Tag Archive for 'Glenn Milne'

End of the road for Glenn Milne?

Published
by
Kim
3 days, 8 hours ago
in Media
. 42 Comments

There’s an intriguing little piece by Jason Whittaker in Crikey’s media briefs today, implying that Glenn Milne’s days as a columnist for the News Limited Sunday papers (and full time staffer) are over. I wonder what that signifies? Continue reading ‘End of the road for Glenn Milne?’

Lame claims: invoking the Reserve Bank and Treasury politically

Published
by
Mark
7 months ago
in Economics, Media and Politics
. 16 Comments

Sometimes, in politics, it might be better to remain silent.

Glenn Milne’s latest intervention, talking up a line from Liberal MP Scott Morrison, has to be one of the lamest ever political attack lines. [For those who don't want to wade through a farrago of fallacies expounded at excessive length, his core point is echoed by Sinclair Davidson at Catallaxy, though without attribution to Milne. Rendered in short form, the basic logical fallacy is starkly evident.]

So, there’s going to be an “emissions financial crisis” and the Reserve Bank wasn’t consulted by the Government before climate change legislation was prepared? A non sequitur built on speculative and incoherent fantasy does not make for an effective political attack. ‘OMG! Governor didn’t read legislation! Rudd FAIL!’…

The political syntax of this claim, of course, is that Rudd and co successfully berated the Liberals for ‘ignoring 20 (or whatever it was) successive Reserve Bank warnings’ in the lead up to the 2007 election. Now, we have the Liberals, and their echo chamber, arguing that the Reserve Bank should have been given a chance to warn. Somehow a hypothetical and unlikely warning was pre-empted by the Government deliberately choosing not to do what it doesn’t have to do. Try to make any sense of that.

What would be far more interesting to examine would be the politics of invoking the Reserve Bank (and for that matter, Treasury and its ubiquitous Secretary, Dr Ken Henry). Continue reading ‘Lame claims: invoking the Reserve Bank and Treasury politically’

The Liberals, women and the Mad Monk

Published
by
Kim
8 months, 2 weeks ago
in Media, Politics, Polls and Women
. 79 Comments

Pavlov’s Cat made a very incisive comment here recently, apropos of the silly push for Tony Abbott to be leader of the Liberal Party (which seems to have disappeared ever since Malcolm got ‘back on the front foot’, ‘muscled up’, ‘took the fight up to the government’ blah blah by banging on about debt and deficit – alliteration masks a multiplicity of sins in politics – and buying a debt truck):

The widespread practice of simply ignoring women in male-dominated discussions does not make the fact that we make up 51% of voters go away.

Indeed. Women are nigh on invisible, or at least very radically under-represented in most public discussions of electoral politics. But, as Pavlov’s Cat points out, we constitute more than a majority of the electorate… and that’s reflected in the composition of samples taken for polls. So as Possum reveals (with one of his spiffy graphs), the Coalition trails much further behind where they were at the last election with women voters than with male:

The Coalition is pulling a fairly stable average of 37-39 among male voters, which isn’t crash hot, but it’s not exactly terrible either. The thing about election campaigns is that it’s pretty easy to win or lose a few points with any demographic, so if the Coalition went into the next campaign only 3 or 4 points down among males, it’s a doable proposition for them.

With the female vote however, they’re pulling an average 34-37, which is a staggering 7 to 10 point decline on their result from the last election. Turning around a gap that large simply isn’t a doable proposition over the short time frame of an election campaign. For the Coalition to not go backwards at the next election (let alone win), they have to substantially improve their female voter base before the next election campaign starts, simply to give them some realistic base to launch a final assault on Labor from during the campaign itself.

[By the way, Possum also reveals with customary wonkiness and style, that the puzzle of why the PM is popular - so unintelligible to the press gallery and the Libs - might be explained by the fact that the PM is liked. Circular, I know, but there you have it...]

So, why, exactly, are the Libs so on the nose with women voters? Speculate away…

News Limited’s partisan nonsense actually a disaster for the Liberals

Published
by
Mark
8 months, 2 weeks ago
in Media and Politics
. 138 Comments

Various News Limited scribes on the weekend opined (all speaking in the voice of Tony Abbott’s ventriloquist dummy – it couldn’t be more obvious) that Malcolm Turnbull had set himself the task of tearing Rudd down in order to win. And failed. [By the way, bad move according to the News punditariat - nothing at all to do with publishing fake Utegate emails on front pages - who are now touting the said Tony Abbott, who presumably is as pure as the driven snow and would never resort to personal attacks or absurd and false confected scandalising in the most unlikely event he became Opposition Leader...] In case you missed the various stories, Turnbull has “declared” the Liberals can win the next election. That’s a matter of total irrelevance to the actual dynamic of Australian politics, since the “influence” of the News Limited opinionistas now only extends to Liberal MPs (and, sadly, the ABC’s more recondite political correspondents).

There’s a bit of a problem with this meme.

In a (now) rare piece of relatively sensible and reality based political commentary, Lenore Taylor, formerly of the Australian Financial Review, wrote in The Australian on the weekend that the “personal destruction of Rudd” thing failed dismally for the serried ranks of Howardistas in government and – were she writing completely honestly she might have added – in News Limited in 2007.

She also neglected to observe that Dennis Shanahan was the most enthusiastic participant in this collective delusion. While Glenn Milne, one might conjecture, did the mud slinging antecedent to the putative glorious Howard re-election that never was.

Continue reading ‘News Limited’s partisan nonsense actually a disaster for the Liberals’

Milne land

Published
by
Mark
8 months, 2 weeks ago
in Media and Politics
. 41 Comments

Peter Costello announces he’s retiring from Parliament, Malcolm Turnbull implodes, and therefore Glenn Milne needs a new bandwagon. He’s found one. Tony Abbott for PM.

If the polls haven’t turned around by Christmas, etc.

This must be what John Hartigan means by high quality journalism. I’m sure readers are just lining up to pay to read Milne’s writing on the web. Pay for view Liberal leadership speculation. That’ll be a sustainable business model.

Elsewhere: John Quiggin.

Rudd reshuffles

Published
by
Mark
9 months, 2 weeks ago
in Politics
. 37 Comments

Kevin Rudd has announced a bigger reshuffle than most observers were expecting – with Greg Combet and Chris Bowen the big winners. Jan McLucas and Bob Debus have been dropped from the frontbench. No sign of the much touted Mark Arbib ascendancy, which just goes to prove you can’t trust everything you read in Glenn Milne’s columns.

Both Combet’s and Bowen’s elevations are no great surprise. But I’m disappointed to see Bob Debus go – he seemed a reasonable, measured and sensible Minister in a potentially trouble ridden portfolio. In some ways, I think he was a much better performer than Robert McLelland, his senior portfolio minister.

Newspoll Monday: Labor 56-44

Published
by
Kim
1 year ago
in Polls, Queensland and State/Territory Elections
. 31 Comments

Shanahan gets it right:

Even the desperate hopes of some Liberals that the improvement in parliament two weeks ago that saw Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon on the rack have proved forlorn.

When jobs are being lost, the economy is contracting and the world faces great uncertainty, voters are not about to be distracted by a bureaucratic bungle in Defence no matter how good the Liberals felt as a result.

They, and Dennis, are of course still pinning their hopes on a leadership shift. The punditariat seem to be backing $weetie now. Perhaps Glenn Milne has convinced them by the force of argument to adopt his long-held point of view about Costello’s saviour-like qualities?

Elsewhere: The Poll Bludger.

And the Queensland edition of the Newspoll (LNP 51-49) is debated at Pineapple Party Time.

Update [by Mark]: Possum.

Review into the NT Intervention: on not reading and stereotyped debates

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 5 months ago
in Culture, Ethics, History, Indigenous, Media, Politics and Race
. 18 Comments

I have to confess at the outset that I haven’t read the report – I am really busy with work at the moment and I simply don’t have time (or energy when I do have time), but I wanted to comment instead on the practice of not reading. I was struck by this when reading Mark’s post from last night about the reactions of Gerard Henderson and Kevin Donnelly to the report released by Stuart Macintyre’s history curriculum panel. Donnelly, when interviewed on Lateline (and why is it necessary to interview him – for balance? … so that the substance of the story can be obscured by inscription in a “history wars” frame – what happened to journos perhaps reading the report and reporting on its substance not a press release?) couldn’t actually point to anything in the report which would support the line he wanted to run about a “black armband view” and wanted to mutter something dark instead about Labor being tricky about pretending not to be as left wing as they are. Incidentally, that’s the cunning new strategy that Chrissy Pyne came up with the other day, if we believe his ghost writer Glenn Milne.

Similarly, Hendo appeared to be reacting to a press release. Now these characters are held up as “public intellectuals” and their assemblage of titles (thinktank director, educator/consultant, etc) supposedly represent authority and expertise. Obviously, they’re just going to push the political line they run with constantly, but what’s happened to the idea that you should actually inform yourself about what you comment on?

(Hendo, I suppose, doesn’t have time, what with having to write 50 emails a day to Robert Manne about what they each thought about Indonesia in the 1960s, or monitoring the ABC all day for “bias”…)

Something very similar is operating with the reaction of Warren Mundine to the NT Intervention Review. Andrew Bartlett asks some pointed questions:

Yet almost all the attacks seem to be ignoring the evidence about what has been happening on the ground, and the views of the people that live there, instead treating policies such as universal compulsory quarantining of welfare payments and scrapping the permit system as sacred totems which cannot be touched, regardless of the evidence.

Continue reading ‘Review into the NT Intervention: on not reading and stereotyped debates’

Confidential sources

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 5 months ago
in Education and Media
. 32 Comments

Glenn Milne used to be frequently accused of being a mouthpiece for Peter Costello. Guess who he’s talking to now?

Pyne, one of Turnbull’s key leadership backers, has now been promoted into the frontline education portfolio and it is Julia Gillard, his opposite, whom he now has in his sights. Pyne has finally assumed his rightful position at the epicentre of the Opposition, a role that was bloodymindedly denied him by Howard for two reasons: he was a Liberal progressive and he was a supporter of Peter Costello. It was enough to generate such negative personal energy from Howard that he continually blocked Pyne’s promotion in what turned out to be part of an act of self-destruction.

Pyne is now where he wants to be in the Liberal pantheon and, more critically, where Turnbull wants him to be.

In case you don’t feel like reading the rest of this guff, Christopher Pyne has “lighted onto” a “proposition” – that while Kevin Rudd and his ministers are portrayed as “Howard lite”, they’re actually hiding their socialist lights under a bushel! Exposes such as Christopher’s clever realisation that transparency in private school funding might lead to Class Warfare will be their secret weapon as they go on the front foot…

Memo to Kevin Rudd: these guys think they can win. And they will now do whatever it takes to do so.

Whatever…

Bursting the Costello balloon

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 6 months ago
in Media and Politics
. 23 Comments

In the wake of the punditariat’s latest game of deconstructing each parliamentary interjection by The Great Pretender and wistfully wishing his incoherent comedy lines on the public, it’s worth taking a step back and asking whether – even if you think Peter Costello’s schtick is remotely worthwhile – it matters.

Andrew Bartlett points out:

I remain to be convinced that being the best performer at ‘throwing the switch to vaudeville’ does much on its own to attract public support.

Kevin Rudd didn’t defeat John Howard because he had a lot of witty putdowns in parliament. Nor did John Howard win against Paul Keating in 1996 for this reason. Indeed, one could argue that this fixation with Keating’s apparently unchallenged ability to dominate the arena during Question Time was a key reason why so many commentators argued he still had a chance of winning in 1996, well after the electorate had already decided they’d had enough.

Exactly.

Continue reading ‘Bursting the Costello balloon’

Imagine

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 6 months ago
in Media and Politics
. 42 Comments

Somehow I’m not feeling the Costello excitement:

After Gillard taunted him in the parliament last week about his publisher’s motto, “books with spine”, he responded: “If she bought a copy, I might sign it for her. She could take it back to that flat where she lives with the spartan furniture, put it up on the bookshelf with her current library, the collected works of Marx and Engels. She could file it alphabetically, by author, ‘Cos’. It will come after ‘Com’, for The Communist Manifesto, and before ‘D’, for Das Kapital. Or she could it put by her bedside where she’s reading a book on how to create unemployment in an economy which is undergoing a mining boom.” Imagine those lines delivered in parliament.

Meanwhile, Brendan’s still truckin’…

Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson says all decision-makers should spend 12 hours in a truck to understand the issues long-distance drivers face.

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

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 7 months 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’