The Victorian Left MP ruminates on the damage done by the excessive use of focus group techniques and a soulless approach to the techniques of campaigning, and at the same time argues that Labor needs to formulate principled policy which can appeal to its support bases in both progressive and working communities. That’s normally seen as a bridge too far by modern Labor, post-Keating. Yet I’ve seen very little evidence that most of the outer suburban vote targeted by ALP “hard heads” actually does swing on the basis of issues such as asylum seekers and “social issues”.

The smallest swing against the ALP in Queensland, for instance, was in Petrie – a classic outer suburban “battlers” seat. I suspect there’s a refusal to recognise that the consequences of economic decisions taken under Hawke and Keating actually contributed mightily to the erosion of Labor’s vote. The backlash against the Howard Liberals over WorkChoices also suggests that the cultural project of reconfiguring class identities around notions of “aspiration” and “entrepreneurialism” was only ever skin deep.

Meanwhile, over in Milne-land, the veteran transcriber of leaks purports to report the defensive bile of the NSW right, and to present it in the best possible light. Karl Bitar, it seems, is going to voluntarily look for career opportunities elsewhere, while the rightsters heap blame on the PM for the exact same reasons they heaped blame on Kevin Rudd.

You could take all this with a massive pinch of salt, of course, but it’s interesting that a serious piece of reflection from a Left MP is ignored in the MSM while the almost totally discredited NSW right’s recriminations are still treated as if they’re gospel (and headlined as a “crisis for Labor”).

Something I’d regard as a plus is treated as a negative:

Where has she been? We learn today she is now planning to move into the Lodge, making her ascension formal. Until her appearance on Wednesday where she delivered the latest episode of the soap that is becoming the Speakership we had not heard from her in person since her Ben Chifley, “Light on the Hill” moment on September 18.

Meanwhile the vacuum is being filled by the Greens and, wait for it, Rudd as shiny new Foreign Minister. Can you imagine John Howard or Rudd as prime minister going missing for that long a time? Perhaps it was an inauspicious outing. Gillard used it to claim she would be as an audacious and ambitious leader as Chifley was, faced by his own straitened circumstances of a parliament and a government reliant on independents.

I’d have thought that not compulsively fronting the cameras for the message of the day, making serious appearances to talk about serious things, and getting on with the business of governing in a new environment was actually a very good move by the PM.

Crikey has a liveblog, and ABC News 24 and News Radio are carrying Bob Katter’s press conference live.

Update: Bernard Keane summarises Katter’s press conference.

Update: Tony Windsor supports Labor.

So this is the last call for any haruspices, augurs, tarot-card readers or other diviners!

The response I received from the I Ching On Line perhaps cautions against divination itself!

THE JUDGEMENT

Keeping Still. Keeping his back still
So that he no longer feels his body.
He goes into his courtyard
And does not see his people.
No blame.

THE IMAGE

Mountains standing close together:
The image of Keeping Still.
Thus the superior man
Does not permit his thoughts
To go beyond his situation.

NB: Wish someone would do a more gender-neutral I Ching translation…

Funny how political philosophy is being invoked in an actual political context.

And it was funny to hear Rob Oakeshott skewer the piffle on Edmund Burke served up by Professor Kenneth Wiltshire in The Australian yesterday.

You really wonder what purpose these op/ed pieces serve; except maybe to annoy the people they’re supposedly addressing.

Just by the by, while we’re on the topic of News Limited’s partisan campaigns, does anyone expect “ELECTION NOW!” to carry on if the Independents support the Coalition (which, it goes without saying, Goddess forfend!)…

The story is here.

Pearson’s main issue seems to be the Queensland Wild Rivers legislation, which Brian wrote about recently.

As the article notes, this intervention comes on the back of an attack by Pearson on Friday on Labor.

One thing of interest is that Pearson seems to be acting, in this context, as his own local member. That is – his concerns appear to be mainly about his own region, and his common theme of seeing his own ideas implemented elsewhere.

In that vein, there’s a very interesting article in the latest issue of Overland by Chris Graham, which among other things, makes the point that Pearson’s biggest blind spot is his isolation from other Indigenous leaders, and also critiques the policy initiatives he’s seen implemented (largely with Peter Beattie’s support) in Cape York.

The representatives of both wings of the political class – Nick Minchin and Peter Beattie – looked like going into meltdown as Christine Milne and Bob Katter, for somewhat different reasons, denounced the free trade and deregulatory neo-liberal consensus that has dominated our politics for decades.

Minchin came as close as I’ve ever seen him to passion: on the topic of not having tariffs.

(It was also interesting to watch his finger tapping as Bob Katter denounced the Coalition’s record on agriculture. And it was choice to see Katter set Minchin a reading list of De Tocqueville and Mill.)

Minchin’s argument of last resort was to invoke cheap food.

To return to my early 20th century British politics parallels, the Liberal party came to power in 1906, after much agitation for agricultural tariffs from within the Tory party, on a cry of “cheap bread”. At the same time, of course, that line resonated because wages were stagnant or falling, employment insecure, and the legal rights of trade unions under attack.

It’s always worth asking precisely why cheap food is such a pressing concern.

[Via Peter Martin]

I watched last week’s Q&A on repeat – I turned it off last Monday when the first question was a stupid iteration of the Penberthy Line – ZOMG! It’s so undemocratic for Independents to decide! (Note to #qanda – lose the balance of Young Liberal/Labor/Green/CEC/Whoever hacks idea and the extremely unspontaneous questions based on MSM or partisan talking points, please). I ended up watching it partly because I was curious about Jessica Rudd.

That’s by the by – I found John Keane’s comments interesting. Keane, the author of an acclaimed history of democracy, has recently taken up a Chair at Sydney University. Aside from the fact that he seemed to have caught the “must be witty for Qanda” virus, what he had to say was quite different from the usual issues of the day fodder we get.

Among other things, Keane said:

I think this is a black swan moment in Australian politics. I think that we’re at the end of the road of stage managed two party politics. It has collapsed in every other Westminster model. This is the last one where it has collapsed…

In part, that reflects the point made here at LP a while back about the fact that all Westminster parliaments in the major countries where they’re part of the political fabric have no majority, and that’s something that is inconsistent with the political model they were designed to achieve – after single member constituencies were entrenched in the Third Reform Act in 1886.

Keane goes on to discuss the end of industrial era and modernist politics, which is perhaps a structural cause of the breakdown of the prevalent political mode. Mark made some quick observations about that on the Monday after the election. It’s a big theme, and one to which we should return.

If we think back to the last term, it’s difficult to argue against the proposition – just on the surface – that stability wasn’t much in evidence on either major party side. Labor had two Prime Ministers, the term itself was truncated, while counting John Howard, the Libs went through four leaders.

All sorts of narratives abound about what this means.

But let’s make one point – in one way, the election result makes sense as a rejection of partisanship itself. Think about the fact that for a large part of the term the Liberal party struggled to get over 35% in the polls, and then things massively swung around to a position where Labor struggled to get much above 35%. Both parties had a blip upwards at the start and in the middle of the campaign, but one thing we can say is that there was a very large proportion of voters throughout the term – probably close to a third – who were to greater or lesser degree disattached from a partisan identification with the majors. That was disguised a bit by the Kevin07 hegemony, but its rapid erosion and then failure to resolve into a Coalition majority proves the point.

So, beneath all the froth and bubble, there was a lot of instability bubbling along.

Whether or not a post-partisan Labor minority government could change things, I don’t know. It won’t be a land of milk and honey, but it’s worth thinking about, nevertheless.

NB: This is not a general thread to discuss anything to do with the hung parliament, or negotiations about the formation of a government. Please just don’t leave a comment here because it’s the most recent post. Any general comments should go on the most recent roundtable or please comment on a topical thread if what you have to say is germane to it.

Any comments I consider to be off topic will be deleted.

The poll being talked about was trumpeted by News Limited, but curiously didn’t emanate from either Newspoll or Galaxy – pollsters of choice to The Australian and the metro tabloids respectively. Rather it was commissioned by “Sydney-based public relations and lobby firm Parker and Partners”, for reasons unknown and for a client unknown, and all we know is that it’s a phone poll of 1000 people with 56% apparently wanting another election now. In the absence of any information about the composition of the sample or the question/s asked, it’s probably useful only as fodder for the “Election Now!” campaign.

Some interesting questions about where it comes from, and why it’s being reported in the absence of the transparency that usually exists around the detail of the polling are probably worth asking.

More reliable is Essential Research today, which you can read about at Crikey. Voting intentions were essentially unchanged from the actual poll that counts, and there wasn’t much evidence that many voters would vote differently in a hypothetical new election, though most now anticipate a Coalition win. If you hold to the theory that Labor might have done better in the absence of win expectations being so high (“it was the protest vote wot done it!”), maybe that’s significant.

Of course, no one seems to be reporting that an immediate election is constitutionally impossible without parliament having met, and that in any case, its likelihood is fairly narrow. Whatever might be the putative state of public opinion at the moment (and I doubt too many people are actually strongly concerned about the absence of a gubbermint, or would welcome a return to election mode if it actually happened), it might be worth observing that two years last century in which Great Britain had two elections – 1910 and 1974 – both after an inconclusive first try, produced pretty much the same result both times.

So what we have is a media strategy rather than a negotiating strategy, setting the stage to continue the onslaught of bullying and blather if a Gillard government is sworn in this week.

Perhaps the last throw of the dice in this game is a bizarre opinion piece by Tony Abbott himself in the comfortable environs of the Sydney Daily Telegraph. Presumably if this absurd combination of hyperbole and untruths doesn’t influence the Independents at this late stage, Tony Abbott is preparing to resume his career as “Australia’s Most Successful Opposition Leader” to the general acclaim of Paul Kelly, Dennis Shanahan and David Penberthy.

The question, though, is whether another installment in The Party of No show will work in the actual parliamentary conditions under which an Abbott opposition will operate. If the prospect of an election recedes, and conciliation becomes entrenched, could the Liberals start looking for a less combative leader? And are they confident that every single one of their 72 members will follow Abbott’s lead on every vote?

Elsewhere: Grog’s Gamut.