However, I don’t buy the whole “balancing state and federal governments” argument. States have political cycles of their own which are substantially independent of federal swings of the pendulum. In Queensland, changes of government are very rare, with only six since 1915. That might give you some idea of why Peter Beattie hung on in 2006 when by rights (and he knew it) he should have lost. And the LNP is still looking quite messy. Aside from the internal shenanigans associated with the Nats takeover, Lawrence Springborg has made a couple of big mistakes by not following up on his teaser campaign with any substantial policy in areas such as infrastructure, health and education and by going relatively silent since his great conservative union was kinda consummated. The Borg is now back in a no policy, carping oppo leader zone – with internal rumblings. So I think 2009 in Queensland is still Labor’s to lose.

Incidentally, contra The Australian, I don’t think Kevin Rudd should be shaking in his boots at Labor’s state polling in Queensland. The ALP won a majority of federal seats under Bob Hawke in the state while Joh Bjelke-Petersen was Premier in both 1983 and 1987.

Elsewhere: Possum crunches the numbers:

Beware people, or rather Queensland Nats, saying that The Merger is responsible for this changing of political fortune – as you can clearly see from the timeline, Bligh becoming Premier is what seems to be driving most of this, with Labor falling sharply and the Conservative party vote increasing substantially before the merger occurred. Springborg’s Better Premier rating is in the bin, again, as it probably always will be – the bloke is a liability in metro seats.

The whole “keep business satisfied” implementation agenda might have seemed like a good idea last year. It’s not looking so flash now, particularly as the ACTU finally wakes up to the fact that they’ve effectively been locked out of the policy making process.

Elsewhere: More discussion of the poll at The Poll Bludger. Also interesting is the comparison with ratings of attributes between Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd (with the proviso that the data on Rudd dates from June). Turnbull will be worried at the 47% “out of touch” figure. How do you actually turn that around? Brendan Nelson didn’t do so by emoting and going trucking.

So what’s Labor up to? A lot of it has to do with Turnbull’s persona. As Kim observed the other day, Turnbull won’t be anywhere near as well known among the general public as he is among political junkies. When there’s so much attention on him, you get in quick to define his persona. The line has already morphed – from rich dude to out of touch Eastern suburbs silvertail who represents, you know, latte sippers and Sydney Morning Herald readers. Which, after all, he does. “Vaucluse”, “Point Piper”, and “Western suburbs” (by way of contrast) are words carrying huge symbolic weight. It’s a tie in with the “right to drive a Porsche” jibes and will be a better fit with Turnbull than with truckin’ Brendan.

Turnbull’s possibly doing himself no favours by talking about himself so much, a point that a conga line of Ministers have made. It’s the downside of having to define yourself. To the degree that Turnbull does have an image as egotistical and arrogant, he reinforces that by dwelling on his own qualities. And the press does part of the job for the ALP by writing about him in terms of his stellar intellect, heroic qualities, his temper and “inability to tolerate fools”, blah blah. If there’s one image that Australian voters don’t like, it’s of someone with tickets on themselves and a sense of entitlement. Just ask Peter Costello.

Thirdly, while the press may have been suggesting Turbull is some sort of “crazy brave” choice and will provide sparks and excitement, that’s probably a negative. An objective look at most of his public presentation since becoming a Parliamentarian belies that. It must be a reflection of his private behaviour – just as Rudd’s known to “Insiders” as having a temper, but has a very carefully crafted public self-presentation as almost respectful and gentle in disposition towards his interlocutors. So the “truth” doesn’t matter in communications terms. What Labor is doing is again playing on the media story and goading Turnbull – particularly in Parliament – to actually lose his temper. While the press gallery might be writing admiringly about Turnbull’s poise in question time, what the government is trying to do is to rile him. Then the deal is sealed. Hubris can be gamed.

All this is quite similar to how the Liberals tried to game Rudd last year. It didn’t work then because of Rudd’s incredible self-discipline, and because he didn’t appear to be a media tart. It may well work with Turnbull.

The Labor attack on Rudd will have been focus grouped. Any political machine worth its salt does research on possible opponents. There’s a lot of discipline and strategy and cohesive themes in Labor’s assault, which (among other things) suggests it’s a game plan which has just been taken off the shelf, and isn’t some sort of frightened reaction. There’s actually been some very clever politics from the Labor side over the last couple of days. It doesn’t appear to have been noticed by the press gallery, who are lost in their own “media narrative”. To the degree that there is now a contest, Labor is ready. They’ve hardly had to play politics at all since the election, because Nelson was doomed from the start. Now they do. But don’t forget these dudes and dudettes threw out a government which was supposed to be unassailable with a very large swing indeed. They’re not political amateurs.

Yes, Virginia, there is a strategy.

But you can be sure that from the end of the next week until at least the end of the following week, it will be all-Costello-all-the-time in the Australian media.

Lord save us.

This question from Essential Research (which incidentally has Labor sitting on a 59/41 2PP split) is a hypothetical, but it’s still an interesting result:

Kevin Rudd is preferred to Peter Costello head-to-head 53 per cent to 27 per cent.

Elsewhere: Possum shows why the Costello dithering is doing a lot of damage to the Libs.

Image courtesy of Funkadelic at deviantart. Click through and click on full view for a higher res version.

Regular LP readers might recall that I’ve been emphasising for some time now research evidence which suggests that the “apathetic youth” narrative is nonsense. Just because no one’s marching in the street, doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening. Further evidence for that case comes from a literature review prepared for the Whitlam Institute by Philippa Colin – Young People Imagining a New Democracy [link to pdf]. Colin finds that engagement is migrating online, and that it’s much more likely to be issues or cause based than the “citizen oriented repertoires” of involvement in political parties. The review also suggests significant disengagement with the formal practices of citizenship coincides with idealism and engagement around issues and networks.

This report was discussed in the most stereotypical possible way on last week’s Q&A (where most of the panel wanted to diss blogging and those intertubes). Doing it justice might force us to answer the question of what’s wrong with our democracy, rather than squeeze it into the most tedious and condescending media frame of what’s wrong with teh yoof… In many ways, one could argue that disengagement from an unresponsive and elitist “democracy” is an eminently rational choice. That might be something the professionally cynical pundits and pollies might wish to ponder.