That album (and much of that band’s work really, on reflection) was a piece of utter pap to rival the worst of Matchbox 20 and their ilk, but overlaid with the sort of pretension that should only ever (and in this case, didn’t at all) accompany some serious fucking talent.
So now I’m getting excited about a much more pretentious band’s new album. Radiohead are releasing In Rainbows any minute now via their website. I love The Bends and OK Computer, and to be honest I love the later ones as well, though there are songs I am neither here nor there about. Climbing up the walls, Like spinning plates (the live version), Life in a glasshouse and Myxomatosis are some of my favourite pieces of music full stop, and there’s plenty more in the back catalogue that I like almost as much so I’m sure this album’s going to be fucking awesome. Hence the dancing on the spot level of excitement that I’m not quite containing today.
The website setup is pretty neat – Radiohead have been without a label for the last few years, so for this album (their first since Hail to the Thief in 2003) they’ve gone for a distribution setup completely based around their site.
You hop on there and pre-order the album and pay whatever you feel like paying. Whatever you feel like. When you ask for further guidance, the site says ‘IT’S UP TO YOU’. Pressed further, it only responds with ‘NO REALLY, IT’S UP TO YOU’. They are spectacularly wealthy, so I guess they can do what they like, really. I found it cute anyway…
So I paid them ten pounds (roughly what I’d expect to pay in a store plus a 45p processing charge…) and they’re gonna send me an email with a download code, after which I’ll be able to download a little zip file less than 50mB in size and in there I will find 10 mp3 files.
It’s a neat way to do it, but I will miss the tactile experience of having a new CD, opening it up for the first time to see the cover art inside (and invariably about a dozen of the teeth from the centre of the disc tray have broken off and are falling about everywhere) and then the part thrill/part terror of playing it for the first time.
Is it genius? Is it horseshit? Is it four runs off the bat or will I have to graft it out to get comfy with this one
A new album is such fun.
Of course, if you want the full-on tactile experience you can always go the discbox, with two vinyl discs and two CDs for 40 quid, but I’m not sure I really wanted to stretch that far. I may change my mind, you never know.
All there is for now is to wait, and hope that their first album in four years is a good one.
]]>What are the odds he stays in detention, or is simply deported on short notice. The question is where will he be deported to?
Whose arse is gonna get kicked over the notes in the diary, and all the other cock-ups in this case?
More to come.
]]>What are the odds he stays in detention, or is simply deported on short notice. The question is where will he be deported to?
Whose arse is gonna get kicked over the notes in the diary, and all the other cock-ups in this case?
More to come.
]]>Voting green bothers me less (far less) than the defeatism of ‘The Rudd Labor Party deserves to lose this election’ and the following line ‘If it hadn’t been for WorkChoices, buddy, you couldn’t even count on a preference from me now.’
And the thing i find most stupid of all is the quote she’s got such a huge problem with:
“Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd says a Labor Government would create a bi-partisan ‘war cabinet’ to deal with the national emergency in indigenous communities.”
Er… so what’s the problem? I think that’s a fantastic idea. I mean really, the thing with this issue is that it’s too big to let political point-scoring determine your actions. The last thing that anybody needs is one party using indigenous people as a wedge…
Oh, wait, we’ve got that already.
But Rudd’s plan is different. Running a war cabinet, bringing the opposition to the table and simply saying ‘we’re going to fix this together, damn the credit and the critics, let’s work something out’ also leaves open the opportunity to go out and listen to ideas coming from the grassroots, and you can take them on board and implement them without fear of the ‘other side’ kicking you for it. It means they’re actually free to act. To do something!
And with a Labor Government, the whole idea wouldn’t be tied up in silly ‘we’ll take your land so you look after your kids’ games either.
It was a Labor Government that created the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody. It was the Labor party that first took seriously the issue of reconciliation and moved the wheels of government to address it. It was a Labor politician who poured sand into Charles Lingiari’s hand and it was the Labor Party who passed the original Native Title Act.
Labor actually did these things. They didn’t ask from the sidelines and complain when rebuffed, they did them. You can only ever do these things from government. That’s why it’s important to make sure Labor gets elected this year.
]]>Voting green bothers me less (far less) than the defeatism of ‘The Rudd Labor Party deserves to lose this election’ and the following line ‘If it hadn’t been for WorkChoices, buddy, you couldn’t even count on a preference from me now.’
And the thing i find most stupid of all is the quote she’s got such a huge problem with:
“Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd says a Labor Government would create a bi-partisan ‘war cabinet’ to deal with the national emergency in indigenous communities.”
Er… so what’s the problem? I think that’s a fantastic idea. I mean really, the thing with this issue is that it’s too big to let political point-scoring determine your actions. The last thing that anybody needs is one party using indigenous people as a wedge…
Oh, wait, we’ve got that already.
But Rudd’s plan is different. Running a war cabinet, bringing the opposition to the table and simply saying ‘we’re going to fix this together, damn the credit and the critics, let’s work something out’ also leaves open the opportunity to go out and listen to ideas coming from the grassroots, and you can take them on board and implement them without fear of the ‘other side’ kicking you for it. It means they’re actually free to act. To do something!
And with a Labor Government, the whole idea wouldn’t be tied up in silly ‘we’ll take your land so you look after your kids’ games either.
It was a Labor Government that created the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody. It was the Labor party that first took seriously the issue of reconciliation and moved the wheels of government to address it. It was a Labor politician who poured sand into Charles Lingiari’s hand and it was the Labor Party who passed the original Native Title Act.
Labor actually did these things. They didn’t ask from the sidelines and complain when rebuffed, they did them. You can only ever do these things from government. That’s why it’s important to make sure Labor gets elected this year.
]]>The editorial is arguing that this week’s Newspoll shows that Labor should be remaking its IR policy in ‘moderate, modern and reformist’ terms. Subtext: Stick it to the unions or else. This is the clear message that a drop in Labor’s primary vote is sending to the Opposition Leader. Apparently…
]]>The editorial is arguing that this week’s Newspoll shows that Labor should be remaking its IR policy in ‘moderate, modern and reformist’ terms. Subtext: Stick it to the unions or else. This is the clear message that a drop in Labor’s primary vote is sending to the Opposition Leader. Apparently…
Let’s start with the poll – there is a 6% drop in primary vote. Absolutely true. The drop is from 52% to 46%. That’s a big drop.
But let’s unpack this as well - if the Labor Party were to win 46% of the primary vote, and the resulting 56% of the two party preferred vote, they would absolutely romp it home.
On the back of the 8.6% swing, Labor would win some 94 seats to the Government’s 53. Peter Costello would survive by the skin of his teeth, trimmed to 0.13% margin, or about 100 votes or so. So a 46% primary result would be a stunning result and an enormous thumping for the Government.
But it’s not the poll but the trend that you should look at, I hear you protest! Oh, quite right. Looking at just the move from the last poll is a bit weak though – the last poll was at 52% primary vote, but the one before that was at 47%. One of these was probably a rogue poll. I’d guess the 52% was well on the high side of what’s actually going on out there. It’s even possible that the 46% is on the low side.
We won’t really know til a little way down the track. But as you can see at OzPolitics, while there is a trend back from the peak of the honeymoon in March, it’s slow. It’s not a 6% swing in a fortnight type of thing.
So we’ve got a drop, but it’s not 6% in a fortnight. But this trend is back from a peak of 62% 2PP, and Labor is never going to win an election by 20 points in 2PP terms (and the 120 odd seats that that would have delivered) so there was always going to be a trend back, it’s just a question of how far and how fast.
And the ACNielsen poll out yesterday as well (2PP – Labor 57:43 Coalition) indicates that this poll is pretty well on the money. That 57% figure is also well higher than you could expect in an election. If Labor polls higher than 53% in 2PP terms (or lower than 47% in the case of a loss) I’d be very very surprised.
But in the same paper as this editorial predicting doom and gloom unless Labor beats up the unions is another set of poll questions from the same poll as reported yesterday that indicates people are pretty happy with their voting choice and aren’t for moving in a hurry – 52% say they aren’t going to change, another 33% are unlikely to change and only 13% are 50-50 propositions. 1% apparently won’t vote for who they say they will vote for, so that’s a bit odd…
So people aren’t parking their votes for a while, they’re starting to lock them in. there are a smaller than expected number of votes still being contested. And people made up their minds to vote the way they did with Labor’s stance, in particular on IR, clear and unambiguous.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect that if Labor were to backflip and decide to beat up on the unions, the people who until now are looking very seriously at voting Labor may not be so keen.
And even if Rudd does, he still won’t win the support of the News Ltd. attack dogs and the editorial page of The Australian. He could promise statues of Rupert on every street corner and I’m sure he wouldn’t get support.
Sometimes it’s better to just keep on doing what you’re doing because you know it’s right, rather than trying to win friends you don’t need and losing the ones you’ve got.
]]>…Or so it would seem anyway for Labor at the moment. As any two-bit analyst would tell you, the last two weeks have been tough for Labor. And as they were all saying until the trio of the Morgan, Galaxy and Newspoll results came through – it must really be the end of the honeymoon this time.
]]>…Or so it would seem anyway for Labor at the moment. As any two-bit analyst would tell you, the last two weeks have been tough for Labor. And as they were all saying until the trio of the Morgan, Galaxy and Newspoll results came through – it must really be the end of the honeymoon this time.
Not so it seems. As Peter Hartcher observed in his brand-spanking new blog:
The true surprise in today’s poll is another angle entirely. It’s that Kevin Rudd has not been hurt in any apparent way by his new industrial relations policy. If anything, Rudd Labor has only benefited from the policy.
John Howard has railed against it for weeks, business lobby groups have been slamming it at every opportunity, yet Labor’s share of the vote has actually improved. And Rudd’s approval has strengthened.
This suggests that the voting public is so concerned about Howard’s Work Choices that it will reward Rudd for standing up to it, rather than punish him for upsetting business.
This view appears to be confirmed by the Newspoll that shows that despite being satisfied with the Budget, people are still declaring an intent to vote for Labor. IR is trumping the broader economic debate. This is surely due in large part to the ALP reducing points of difference on basic economic management while highlighting the gulf between it and the Coalition on IR.
To emphasise the gulf, it doesn’t hurt to see business seeking to belt Rudd and Gillard about the head and body with ever more desperate attacks, like the so-called “Rudd risk”. It’s rubbish of course, and Heather Ridout told us so, as reported by the West:
Australian Industry Group chief executive office Heather Ridout, normally an ardent supporter of government workplace policy, said it was not even clear if the Rudd levy was actually reality.
“I don’t think that’s happening,” Ms Ridout told reporters.
She warned anyone who increased prices on the possibility of a Labor government would be dealt with by the free market.“The market will bear what the market will bear,” she said.
“In manufacturing you can’t go around jacking up prices, you lose market share so I don’t know about these jacking up prices activities. In a competitive market in which most of our members operate, (there are) very small margins.”
And so we come to the ALP ‘leaking’ internal polling that suggests that voters really really don’t like Workchoices:
The nationwide survey of 500 voters by Labor’s pollster, UMR Research, done early last week before the budget on Tuesday night, also showed a cool response to the Government’s Work Choices law. Asked to assess the impact of Work Choices on working families, the poll found that 16 per cent said it was good, 8 per cent said it made no difference and 57 per cent said it was bad.
Asked whether Work Choices was good, bad or made no difference to the personal situation of respondents, 10 per cent replied that it was good, 60 per cent said it made no difference, and 27 per cent said it was bad, according to informed Labor sources.
Bryan Palmer at OzPolitics is right when he notes:
So why has Labor leaked this poll? The SMH speculated three reasons. First to tell business that Labor is sticking with with its current IR policy prescription. Second, to solidify the message that Labor is on a winner with IR rollback. Third, to reinforce in the minds of voters that WorkChoices is bad because most people believe it is bad.
I agree with the SMH on its assessment of the likely motivations. I also suspect the leak was designed to firm up waverers within the Labor Party (and the mining unions) who may have wanted to give some concessions to the business push for a continuation of AWAs.
So maybe the watering down of the ALP’s policy might not happen. It shouldn’t – the ALP should hold the line, not just because it’s good for the labour movement, not just because it appears to be good politics, but also because it’s good economics. Via OzPolitics I also read Peter Martin’s interesting post where he puts it that Workchoices is actually bad for productivity. He writes:
The government’s own figures suggest that Keating-style enterprise agreements paid Australia huge productivity dividends. They suggest that moving away from them has set our productivity performance back.
And yet, Labor’s leader Kevin Rudd and its deputy leader and industrial relations spokesman Julia Gillard have been reluctant to make that case. They have been reluctant to mount the very plausible argument that Keating-style agreements enhance productivity growth whereas Howard-style agreements hold it back.
It is an argument waiting to be made, by someone other than Keating himself.
So what more could the ALP want? Good polls, good policy and being shot at by the right people. Maybe it’s time to quit worrying about watering down the IR policy, and instead don the kevlar and get stuck into it.
]]>
I wonder if Google can offer advisories for similar sites that are bad for the mind? Sites like… oh, I dunno… news.com.au? I feel dumber every time I visit that. Anyways… over and out.
]]>
I wonder if Google can offer advisories for similar sites that are bad for the mind? Sites like… oh, I dunno… news.com.au? I feel dumber every time I visit that. Anyways… over and out.
]]>The bookies’ odds are either the true indicator of what’s likely to happen or a way for bookies to wangle wads of dosh from politically minded know-it-alls who don’t know it at all. It certainly goes into our bizarre little category of speculative fact.
Whatever they are, Sportbet now has Labor favourites to win at $1.80 as against the Coalition at $1.95. This implies that the probability of a Labor win is now 52%, and 48% for the Coalition.
]]>The bookies’ odds are either the true indicator of what’s likely to happen or a way for bookies to wangle wads of dosh from politically minded know-it-alls who don’t know it at all. It certainly goes into our bizarre little category of speculative fact.
Whatever they are, Sportbet now has Labor favourites to win at $1.80 as against the Coalition at $1.95. This implies that the probability of a Labor win is now 52%, and 48% for the Coalition.
They do seem to predict election results reasonably well. Andrew Leigh from the ANU has written at length about the predictive utility of betting odds for elections. Leigh’s stuff is very detailed, and for mine it’s a bit much to read for a casual interest, but he’s come to the firm conclusion that odds beat polls for picking the winner of an election.
OzPolitics has had a series running for ages about betting odds. There are endless graphs and regularly updated odds, and in particular has run a series of weighted average odds to indicate the estimated probability of a Coalition win at the next election.
Against this, it is worth noting that one bookmaker has Labor favourite to win for the first time. The odds have been narrowing sharply since Kevin Rudd’s ascent to the leadership of the Labor Party, but this is the first bookie that’s been prepared to put Labor in front.
It’s only one bookie – Sportsbet, and it comes against the background of the others not moving at all and one even moving the other way, but it’s potentially a psychologically significant phenomenon. It indicates that it’s not a momentary feeling that the Opposition are doing well, but that people are in fact willing to back them in with hard cash.
UPDATE - The SMH reports that Sportingbet have been followed by Centrebet and IASbet. Curiouser and curiouser…
]]>
Rudd: 49
Beazley: 39
UPDATE: Gillard wins deputy’s position unopposed.
Chris Evans and Stephen Conroy remain as Senate Leader and Deputy Leader, having renominated and been elected unopposed.
]]>Rudd: 49
Beazley: 39
UPDATE: Gillard wins deputy’s position unopposed.
Chris Evans and Stephen Conroy remain as Senate Leader and Deputy Leader, having renominated and been elected unopposed.
]]>He basically misspoke, in a pretty spectacular manner:
“…Today our thoughts and the thoughts of many, many Australians will be with Karl Rove as he goes through the very sad process of burying his beloved wife. And I just want him to know that my thoughts and the thoughts of my colleagues are very much with him today.”
Karl Rove? As in the antichrist, architect of doom and purveyor of pestilence over the pond eh? Didn’t realise his missus had popped off… but of course he meant to say Rove McManus, the vertically and comedically challenged Daryl Somers Mk.II who is apparently so loved by The Young’Uns around my age, who buried his late wife Belinda Emmett today.
Now, let’s leave aside the ageism of the description. Let’s also leave aside that it’s a pretty basic goof that somebody should have tapped him on the shoulder and got him to fix, there and then. Let’s just have a think about whether this Actually Fucking Matters.
]]>He basically misspoke, in a pretty spectacular manner:
“…Today our thoughts and the thoughts of many, many Australians will be with Karl Rove as he goes through the very sad process of burying his beloved wife. And I just want him to know that my thoughts and the thoughts of my colleagues are very much with him today.”
Karl Rove? As in the antichrist, architect of doom and purveyor of pestilence over the pond eh? Didn’t realise his missus had popped off… but of course he meant to say Rove McManus, the vertically and comedically challenged Daryl Somers Mk.II who is apparently so loved by The Young’Uns around my age, who buried his late wife Belinda Emmett today.
Now, let’s leave aside the ageism of the description. Let’s also leave aside that it’s a pretty basic goof that somebody should have tapped him on the shoulder and got him to fix, there and then. Let’s just have a think about whether this Actually Fucking Matters.
What does it matter if a politician comments on a celebrity funeral/marriage/birth/surgical procedure/new single/red carpet appearance/taking up Kabbalah… I mean really. In what kind of fucking universe are the two spheres related?
What can a politician gain from making comment about Belinda Emmett’s funeral? It wouldn’t have been reported, and if it were nobody would have cared. They would have flicked instead to the pictures of the other celebrities who likely never met the woman and are there to be seen in the next issue of Woman’s Day. Unless…
Crikey’s got a link to audio of the goof and comment by a Southern Cross Radio presenter of some stripe talking to Alison Carabine, their press gallery correspondent.
You can hear the goof in all its schadenfreude-laden glory, with surrounding commentary from the two hosts. Carabine’s comments, to me, are infuriating:
let’s keep in mind Beazley has a track record of getting people’s names wrong, he’s not appropriately focused on the, on the task at hand, and this is how he opened his press conference… [roll tape].
How about get fucked. Seriously, just get fucked. He got a celebrity name wrong. And her off-sider in the studio was no better:
that will haunt Kim Beazley, I mean if you can’t get that right, um, can you get the bigger issues right that you’re required to be across when you’re the alternative Prime Minister
Well you can just get fucked as well sunshine. He fucked up the name of a celebrity, and he’s fucked up another couple of names, as Crikey says:
- In August the Opposition Leader mistook outgoing Reserver Bank governor Ian Macfarlane for his namesake, Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane. Beazley then launched into a political attack, claiming that Mr Macfarlane’s views on interest rates proved he was out of touch with ordinary Australians, before being corrected.
- In April Beazley was embarrassed when during a radio interview he couldn’t remember the names of Labor’s five South Australian senators.
- The forgetful Opposition leader mispronounced Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile’s name.
- Upon being told that Bali convicted drug user Michelle Leslie would walk free in November last year, he got the model’s name wrong – “What are your thoughts on what’s happened to Michelle Leslie?” Adelaide presenter Leon Byner asked Mr Beazley straight after a news break. Beazley stammered for several seconds, according to a Daily Tele report before hesitantly replying, “Oh, well, I’m glad she’s out. Michelle Lee, I think.”
Right. First one - two Ian McFarlanes make things a little different, and tell me there aren’t any number of other politicians who saw that and just thought “jeez, there but for the grace of God go I…”
Second – Tell me Howard could remember the names of all his Senators when pressed, out of context, to do so. Come on, we’re talking about leadership, not recitation of a roll-call list.
Third – He mispronounced a name? Hell, the President of the USA can’t say ‘nuclear’, nor frankly can half the rest of the people in the parliament, but in all cases we know what they bloody well mean. What’s the big deal?
Fourth – Michelle Leslie used to go under the name Michelle Lee. Perfectly understandable error. And you would expect, wouldn’t you, that the alternative Prime Minister spends more time reading the serious pages than Sydney Confidential, right?
Which brings me to my final point.
Who gives a rat’s fuck whether he rooted up some celebrity’s name royally? It doesn’t fucking well matter. And the imputation that him doing so somehow implies that he’s not fit to govern is preposterous. Do you think he’s actually going to forget who North Korea are and sell them weapons? Do you think he’s going to forget what the red and green lights mean when he’s driving?
For fuck’s sake – it’s irrelevant. It’s not on the radar, which is probably why he fucked it up in the first place. So Crikey and southern Cross Radio can get fucked too.
]]>Last night, Uruguay lost 2-0 to the might of Georgia (world ranking 98 according to FIFA; population: 4.6 million and primary export - scrap metal, according to the CIA Factbook).
Makes me laugh a lot when I consider that last year Uruguay playmaker Alvaro Recoba claimed that Uruguay had a divine right to play in the world cup.
As Australian football supoprters reflect on a year passing since our stressful and joyful penalty shootout victory over Los Celeste and the intervening months with a successful A-League season and a fantastic performance in by the Socceroos in Germany, all I can say is not any more, sunshine…
]]>Last night, Uruguay lost 2-0 to the might of Georgia (world ranking 98 according to FIFA; population: 4.6 million and primary export - scrap metal, according to the CIA Factbook).
Makes me laugh a lot when I consider that last year Uruguay playmaker Alvaro Recoba claimed that Uruguay had a divine right to play in the world cup.
As Australian football supoprters reflect on a year passing since our stressful and joyful penalty shootout victory over Los Celeste and the intervening months with a successful A-League season and a fantastic performance in by the Socceroos in Germany, all I can say is not any more, sunshine…
]]>I think they’re all wrong.
]]>I think they’re all wrong.
The key thing here is a little number that came out of the bustling hive of activity that is the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The number is 3.9%. That’s the percentage rise in the Consumer Price Index for the year to the end of the September Quarter. That number’s pretty big, by recent standards. When the number gets above 3%, the Reserve Bank starts reaching for the Interest Rates Stick to belt it down again to the target range of 2-3%.
Inflation’s up due to a number of factors, fruit prices not least of them, but there are also indications from the Producer Price Index that there are core inflationary pressures building up and pressing interest rates higher as well.
So prices are rising at a fair old rate, but 5.67% is still a fair bit bigger than 3.9%, isn’t it? The answer is a firm ‘no’. You see, the last wage decision was 18 months ago. Australia’s lowest paid have been on a wage freeze. And when you check out the raw CPI figure, it’s actually risen 5.56% over this time. So this ‘big pay rise’ is essentially a catch up – ensuring that low paid workers don’t actually fall behind the inflation rate. To get completely Polyanna on this – it’s a whole 0.11% real pay rise, and I’m sure the workers of Australia are gonna dance in the street tonight.
This pay rise is a dead set gift for the Government and the business lobby:
Incidentally, the AIG asked for a rise of only $14 a week, or a cut to real wages. That’s where they’re going, once the election’s out of the way.
]]>AK-47’s? Check.
Well thumbed copy of the Koran? Check.
Video camera and sattelite link to al-Jazeera? Check.
The next one is one you might not otherwise have expected:
Impenetrable forest of ganga? Check…
That’s right - a dope fortress.
]]>AK-47’s? Check.
Well thumbed copy of the Koran? Check.
Video camera and sattelite link to al-Jazeera? Check.
The next one is one you might not otherwise have expected:
Impenetrable forest of ganga? Check…
That’s right - a dope fortress.
Was just idly checking the SMH breaking news section when I came across this gem.
Seems our generally-not-so-funloving Taliban types have taken to the weed, not for toking, but for protection. They can hide in it and are not easily found in the dense, three metre high forests. The plants’ high water content means they don’t burn easily. Even with either diesel or white phosphorous the plants’ resistance to heat and energy is high.
But they did manage to burn a couple of dried out plants.
Says General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defence staff:
A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action
No shit…
Chalk it up as another practical use for the wonder weed. Paper, rope, treatment of glaucoma, pain relief, an anti-nausea agent, simply toking on… and now camouflage and territorial defence.
]]>Time and again, we see the ALP’s chances derided because their leader is hopeless, and John Howard remains Australia’s preferred PM.
As can be seen over at OzPolitics - over the last year or more, there’s been a pretty steady trend towards Labor in the one figure that counts - the two-party preferred vote. This is the vote that decides elections. In fact, in 1996 when the Howard opposition sent the Keating Government packing, the Newspoll immediately before the election showed that Keating led the preferred prime minister statistic 45-40. It’s a beauty contest. The two party preferred stat was the stat that mattered, and it (unlike the preferred PM stat) correctly showed that Howard was going to win comfortably.
So the fact that Labor’s consistently doing well in the two party preferred is what give a true indication of what’s likely to happen.
But you wouldn’t know it, if the only information you went on was the blindly biased rantings of the Oz’s political editor, Dennis Shanahan.
]]>Time and again, we see the ALP’s chances derided because their leader is hopeless, and John Howard remains Australia’s preferred PM.
As can be seen over at OzPolitics - over the last year or more, there’s been a pretty steady trend towards Labor in the one figure that counts - the two-party preferred vote. This is the vote that decides elections. In fact, in 1996 when the Howard opposition sent the Keating Government packing, the Newspoll immediately before the election showed that Keating led the preferred prime minister statistic 45-40. It’s a beauty contest. The two party preferred stat was the stat that mattered, and it (unlike the preferred PM stat) correctly showed that Howard was going to win comfortably.
So the fact that Labor’s consistently doing well in the two party preferred is what give a true indication of what’s likely to happen.
But you wouldn’t know it, if the only information you went on was the blindly biased rantings of the Oz’s political editor, Dennis Shanahan.
From this morning’s article:
VOTER dissatisfaction with Kim Beazley’s leadership is undermining Labor’s election-winning lead in crucial marginal seats.
Barely a third of voters, both in the marginals and in safe Labor seats, are satisfied with Mr Beazley’s job as Opposition Leader and half are dissatisfied.
There’s no evidence for Beazley’s personals standing ‘undermining’ the ‘election winning’ lead – that’s pulled straight out of Shanahan’s arse. It’s not a claim you can make, unless you can say with certainty that a different leader would yield a different result. More on that later.
Lefties whinging about portrayal of their cause in the media is passé, I realise, but time and again this guy sticks the knife in. Former Keating Government minister and Labor MP from the ACT Bob McMullan didn’t hold back in parliament just a few weeks ago:
Many Australians, probably most, would be surprised to know that the unequivocal evidence from the published opinion polls is that the Labor Party has been clearly and consistently ahead in federal voting intention surveys for the last six months, and not just a little bit—between two and four per cent ahead on either trend or average analysis of both Newspoll and the Nielsen Sydney Morning Herald or Age polls. Over the last six months—which is in reality the short term, although for much political analysis it can pass for the long term—there have been 15 polls by those two major reputable polling organisations in this country, published by the Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. Of those 15 polls, the ALP has been ahead in 12: six out of six by ACNielsen, nine out of 12 by Newspoll. The trend line analysis suggests the normal statistical variation around a pretty stable trend, which has the ALP on between 51 and 52 per cent two-party preferred. Yet this is a million miles away from public perception. Why is that?
It clearly has something to do with the way the polls are reported. It is not the polls themselves; I believe Australia is well served by competent and ethical major polling organisations in this country, although I do think—and I will try to find time to make a comment—that some could make the statistical validity and circumstances of their polling a little clearer on their websites. But I do think they are first-class organisations. I think there are three possible explanations for the distance between the reporting of the polls and the polls themselves: biased reporting, incompetent reporting or a mindset which influences perceptions and flows through to the coverage of the polls. It is always very easy to complain about media bias—that is not what I am doing, and I do not think the individuals who write the stories are incompetent. In my view, the principal problem is in the third category. Commentators believe that the incumbent government is likely to win and therefore they interpret the material which comes before them in that light.
Let me give you an example. On 15 August, when the coalition had one of its few reported leads of the previous six months, the commentary in the Australian of that day was:
THE Howard Government has opened an election-winning lead …
In fact, the poll showed a 51 per cent to 49 per cent lead to the coalition. Yet on 29 August when the result was reversed, with a 51 per cent to 49 per cent lead to the opposition, there was no similar report. There are other aspects of the 29 August coverage of the poll result which I will come back to later. The point I am trying to make here is that we had mirror-image polls but significantly different reporting of them by the same newspaper. The polling organisation accurately reported the change, but the representation of it was dramatically different.
My point is not that I believe that the ALP should have been reported as having ‘opened an election-winning lead’. I do not think we do have such an election-winning lead; I do not think anybody does. Properly reported, we would have a consensus that no-one is significantly ahead. The opposition is, and has been for at least six months, seriously competitive, and at this stage the election is too close to call. I am not here trying to make a partisan Labor Party point—it may well not be in the Labor Party’s interests to have such a perception abroad—but that is the accurate situation. My real concern is a long-term one: the credibility and quality of public discourse around our major democratic institutions is an important aspect of any attempt to lift the standing of and respect for our political processes and governance in Australia. There are many other aspects of this issue which need to be addressed as we endeavour to review, reform and rehabilitate our political processes. This is one which should be addressed.
House of Representatives, Grievance Debate, 11/9/06.
If you’ll forgive me having an Alan Ramsey moment, I think McMullan’s making a pretty good point.
If the media fails to report accurately what the polls are actually saying, then there’s actually not that much point in having them at all. It could possibly be worse than that – the inaccurate reporting of the polls could have the effect of first creating, then reinforcing a view that the party against which the bias is laboured constantly is uncompetitive and not ready for government.
The articles, if not the polls, can create a sense of malaise, create a lens through which any other negatives can be magnified or even create the impetus for things like a change in leadership which, judging on the poll numbers themselves, there may be absolutely no argument for.
This of course is the story with the Leader of the Opposition at the moment – there appears to be a steady campaign being waged against Beazley or at least a campaign to give momentum to whatever putative anti-Beazley movers there may be in the ALP. This is where Shanahan’s ‘undermining’ comment comes in.
Ignore the fact that the party is competitive in the polls (supposedly being several percentage points better off in polls than at the last election) and highlight a perceived dissatisfaction with the leader. Then whenever the polling numbers suit, switch the focus to how Labor’s finally been broken and the Government’s in a winning position.
Keep kicking the dogs, maybe they’ll start biting.
Beazley’s personal approval numbers (his beauty contest numbers) are not high. But the party’s vote is strong and he’s the leader. What’s the argument here – is it that all the ALP needs to do is change leaders and they’ll storm it in? Bollocks.
The obvious story-within-the-story is that all the ALP needs to do is move towards a change of leaders and there’ll be six months’ worth of stories for the press gallery to run about internal divisions, the background of the challengers, the headkickers coming out to play and so on, with lots of photos of ashen faced powerbrokers scurrying between meetings… you know the drill.
All the while, things like the latest IR disaster story get washed under, and the Labor party talks publicly about anything but policy. Which also means that when the leadership talk finally dies out the last person standing gets to not talk about policy but be asked why the ALP is such a policy-free zone and why they haven’t talked about any policy for six months. It’s a load of horseshit and ignores the real story.
So what is the real story this morning? Let’s actually look at the numbers:
Certainly looks like a party in crisis, doesn’t it?
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