Trevor Cook

Abbott's lacklustre debut in the polls

Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott became Opposition Leader at identical points in the electoral cycle. Rudd on 4 December 2006 and Abbott on 1 December 2009. With less than 12 months to the next election they needed to hit the road running.

No two electoral cycles have the same dynamics, of course. Nevertheless, this similarity in the timing of their success in their respective party rooms gives us a useful bit of context for assessing the success, or otherwise, of Abbott's first few months in the job.

In the Newspoll immediately before Rudd became leader (conducted 24 - 26 November), his predecessor, Kim Beazley had a negative satisfaction rating of 30 points (28 satisfied and 58 dissatisfied), massive and disastrous.

Rudd's impact on this measure was immediate and decisive. In the next Newspoll (8-10 December), Rudd scored a positive satisfaction rating of 31 points (41 to 10).  The turnaround did not stop there, by mid February (16 - 18 February) Rudd's satisfaction score had blown out to a positive 55 points, 68 satisfied to 13 dissatisfied. Rudd's satisfaction rating stayed in the positive 30s and 40s all the way through to the election in November. The satisfied number never fell below 60 percent.

Malcolm Turnbull had a negative satisfaction of 14 points (36 satisfied to 50 dissatisfied) in his last Newspoll as Opposition Leader (27 - 29 November). Nowhere near as bad as Beazley's but not good or sustainable.

Abbott had an immediate impact on the measure of satisfaction, but nowhere near as dramatic as Rudd's. 

In the most recent poll, 12-14 February 2010, Abbott had a positive rating of just 7 points (44 satisfied, 37 dissatisfied), compared with Rudd's positive score of 55 points at the same point in the electoral cycle.

A similar story is evident in the more important measure of two party preferred voting intention, but one that's even bleaker for the Coalition's prospects of turning the Rudd Government into a oncer. 

In that poll just before Rudd became leader, the ALP led the Coalition by 2 points (51 to 49), despite Beazley's electoral unpopularity, by the mid February 2006 poll Rudd had taken the lead out to 8 points. Labor's lead went onto blow-out to a peak of 22 points (61 to 39) in mid March, it was a 40 point lead inlate May after a brief dip, before returning to more realistic numbers (6 to 10 point leads) when the actual election campaign was underway.

In Turnbull's last Newspoll, the Coalition was 14 points behind Labor (43 to 57), in the most recent Newspoll, the Coalition had improved it's position but it still trailed Labor by 6 points.

Comparing the two election cycles, Abbott's Opposition is 7 points TPP behind where Rudd's Opposition was in mid-February 2007, Rudd's ALP was sitting on 54 while Abbott's Coalition is on 47.

One of the reasons for this difference may be found in comparing the ratings for satisfaction with the prime minister of the day.

In mid February 2007, Howard had a negative rating of 2 points (44 satisfied to 46 satisfied) whereas in the most recent poll Rudd had a positive rating of 10 points (50 satisfied to 40 dissatisfied).

This difference in prime ministerial ratings doesn't seem large enough to explain all the difference in the relative performances of Rudd and Abbott in their first few months as Opposition leader.

Abbott's numbers are better than Turnbull's but they seem poor compared to Rudd's and a lot less impressive than you might think from reading our dying newspapers and listening to the mad barkers on 2GB.

Did Woodstock cause the GFC?

Did Woodstock hippies lead to US financial collapse?, by Mark Guarino, CSM: A new film is gaining traction among tea-party followers for suggesting that the collapse of the US financial system has roots dating back 40 years to the Summer of Love.

“Generation Zero,” a film set to premiere in March, examines what producer David Bossie says is a “historic perspective on a generational change” that led to the September 2008 bank collapse. Mr. Bossie says generational narcissism, as represented by the 1969 Woodstock Festival, is responsible for the excessive spending, mortgage crisis, and recklessness on Wall Street. ...

via economistsview.typepad.com

Gordon Brown jettisons the past

Alas for the PM, in this speech he was arguing with himself as much as with David Cameron. "Elections are not verdicts on the past," he declared yesterday, "they are choices for the future." Yet as a strategist in the 2001 and 2005 elections he argued – to the chagrin of many Blairites – precisely the opposite: in those contests, Gordon believed that Labour should simply carpet-bomb the Tories off the battlefield with statistics and evidence of its past success. This time round, of course, he doesn't have such weapons to hand, and wants, faute de mieux, to pit one blueprint for the future (his own) against another (nasty, mean Mr Cameron's).

via www.telegraph.co.uk

I guess Kristina Keneally will adopt this strategy too - probably with a similar lack of success.

Permanent campaigning weakens Labor's ability to govern

In recent years, the ALP has all but mastered the dark arts of media manipulation.

In NSW, former premier Bob Carr worried obsessively about the daily news cycle. 

Carr, a former journalist, was brilliant at winning the daily battle with the Opposition for favourable headlines.

He and his successors (Iemma, Rees and Keneally) have become infamous for their habit of announcing and de-announcing plans, strategies and projects.

They think the past doesn't matter, as long as they can conjure up some more bright, shiny baubles to promise a greedy electorate eager to believe that Santa Claus lives on as a politician.

In Canberra, the same obsession with media manipulation has been evident since Rudd was elected.

Unexpectedly, the GFC came along and gave the Rudd government a rationale for massive spending and massive spending means lots more of those seductive announcements. Insulation for every home, a laptop for every student, new classrooms, big new infrastructure projects and so on and so on. Not to mention hundreds of dollars of cash deposited directly into the bank accounts of a large slice of the voting age population.

Announcements, funded under the guise of the economic stimulus, seemed to role out almost daily.

These sad little affairs get the desired positive media coverage, but it's unclear what the political impact is.

Unlike politicians, voters pay little attention to the daily avalanche of political stories with their breathlessness and superficiality. 

Voters just want more: "what will you do for me tomorrow?"

It is easy for politicians to confuse clever campaigning with sound government.

Both Rudd and Carr seem to have been unable to distinguish between politics and government.

Government is not about making promises, or staging media stunts to make yet another announcement.

Government is about program design and delivery. It's about accountability.

Government is about working through a strategy and a plan, week after week, year in and year out.

Government is boring, complex and difficult.

Just the sort of stuff the media hates.

So politicians deliver glib announcements and sound-bites. Just what the media needs to fill all that empty space everyday.

But if you hang around long enough all the campaigning at the expense of governing catches up with you.

Most voters would be hard-pressed to name three achievements of Carr's long premiership. 

They do remember, with cynicism and bitterness, the broken promises.

And none of them really believe that the Keneally Government will deliver on the transport plan it announced yesterday.

If NSW Labor had been governing not campaigning for these past 15 years then most of what was in yesterday's package would have already been delivered.

The Labor Government would be proudly ticking off real achievements and not relying on empty soundbites like '96% ontime running'. 

The public would have more confidence in Labor's new promises, and less desire to risk a change.

In addition, Keneally's effort is not a strategy, it's a series of announcements.

All the pretty maps, big dollar figures and arbitrary start and finish dates don't cover the ugly fact that the 'plan' doesn't actually address Sydney's transport problem. 

In 20 years, we'll still be relying on private vehicles for about the same percentage of trips, the plan does not deliver a significant switch from cars to other modes. So our roads will just keep getting more congested, and our city noisier and more polluted.

In Canberra, Rudd's mania for announcements is starting to catch up with him. 

People are starting to notice that his flair for announcing stuff, complete with obligatory picture opportunities, is not being matched by an ability to deliver competently and on-time.

Rudd needs to learn from the very big hole the clever, media manipulators of NSW Labor have dug for themselves.

Net rage and free speech

The purpose of this new form of cyber-bullying seems clear; it is to upset and intimidate the targets, making them reluctant to participate further in the climate change debate or to change what they say. While the internet is often held up as the instrument of free speech, it is often used for the opposite purpose, to drive people out of the public debate.

Unlike the letters pages of newspapers, on the internet anonymity is accepted and the gate-keepers, where they exist, are more lax, so the normal constraints on social discourse do not apply. On the internet, the demons of the human psyche find a play-ground.

via www.abc.net.au

It's so true.

Civility needed in Canberra too

All right, back to other matters. Evan Bayh's decision to leave the United States Senate, do you buy his view of the Senate, in other words, what he said the reason was, why he was leaving?

MARK SHIELDS: I have no reason not to buy his view, Jim. I admire anybody who runs for office. It's a very personal decision. And the decision not to run is equally personal.

I think, in Evan Bayh's case, I -- I don't think it's a question of bipartisanship, as much as it is there -- every year, "Fortune" magazine lists the 100 best places to work. The Container Store and Smucker's jams, and places like that are always listed.

Nobody is listing the United States Senate. I mean, it is not a positive work environment. And there is a lack of civility. There really is. And one of the great suggestions that was made, I think, by Norm Ornstein, the political scientist who has appeared on this show, was that the Congress be in, in three weeks in a row, Monday through Friday, first thing in the morning until late at night Friday, and that they are here, and then they take a week off.

And that would force them to bring their families here. If you are -- if I see you with your child at a soccer game, it is tougher for me to demonize you on Monday.

And I just think, somehow, there's got to -- before we ever get to, you know, collegiality again, there has got to be civility. And I think civility come with just getting to know each other.

via www.pbs.org

It's got a lot worse since Abbott became Opposition leader - allegations (all unsubstantiated) of bribery, corruption and manslaughter are thrown about with great abandon.

Commercial TV license fees - The 7.30 Report - ABC

The Minister for Broadband and Communications Stephen Conroy has been embarrassed by revelations that he had gone skiing in Colorado with Channel Seven Network partner Kerry Stokes just one before he announced that the Government would reduce licence fees for free to air TV channels by $250 million.

via www.abc.net.au

Well worth reading the transcript. So far, it's the only media story to make a good go at analysis and context on this issue

Should our foreign policy deal with religious groupings of states?

I argued that, in our foreign policy, we ought not to deal with organizations such as the OIC, which were built medieval-style on religious principles. Did it make sense to have foreign policy organized by “Christian” states today? Would we want then-President Obasanjo to organize pan-African organizations or the NEPAD process, or would we want to discuss foreign policy with an international forum of Yorubas? Would not the formal recognition of institutions that organized foreign policy, as does the OIC (whose meetings and activities are almost always handled by the foreign ministries of its 57 member states), simply encourage a return to the Middle Ages and beyond? I was struck by the approval expressed by many in the audience when the panel ended.

And now President Obama is doing just what he should not do. Yes, deal with the states that have Muslim majorities and are often theocratic rather than secular: Intellectuals can shun those they deplore, but foreign policy must deal with what is there. Do we really want to promote foreign policy negotiations with nation states grouped around religion?

via www.worldaffairsjournal.org

An interesting question

Online brands increasingly turn to TV advertising

Data from Nielsen Media Research, which has been analysed by the marketing body for commercial TV, Thinkbox, suggests TV spend now accounts for 71.5% of online brands' advertising investment, when online search is excluded. The figures including search were not disclosed.

via www.mediaweek.co.uk

For social democratic parties, it's about representation not just competence

In short, the strength of the Democratic Party is found in its “representational” character—in being seen as on the side of ordinary working and middle-income Americans. This may deflate the egos of the folks who staff liberal think tanks, but it is these “representational” factors—rather than perceived competence that undergird Democratic strength at the ballot box.

via www.inthesetimes.com

This is my contention in relation to the ALP as well

Capturing America: Mark Lawson's History of Modern American Literature, Fighters and Writers

Mark Lawson tells the story of how American writing became the literary superpower of the 20th century, telling the nation's stories of money, power, sex, religion and war.

Mark traces the way a group of young Americans returning from WWII turned the US into a literary superpower.

Contributors include Philip Roth, Toni Morrison and Edward Albee as well as Norman Mailer, John Updike and Kurt Vonnegut, the last three recorded in the final major interviews of their lives.

Drawing on interviews with dozens of key writers and critics, Mark Lawson examines the role of authors in capturing the nature of the US and explores the successes and controversies of America's literary output. He shows how differences of race, region and gender informed and expanded the stories being told. And he nominates his candidate for the title of the most unfairly neglected great American novelist.

via www.bbc.co.uk

Just listened to the first of eight episodes (you've got 14 hours until they pull it down) and very much enjoyed it.

Kevin Rudd | Foreign Policy

Just before Christmas, Kevin Rudd hosted 100 or so foreign affairs specialists for evening drinks on the lawns of Kirribilli House in Sydney, the harbour splendid in the background. Representing 22 countries - the US, China, Japan, Indonesia and right across South-East Asia, India, Latin America and Russia - they had come to discuss the Prime Minister's pet project, his idea to reshape the region's diplomatic architecture into the Asia-Pacific Community.

via www.smh.com.au

Interesting overview but I'm not convinced that Rudd's 'control' of foreign policy is a big deal

Keen to walk

The site will highlight the 224 kilometre journey on foot from Parliament House in Canberra to Mount Kosciuszko in the Snowy Mountains he is making in April, after losing a wager with Macquarie Bank analyst Rory Robertson that home prices would fall 40 per cent from peak to trough in a year

via www.smh.com.au

Couldn't resist the corny headline!

China's new hard-line

Until very recently, many western politicians, bankers and business people were broadly optimistic about the rise of China. They assumed that as China became more developed it would become more western. As it integrated into the global economy it would play a constructive role in multilateral institutions, help western governments sort out key foreign policy challenges and permit a more open society. China's leaders seemed to understand that the economic development of their country required friendly relations with the US and other major powers.

The EU's leaders shared this optimism. But over the past year China's behaviour has changed. Relatively hard-line and nationalist elements in the leadership appear to have sidelined those with liberal and internationalist instincts. This shift is spurring the EU's governments and institutions to reappraise their China strategies.

via www.cer.org.uk

Hitchens: Sport is bad for us

I'm not done. Our own political discourse, already emaciated enough, has been further degraded by the continuous importation of sports "metaphors": lame and vapid and cheery expressions like "bottom of the ninth," "goal line," and who knows what other tripe. Hard enough on the eyes and ears as this is—and there are some cartoonists who can't seem to draw without it—it also increases the deplorable tendency to look at the party system as a matter of team loyalty, which is the most trivial and parochial form that attachment can take. Meanwhile, the sponsorship racket means that a string of thugs and mediocrities is regularly marketed and presented for "role modeling" purposes, and it's considered normal for serious programming to be postponed or even interrupted if some dull game goes into (the very words are like a knell) overtime.

via www.newsweek.com

You have to admit he's got a point.