The inimitable BK provided his much loved links today and one of them bears closer scrutiny…
“Jaqueline Maley with a long and reasonable article about the issues that will dominate this election year. Note how thin the Opposition’s stances are.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/the-10-issues-that-will-decide-the-election-20130104-2c93p.html “
“Reasonable”? BK is too kind.
It looks like Maley’s spoken to Mark Textor pretty exclusively for her analysis (with Hawker-Britton looking on). It boils down to how things will “play”, from a institutionalized Liberal spruiker’s point of view, written up by the SMH’s “parliamentary sketch writer” as proper “journalism”.
On the Carbon Tax Maley posits that the punters will hold a grudge against Gillard for the “lie”, made in August 2010, even as they realize Abbott has been full of shit about the dire effects of the CT. As droughts and fires take hold over the next ten years, she assumes the punters will STILL vote against the government, even if it means their houses burn down and their water runs dry.
For someone who treats her own readers as if they have no memory, Maley now asserts they never forget anything.
“But that doesn’t mean voters have forgiven Gillard her carbon tax “lie”, and it doesn’t mean they are convinced of the value of the carbon pricing reform on its own merits.”
The same goes for the Surplus “promise”. Millions – amateurs and professionals – have been begging the government for relief from spending cutbacks. Swan, according to the experts with a vested interest in doomsaying, waited months longer than he needed to, just to make sure everyone was on board. He finally did what they were clamouring for him to do. And that’s dumb?
It’s so typical of a “parliamentary sketch writer” to obsess about broken promises, years old and now irrelevant, indeed welcomed in many quarters as sensibly and wisely broken. Yada-yada, I guess Jackie would say “It’s all about perception”.
No, it’s not. It’s a last fling Maley is having before she is forced to wake up and realize the public is concerned with outcomes, not the mindf**ks of political opinionistettes who see everything in terms of Journalists Club rules and regulations.
“Thou shalt not breaketh promises, for parliamentary sketch writers will … um … houndeth thou for them, even if the public doesn’t… um … give a toss.”
How about this for a possibility? Labor convinces the punters that Carbon pricing is a good thing, is essentially un-repealable (without causing more chaos than it’s worth from something that’s now basically bedded down), that Global Warming is real – which it is, conveniently – and needs to be countered, and that ditching the obsession with Surpluses is not only a good thing as far as outcomes are concerned, but a good thing for the political process, breaking the chain of reflexive calls for a yearly credit balance no matter what. At least if she countenanced this possibility Maley would distinguish herself from the groupthink that passes for “political analysis” nowadays.
On IR, Maley believes (or is it Textor in her ear again?) that the public will welcome a return to Work Choices (in name or nature) because Craig Thomson is alleged to have used hookers nearly a decade ago and a Labor vice-President looks like he’s ripped off the same union.
She confuses the issue de jour of about a year ago, one of those that excited calls for Prime Ministerial resignations (along with Slipper, who I will come to later) and was classified as a government-busting scandal, with the more sanguine point of view that Thomson was only important because of the numbers in a hung parliament. Any attempt to make it bigger than that and to sustain this until, and throughout an election campaign is risky business, indeed.
The two – union power and petty union corruption – only seem to be connected, and that only in Journo World, a theme park where two flies crawling up a wall make it to the front page. If they crawl back down again, Peter Hartcher writes an obtuse leader and Michelle Grattan tells us either one could come out the winner (or maybe the cockroach will beat them both).
One – union power – protects all workers from the Americanization of our places of employment, which, given our stubbornly low jobless metrics and position as just about the world’s best economy, are things to worry about losing, and which are being worried about, even if the (paradoxically, heavily unionized) Journalists Club thinks it’s a trivial matter of what “she said” while “he said”.
The other, union corruption, can be fixed with a couple of court cases, fresh, clean union elections and stricter regulations. Then we can get onto millionaire Point Piper merchant bankers not being prosecuted for stealing the life savings of gullible self-financed retirees. Why one and not the other?
Punish the wicked, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Let’s not get too carried away thinking that scandals only happen to the Labor side of politics. If Textor/Maley think Craig Thomson and AWU are going to bamboozle the people into loving work Choices, begging for its return, over an alleged (but importantly not yet adjudicated and vigorously denied) bit of t’other by Craig Thomson, they’re even further gone than I thought.
Even without getting Textor’s imprimatur, I could think of another scandal that may provide some light relief for the punters: an LNP plot to bring the government down by dropping Peter Slipper, the Constitution’s highest parliamentary officer, into a homosexual honey trap that everyone in Canberra to the left of the Chair seemed to know was coming, at the same time as having no “specific knowledge” of it. This was followed by the wall-punching, Mr. “Sell Your Virginity Dearly” Abbott getting up in parliament to ask Madame Speaker-Thing to allow him to have a motion passed condemning… misogyny. After that came The Speech, something an insouciant Maley assured us needed to be taken in context… hers, of course.
I wonder where the pugilistic Abbott learned to lead with his chin?
Ashby-Slipper has already survived an almost impossible legal test: a successful accusation of abuse of process, an often argued but so unlikely an outcome for a court case that it makes hens’ teeth seem about as rare as an IPA talking head on The Drum, i.e. not.
If the Libs – including Textor/Maley presumably – believe a Federal Court finding that the fix was well and truly in re. Slipper is going to just disappear – has already disappeared – while 20 year old allegations that Julia Gillard had an intra-office tiff with her partners and was encumbered by a boyfriend with dubious (although as yet, again, unadjudicated) connections is going to get a guernsey as Scandal Of The Century, they may have to find their thinking caps, place them on their bobble heads, and use Velcro to keep them on in the storm that’s about to come.
A common way to cut a policy off at the knees is for a journo at a presser to yell, “Where’s the money coming from?” If there’s no money, then they don’t have to examine policy or do any serious analysis. They just shake their heads and waffle on about how “The Polls” say the voters reckon the government isn’t as good as Joe Hockey – he of “Interest rates will always be {too low|too high|out of control} under Labor” – at managing the economy.
So Textor/Maley today throw out the tired line:
“But there will be natural voter scepticism around funding for the reforms. The review recommends increased funding of $5 billion a year (based on 2009 figures, which amounts to $6.5 billion in today’s terms) and no agreement has been reached with the states.
Textor says the Gonski review might be a talking point among Canberra’s press gallery, but it adds up to just that – talk.
“It’s seen by many as a bunch of recommendations and things they say they’re going to do . . . Have any changes resulted?” Meanwhile, he says, the Coalition can campaign on its “practical approach” to education and “proven ability to negotiate with the states”.
Note how Maley quietly divorces herself from “Canberra’s press gallery”, using Textor’s words? They’re the journos over there, those other ones, the ones who reckon Education is important, not the ones who know the Coalition has a “proven ability to negotiate with the states.” Presumably Textor/Maley are referring to John Howard’s stunning achievements with … um … let’s see… the Murray-Darling, for example? That was a brilliant success, eh? Unlike the miserable Gillard failures of actually passing the MDB legislation through the parliament, shaming the states into agreeing to co-fund the NDIS and her egregious lack of accomplishment at getting NAPLAN testing up and running. What a miserable record of “negotiating with the states” Labor truly has!
I could go on, but I have to go out into the garden and complete the breaking of my lower back shovelling compost for Her Indoors, so that it’s nice when she comes back from a zesty swim at the pool.
Suffice it to say this: before the 2007 election Jason Koutsoukis wrote weekly articles in the Sunday Age telling his readers in great detail how the Coalition had Rudd just where they wanted him: on a slab, prepped for vivisection without the anesthetic. They also had a dirt file on Gillard that proved beyond doubt she was guilty… of something. Never mind, the smear would do.
In 2007 it was scandals and meta-politics that were going to win the day for the Howard government. The Coalition’s default position was that their policies didn’t need to be considered because, well, everyone knew what they were. Jason eventually broke out of the thrall he had been in – for all I know a spell woven by the same Mr. Textor that has today been at Jacqueline Maley – and wrote the truth: the Coalition were on a hiding to nothing, and they relied too much on smear and innuendo.
Today, in 2013, little has changed.
They continue to run on sensational headlines that come to nothing. they continue to cling to the belief that John Howard – who not only lost office, but got chucked out of his seat as a bonus – is on the comeback trail. Not the man himself, but his successors – Abbott, Hockey, Robb, The Puff Adder, Mesma, The Poodle, that bloke from Queensland who’s never asked a question, the stylish Truss, the Human Caricature, Barnarby Joyce, and of course the glamourous Lady Bronwyn Bishop – will stage the revival.
The question that seriously needs to be asked about the next election is: “Are they serious?”
Continuous polling snapshots show the Coalition still in the lead, yet the gap is narrowing. To any reasonably sentient observer that would mean the government is gaining. Yet the Gallery continues to frame its blather around a conservative lead in the polls that is dwindling, the smug spruikings of hired guns like Textor, and an Opposition leader who is about as popular as a fart in a knife drawer, and who has never, ever been popular.
They are up against a party and their leader who have accomplished so much, given the incessant harping, whingeing and moaning from the media and political opponents alike, plus the millstone of a hung parliament strung around their necks.
The media see no future for themselves as they sit in their empty offices, working double shifts to meet the 24 Hour News Cycle. So why not bring everyone down to their level?
The Opposition, stenographed through the media, mindlessly trash-talk the economy into near-recession, then seek to blame the government, without producing alternative policies, except gimmicks like subsidized nannies and more highway bypasses.
A lot can happen in 8 months and it doesn’t necessarily have to be all in the Coalition’s favour, no matter how hard the media push that barrow. Abbott leaves us with a picture of… sameness. Same faces, same policies, same tactics, same telecommunications infrastructure, same negativity. They, and their supporters, have made the fundamental mistake that the Republicans made in the recent US elections: they believe their own publicity.
Also believing the publicity is Jacqueline Maley, who would be better off finding a new career as a waitress, rather than in her chosen, but dumbed-down profession. After all, they say Hospitality is the new boom industry.
THE PUB 
I have been so wrong about Abbott’s insensitivity to women and ‘female’ issues.
He is really a sensitive person. Not only was he born of a female, his wife is a female and his daughters are female.
But what really confirms his sensitivities is the fact that he allowed Peta to store her IVF medications in his parliamentary bar fridge.
What a guy! Let’s make him PM today!
BTW which party is searching around desperately for any good news story about it’s leader ….. so desperate that it will print any rubbish at all, oblivious to the embarrassment.
Probably had to many glasses of red, but that’s not unusual here.
“There should be plenty of footage of Hockey saying,wtte: “Why do you need compensation, if you don’t have a Carbon Tax?” Pointing out what that means will be Labor’s job in an election campaign.”
Yes. yes, yeas and yes. nuff said.
“So Abbott’s women issues are biting, forcing his CoS to make an appearance in the msm to vouch for him?
Loving it. They are worried big time.”
You fracking well should be loving it!!! They are NOT worried. They are giving up if this is all they can come up with.
Good morning Dawn Patrollers. It;s Sunday and I always find it difficult to find anything worthwhile to link.
Bruce Hawker looks at how the ALP can reinvent itself.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/power-to-the-people-how-labor-can-reinvent-itself-20130104-2c8s9.html
It’s going to be a difficult year for Adelaide commuters.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/no-trains-hot-buses-too-bad-says-adelaide-operator/story-e6frea83-1226548155951
BK – Predictably Hawker’s piece is let’s make Kevin leader again …
And from the Land of the Free –
Some good cartoons giving the Repugs some well deserved stick –
http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/gopunity1.jpg (look at Mitch McConnell’s face!)
The Right’s “War on Women”.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/05/1176418/-This-week-in-the-War-on-Women-Yes-ladies-the-GOP-still-hates-us
A very good Thom Hartman monologue on the religiosity of for-profit organisations.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101789994
Bill Moyers essay on US gun control.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101790152
Hate to rain on all our parades, but after several chats W/ bogan-burbians, i don’t beleive they are even aware who governs the country!…….never heard of the “Gillard Mysoginy Speech”.
My theory is that there are approx’ 20% of the people in the world who have the capacity to manage, organise, administer and produce the necessities that sustain this world. The other 80% are the drones who drift into and out of dangerous situations to both themselves and the organisers.
This works very well provided there is no disruption in population demohraphics. Trouble is, when the population grows suddenly and the “drones’ come to outnumber local organisers, trouble starts and the goofyness of the “Dunning-Kruger effect” enboldens some drones to believe they can organise or worse, put their favourite pollie in place to organise on their behalf.
When J W Howard told the “battlers” that he wanted them to feel “comfortable” in their skin, he opened a Pandora’s Box of trouble!
Hawker sees opportunity in the laws banning union donations?
Now look at this disaster in Tas’…Not that it could be averted at this late stage, but the MSM AND INCL’ the ABC. has been giving equal time and space to the dickheads propagating climate denial idiocy and blunting the instruments of action against climate change! These media mugs must be brought to account for their deliberate distortions on this issue….PARTICULARLY the ABC. as it has abandoned its’ duty to the charter to deliver to the best of its’ knowledge the truth and informative information to the public…SACK MARK SCOTT IMMEDIATELY!…bring that raving lunatic Maurice Newman to publicly face his audience with his using the public broadcaster to make deliberate distortions about climate change denial.
Purge the lot!..Start at the top!!
Mike Stuchbery @MikeRStuchbery
As others on Twitter have suggested, Credlin & Abbott probably lined up the story to ward off something dark and smelly in the pipeline.
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2013/01/06/369754_tasmania-news.html
and some think there are no miracles
— Shared using Google Toolbar
AshbyInquiryNow,
Mike Stuchbery @MikeRStuchbery
As others on Twitter have suggested, Credlin & Abbott probably lined up the story to ward off something dark and smelly in the pipeline.
Got any ideas?
Anyway, they can’t keep coming up with this shite to ward off the nasties. I mean, what next, photos of the ‘intensely private’ Peta Credlin getting Artificial Insemination of Tony’s wrigglers because Brian’s are duds?
morning all
BK thanks as always for the land of the free articles. I am particularly interested at present, as daughter is currently visiting there.
Hawker’s article does the usual “Labor is in trouble – look at the Polls! – we must do something; this is something….’ line of argument.
This frustrates the beejeezuz out of me – not because the party doesn’t need reform (all parties do, all the time; it’s a given) – but because it’s an argument based on a false premise.
In 2008, you didn’t get this kind of discussion. Yet the only difference between then and now was that then the party was travelling well in the polls and now it’s not.
At preseent, the evidence is taht membership of the ALP is growing.
DG
Dark and smelly? I have some ideas, but I am probably way off the mark as to what is most likely being implied.
denese
Thank goodness the family are safe and well!
(most of my post went invisible then, so I”m doing it in bits)
Interestingly, we didn’t get the same discussions about the Liberal party then, even though its position in the polls (and Parliament) was far more dire than Labor’s is now.
As for the measures he suggests – firstly, Labor has cut union representation since 1971, and yet union influence has grown. So cutting union representation does not necessarily equal a drop in union power within the party.
BK…in case you missed my question the other day…do you live somewhere near Eden valley/Keyneton?….I too have relatives down on the “flats”….we could be related…: “Luke!…I am your father!!”….sort of thing…
The reason union influence has grown whislt their actual numbers in Conference has declined is quite simple: unions are smart enough to identify people with the potential to be future MPs and to groom them – and as a result, Labor has one of the most talented front benches we’ve seen in a long time.
Hawker simply assumes that union influence is a Bad Thing, without really looking at why it exists and what the results of its influence is (for the record, I have no objection to further reduction in union power. But, by itself, it’s just windown dressing).
From the Kouk
The polling must be showing a toxic opinion of Mr Abbott from female (and right thinking male) voters to wheel Ms Credlin out
As for ‘party members electing the leader’ – it quite possibly works in other environments, but the evidence is it doesn’t work here. With a few exceptions, we have popular election of Mayors, for example. Part of the reason the Dems went down the toilet was that the membership elected a leader the parliamentary party couldn’t work with, and couldn’t get rid of (and a leader with that kind of power will continue to ignore their parliamentary colleagues).
You don’t get good government if the majority of those representing a party in Parliament cannot work with their leader and cannot get rid of them, either. You get sullen, resentful, half hearted people, who might be trying to do their best but don’t feel they can deliver it.
The article about Peta Credlin is quite revolting. It seems to me that they are entering the domain of intimacy. Soon we’ll have PC saying that TA was kind enough to go to the chemist to get her some tampons when she ran out of them. Aren’t the Lib supporters embarrassed about this?
No Act is too embarrassing for the Party that treats the voters like a bunch of morons
YB
Well i guess everyone is going to vote for the LNP now, because Abbott was kind enough to allow Peta to store her IVF medication in the parliamentary fridge. You know it makes sense!!
I am cross posting from my comment on http://www.polanimal.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2058&p=66009#p66008
I think it is a good line, if I say so myself.
The only women’s issues Abbott is interested in is what happens between our knees and navels.
Does anyone else think that Weeping Tony was just plain lying when he told Ms Credlin he was all for abortion, IVF, contraception and all that other secret womens business? Surely she didn’t believe him. I certainly don’t. As I said last night we have more than enough evidence of Tony’s attitude to all that stuff. it’s all on the record because he just loves talking about it and it most definitely is not what he told poor, gullible Peta. He was saying all the same stuff AFTER she became his Chief of Staff. Didn’t she notice? I always thought Ms Credlin was manipulative and power-crazed but I never thought she was just plain stupid. Maybe we should change her name to Peta Credulous.
If ‘Just one of the Girls’ Tony had a little cry with her it was probably because she took his beer out of the office fridge to make room for her drugs.
Do I really want to know the details of Credlin’s IVF treatment?
Anyway. why doesn’t Credlin have her own fridge if she needed it for her medicine? How fkn embarrassing, to have to put your IVF medication in your boss’ fridge. Tony Abbott is as sensitive as a brick. What an ahole.
I would like to know why Peta Credlin needed to use Abbott’s fridge to store drugs in. She’s a senior advisor, with perks and her own office (presumably).
She have her own fridge, wouldn’t she?
Or, if not – perhaps Abbott’s office people all share the same fridge – what right would Abbott have to refuse her space in his fridge?
The thought that he might do so is much more disturbing than the fact that he didn’t.
Surely, we are getting to the point where all these stunts are starting to turn voters off.?
We’ve gone from ‘give us the job or I’ll wreck the joint’ to the point now where he is literally getting on his knees begging us to vote for him
Yesterday PMJG was out and about on Jane McGrath day at the cricket and confirmed the contribution being made by the federal Govt for care nurses etc. Where was Abbott?
Abbott could have ordered a bar fridge f(about $400) for her office, so she had some privacy. She should have kicked him in the cobblers for being a insensitivet pig, not fawned over his supposed generosity.
BB, we are thinking on the same lines here.
leone
I’m trying to find a comment of Abbott’s I once read (fairly recently) where he basically lumped contraception in with abortion as equal evils….something along the lines of it was better to be adopted than aborted or not conceived in the first place.
And it’s fairly easy to find comments which go against his one abo ut his daughters (which, if you look at it, didn’t actually answer Peta’s question..)
We should start of a “Sensitive Things Tony Abbott Has Done To Prove He’s A Caring Guy” competition.
My entry is:
Tony Abbott did not break a chair on the parliamentary table during Gillard’s Speech.
I mean, who believes anything Abbott & Credlin cook up between them anyway?
Right. So Credlin and Abbott went to great lengths to keep her IVF treatment secret, presumably because it was so personal and private. So why – now that’s it’s been unsuccessful – splash it all over the papers?
Well, we know the answer to that one. Desperation.
It’s not like she’s done it in such a way as to support women on IVF, or something like that. If anything, she seems to be suggesting that IVF treatment is shameful in some way.
Most of the women I know who’ve been through IVG have been very open about it.
How about Mr Abbott did not punch the speaker when she carded him for 24 hours last year ?
And how did the ABCradio National describe PMJGat the cricket?
There was some comment about everyone wearing pink and why, then about PM JG,
” didn’t wear pink today, but did manage to announce $(whatever it was) government funding to for the McGrath Foundation”.
Following this was an interview with a representative of the JMF who was over the moon with the funding, and explained it funds 56 Breast Care Nurses across Australia.
PMJG didn’t wear pink (OMFG, FAUX PA OF THE MILLENIUM!), oh she did announce heaps of dough for the JMF or somethink.
BB,
Tony Abbott did not break a chair on the parliamentary table during Gillard’s Speech.
I reckon something’s probably been broken today with all the negative feedback this story has been generating. People are openly mocking them for this story.
“How about Mr Abbott did not punch the speaker when she carded him for 24 hours last year ?”
I think it was an hour, but have tweeted under #sensitivetony.
Morning all.
I agree with others that the Credlin article is quite an over-reach. It’s a level of detail I just don’t want to know about. But this just reinforces the notion of Lazy Abbott:
As a former health minister, I had some inkling of what IVF involved but hadn’t really grasped the multitude of appointments, tests and, above all, injections: big needles, small needles, this drug, that drug.
It also says to me that as health minister he couldn’t be bothered to find out what IVF involved because it’s ‘womens business’ and therefore unimportant.
zoomster
We know why this PR exercise is being done. It is to stall his negative ratings of Mr 63%. I suspect there will be a leadership challenge, if he cant stem the tide. Abbott as leader is not guaranteeing an LNP victory at the next election, and they all know it
puffy
PMJG did wear a pink skirt and a pink bandanna around her neck.
How do you do italics? is it still italics
yep.
The Margie And The Kids strategy didn’t work, so now it’s Plan B: Peta And Her Fertility Treatments.
puffytmd,
So the ABC missed the Pink neckerchief the PM had on yesterday?
c@tmomma
And the Pink Skirt!!
Here is a pic of PMJG at the Cricket. She was actually wearing a pink jacket and hat. In the Interview I saw on ABC, she had a pink skirt on and a pink bandanna around her neck.
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/sport/cricket/australia-v-sri-lanka-third-test-day-three-20130105-2c9oq.html?selectedImage=2
Ms Gillard also wore a Pink Hat, guessed to Journo at Their ABC missed all the pics