that he would have to raise revenue to fund his promises. Labor, supposedly, won’t, because the ETS is meant to be budget neutral.

All this is fairly complex, but we won’t see much of that complexity debated in the public arena during an election year. Kevin Rudd’s playing one of the oldest tricks in the book – make your opponent deny something you claim they’re going to do, and hope that:

(a) they’re perceived as less trustworthy; and/or

(b) obfuscating the issue will make everyone discount it because neither side can be believed.

It’ll probably work.

Continue reading ‘Great big new tax scare campaign game: Two can play’

The Women’s Weekly and politicians

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Culture, Education, Federal Elections, Feminism, Media, Politics and Sexuality
. 83 Comments

Over at Gatewatching, Jason Wilson references Andrew Elder’s very good question about the Australian Women’s Weekly being a graveyard for politicians, and asks another good one – given the magazine’s truly huge readership, were Tony Abbott’s comments ill advised?

The Weekly is a colossus, that really does reach an incredibly wide sweep of Australian voters. Looking bad in it means looking bad to a lot of people. For a man who is struggling with women voters, Tony Abbott has at the very least taken a huge risk with his comments. If they really were off the cuff, and really do hurt him, he will come to regret going unprepared to an encounter with the Weekly, one of Australia’s most important political publications.

To reiterate Mr Elder’s question – one that of course many feminists asked before either of us did – why aren’t magazines like the Weekly taken more seriously, more often, by more journos, scholars and political junkies, as both public sphere institutions, and as places where politics happens?

As summer holidays end, and Parliament prepares to resume, we’ve seen two stories this last week which have had lots of normally not so engaged voters talking; Abbott’s remarks about young women’s sexuality (quickly spun away as ‘private advice’ to his daughters when their potential for embedding a negative perception of his persona became clear) and Julia Gillard’s launch of the Myschool website.

Despite my own reservations about the latter, I have no doubt whatsoever it’s been a big political plus for the Government as the election year begins in earnest. Can the same be said for Tony’s thoughts about sexuality?

Parsing the polls: Just how strong is Labor’s lead, really?

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Elections, Federal Elections, Politics, Polls and Sociology
. 27 Comments

I’ve been wondering myself, recently, about the significance of Labor’s unbroken lead in the polls, which if memory serves, has persisted for over three years now. There’s little doubt that it’s Rudd’s election to lose, but, conversely, big Labor victories in both seat and vote terms have been rare at federal level. Labor’s vote in the 2007 election was also lower than its poll lead had been in the run up, on most measures.

Fortunately, psephological bloggers are on the case!

Both Antony Green and Possum have written thoughtful and well informed posts on just this topic.

I’d add a couple of points:

(a) It’s quite right to be a tad suspicious about whether polls are measuring something slightly different from voting intention. To me, the biggest gap in the polls we have is always the lack of any data on intensity of interest in politics, which could, I think, usefully be correlated with strength of commitment to a particular voting preference. Part of the advantage to incumbents, I suspect, comes from the fact that a lot of the people, a lot of the time, are just not thinking much about politics;

(b) As I’ve commented on and off again and again for years, politics is not amenable to prediction in quite the same way other forms of behaviour are. (A good contrast is with consumption, where the aggregation of individual purchases makes more sense, I’d suggest, than the aggregation of individual votes; the frequent conflation of political behaviour with marketing terminology is misleading – ‘brand loyalty’ is just not the same thing with political parties as with mobile phones or flavoured milk.)