CAAANBRA: Fair & Balanced

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll have no doubt that Rupert Murdoch, that former Australian and worldwide media boss, prefers the conservative side of politics. He’s made no attempts to hide it; in fact, many of his News Limited/News International/News Corporation news outlets actively promote a conservative agenda. Fox News is so far to the right, they're the least trusted news organisation in America.

Nooooo, scream the conservative consumers of Mr Murdoch’s newspapers and television interests. In their view, conservative is “normal” and the rest of us are lefty communist stirrers. Hmmm. What you perceive really does depend on where you stand, but regardless of your position on the political spectrum, few would argue that Mr Murdoch’s news organisations are more conservative than most other news organisations.


Headlines and leaders from News Limited today

With new Newspoll and Neilsen federal opinion polls being released today, the headlines are telling. Fairfax's online titles, including the SMH, the Age and the Brisbane Times, are running the headline “Gillard Budget Boost”, while Murdoch’s press prefer to point out that the Coalition still has an ALP-slaughtering lead. Fair enough too – we need different perspectives on our world.
It's not just the Aussie press, though. Rupert Murdoch is not holding back. He has a personal twitter account, and this morning Mr Murdoch tweeted the following:

“Oz polls show nothing can save this miserable govt. Election can not come soon enough. People decided and tuned out months ago.”

With all due respect, I don’t accept that. The polls Mr Murdoch refers to are the Neilsen and Newspoll  numbers released overnight. Both sets of numbers are either stable or slightly positive for the government and for Ms Gillard as preferred PM, in a post-budget context where ALP votes should’ve been lost, not gained.
Internationally, political pollsters aren’t having a great run of late. In British Columbia, all of the media-aligned pollsters were wrong in their recent election. Every single one of them said that the Liberals would romp home and they didn’t. They lost. According to CBC News British Columbia: 

Angus Reid forecast in its last poll before the election that the NDP was the party of choice for 45 per cent of decided voters and leaners, with the governing Liberals in second place with 36 per cent support.

But in Tuesday's election, the Liberals won 44.4 per cent of the popular vote while the NDP ended up with 39.5 per cent. The win gave the Liberals 50 of the province's 85 seats, five more than the party had going into the election.

Back in Australia, Neilsen’s numbers this week show the Coalition leading the ALP 44-32, a slightly larger gap than was reported in British Columbia, but the BC polls were taken just prior to the election, not 4 months out. There were other similarities too: both leaders were fairly unpopular, and the economy was a key election issue, at least according to the pre-election polls.
The same inconsistencies were a factor in poor polling accuracy in the 2012 American Presidential elections. Gallup, one of the world’s oldest and most respected polling organisations, are holding an internal investigation into how and why their results all pointed to a Romney victory last November. Less than two weeks before the election, Gallup predicted a solid Romney victory; he was leading in the polls by 4%. The final result saw President Obama re-elected by the same margin. In polling terms, that's a big mistake. Huge.

Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, deep in denial on Election Night

Politico has put together a handy summary of some major polls conducted up to Election Day, and few of them had Obama in front.

Remember the faces at Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News when it became increasingly apparent that the Republicans would lose the election convincingly? Less than a month out from the Presidential Election, Fox News ran the story of Los Vegas bookie who was predicting a Romney landslide.  The conservative media in the USA was so sure that their man would win that they were visibly shocked when he didn’t.

The headline doesn't reflect the content of the story.

But Nate Silver, statistician, author and commentator, predicted the election so accurately, he called the result in every one of the fifty states, and DC. He had a look at the Australian situation when he was here in January this year. He predicted a Coalition victory, according to a headline in the Murdoch-stabled Australian.

What he actually said was that the ALP government would be the underdog:

In his first Australian interview after arriving in Melbourne yesterday, Silver said given the recent Australian polls, "clearly the government would be the underdog" but "the most important variable is not how many polls are taken but when the polls are taken relative to the election".

My lefty tendencies aren’t giving this election away just yet. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking, perhaps it’s the weather or some hitherto unknown clairvoyant powers, but this federal election is still up for grabs. Don’t be surprised if, come September 15th, we see more sad Murdoch employees - Andrew Bolt, Janet Albrechtsen, Piers Ackerman, Dennis Shanahan and the rest - wondering how it all went so wrong.

Fox News - America's least trusted news source

Caaanbra: Voter Intent

If you believe the polls of the past few weeks, Prime Minister Gillard’s new semi-hipster specs will be undermined and overthrown by the smoother, newly oranged Tony Abbott and his team of non-communicators. The major Polls – Neilsen, Newspoll, Galaxy, Essential – are all indicating that last year’s steady ascent of Julia Gillard is just so 2012, and that this is the year of the Abbott. Snake. Abbottsnake.

Of course, none of that will happen if the wildcard entry, Mr Kevin “I’m still from Queensland, still trying to help” Rudd ascends to the top of the ALP tree once more. The would be a game-changer. Professional pundits are drooling in anticipation of an ALP Leadership spill, which they seem to believe Kevin Rudd will win. They’re not talking out of their fedoras either: they are reporting the fears of senior ALP ministers, who have stated that the latest polling numbers make it impossible for the ALP to win in September. Many seem to believe that they have to make some changes.

Labor MPs were rocked by recent polls, which showed the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, ahead of Ms Gillard as preferred prime minister, jumping nine points to 49 per cent with her support slipping by five points to 45 per cent.

It followed a poor start to the election year for Labor, which was marred by policy and political errors, the failure of the mining tax, and the prominent emergence of Mr Rudd even as he called on people to ''take a cold shower'' over the leadership.

I really don’t want to discuss polls – there are people far more qualified to talk about them than I am. What fascinates me is what on earth could’ve happened in the past few weeks to turn what was looking like a very close election into a Coalition sure thing, Rudd notwithstanding. It’s not Ms Gillard’s specs, and it’s not Mr Abbott’s fake tan. I doubt it’s the arrest of Craig Thomson, or the whole Peter Slipper/Mal Brough brou-ha-ha. Ha-ha.

Is it policy? Has someone announced something, other than the date of the election, that would edge voters one way or the other? Are Australians more willing to risk a future with Tony Abbott and a sketchy policy than a government without Nicola Roxon and Chris Evans?

Is it absence of policy? Has the Liberal “leak” of Mr Abbott’s plan to build a hundred damns to drought-proof Australia been a winner? Perhaps just a glimmer of a suggestion of the hope of a policy is enough to convince voters that it’s time for change.

Is it the separation of the “other” Coalition, when Greens leader Christine Milne virtually told the government to shove off? I honestly doubt that has much to do with anything, but I thought I should mention the Greens, in case we’re watching the end of their obituary right now. Still, it will be interesting to see how many voters are genuine greenies, and how many were voting green as a way of ensuring a government that was slightly to the left of the other guys, without actually voting for Labor.

Because I am a lefty, I very much doubt that many conservatives read this blog, but for the one or two of you who do, this question is for the conservatives: Can you honestly say that you understand what the lefties are on about? Do you "get" leftie-speak, or is it just JuLiar and nasally accent going "blah blah carbon tax, blah blah misogyny, blah blah Gonski, blah blah blah."

And now, the same sort of questions for my leftie readers: Do you understand the conservative side of politics and the people who support conservative politics? How about conservative priorities, their thought processes, their leadership? When you think of Tony Abbott’s recent public appearances, are you aware of anything other than him turning orange and avoiding any and all serious media interviews?

Perhaps you're one of those progressive types who likes to watch Fox News so you can feel superior to Bill O'Reilly and his Low-Fact Friends in the All-Spin Cycle. Perhaps, like the IPA's James Paterson, you only enjoy QandA for the obscenities that the irrelevant ponces on the ABC trot out week after week. Fine – I’m in favour of mocking, providing some degree of intelligence and awareness of the issues is involved. Without understanding what you’re mocking, it’s not mocking; it’s trolling.

I'm not asking if you agree with the other side; that would be weird, unless you're Malcolm Turnbull. I'm just fascinated to know if you understand what drives the conservative, as opposed to what drives the lefty. At some level, it must come down to "what's in it for me", but that can't be all, particularly when both sides are promising more than they can pay for.

As the disparate sides of Australian politics awkwardly two-step together towards the right, there's not much between the core party platforms. The action, the fun stuff, is at the extremes, with the extremists. Out there, a party’s values still drive policy. It's great television, but not relevant to most average voters. Most Coalition supporters probably don’t support the platforms of the Australian Christian Lobby or the Galileo Movement, just as most Labor supporters aren’t gay Marxist baby-killing tree-huggers. Most of us are here, in the middle, staring at eachother over a wet cigarette paper.

I despair at the level of political debate I hear around me, sometimes on media, sometimes at the water cooler. But what have we done to improve it? What has anyone done? Who has accountability for ensuring that the people in this country who are required by law to turn up at a polling place know what they’re voting for and why?

I support compulsory voting, where everyone has a single, equal vote...and yet, if I vote Liberal in my seat because I don't like Julia Gillard's glasses is it a valid choice? It's definitely a valid vote, but was it made by someone in possession of the facts?

That's one of those horrible questions that keep me awake at night.

Now it's your turn. You can thank me later. 

BTW, there's a silly little poll on this very subject in the right hand column of this very blog. What drives your voting decisions?

Occupy Class Warfare

When the Federal Opposition responded to the Budget with calls of “Class Warfare”, many of us closed our eyes and hummed old Abba favourites very loudly to ourselves. Tony Abbott’s Budget Reply speech barely addressed the Budget, other than to suggest that the Opposition would fund more language classes and make vague promises about fairness, and mock Wayne Swan's attempt to deliver the Holy Grail of Budgets, the Capital-S-Surplus. As a response, it was entirely without guts.

“The last thing the Coalition wants to do is start a class war, a post code war”, declared Abbott, entirely without irony, as he set about trying to start a class war. Then he suggested that the Government should be governing for all Australians. Again, the lack of irony was delicious.

Protip: Next time you want to start a class war, take a look at the Occupy Movement. At least they can use numbers that add up.

It wasn’t only the Opposition that accused the Government of Class Warfare. Dennis Shanahan, Political Editor of the Australian was happy to take up arms against the imaginary war:

Mr Shanahan has completely avoided the awkward detail that the Labor movement itself is built on an ideological foundation of challenging the class structure. If the ALP is seen as playing a benevolent Robin Hood against a backdrop of ongoing economic uncertainty overseas, why is that bad for Labor?

"After Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan invoked class-war rhetoric to sell the budget, it was well received by families earning less than $90,000 a year, while more people than last year, 18 per cent, said they would be personally "better off" as a result of the payments.

"But the cash handouts to families on less than $150,000, some sole parents and the unemployed have damaged Labor's economic standing. Mr Swan's fifth budget was deemed the worst for the economy since John Dawkins' disastrous 1993 budget after the election of the Keating government."

The Government spin on the Budget was that everyone – not just the rich – should benefit from the resources boom, and this was a way of ensuring that we all get a share.  Surely this is the opposite of class warfare, in that it seeks to minimise the class structure that divides the well-off and obscenely rich from those who live from pay cheque to pay cheque, or worse. And isn’t that the ALP mantra? “A Fair Go For All Australians”?

If means-testing of government handouts in the middle class and McMansion mortgage belts is seen as starting a war with those who already have their five-bedroom Tuscan style family home in the outer suburbs, so be it.

Yet somewhere around the end of last week, conventional wisdom was that “the people” (which rarely seems to include me) would fall into line behind Mr Abbott’s team. Julia Gillard’s jibes at Abbott and Hockey’s North Shore insularity and Wayne Swan’s Malicious Budget would be rejected, class warfare proven, insults hurled and punishment dished out via a further drop in the ALP’s approval numbers.

It didn’t happen.

According to the Essential Poll released this week, just 28% of Aussies agreed with the Federal Opposition’s claim that the Gillard Government - and Treasurer Swan in particular – are conducting class warfare against Australia’s richest people and most successful companies. Even more remarkable is the finding that the income level of the respondents was not a particularly strong indicator of response. People with incomes over $1600/week were only slightly more likely to favour the Opposition’s position. So, does this mean that the electorate is chiefly happy with the budget, and that the Opposition’s class warfare spin was off the mark?

Yes and no.

The big surprise was probably Tony Abbott, but not directly because of his unsuccessful class warfare attack. That was just the latest in a long series of political assaults. Attacking, criticizing, belittling the government are all part of the role of an Opposition party.

But it’s not the whole kit and caboodle of being an effective Opposition. The electorate is starting to want more from this Opposition than just a never-ending parade of disapproving grunts and mathematical impossibilities. We don’t need Abbott’s team of ministerial goons to point out that the ALP Government is in trouble. We can see that. Now, we need the Opposition to prove to us that they are a credible alternative Government.

As was the case last year, Mr Abbott used his entire Budget Reply speech as free media time in which to kick the government from every possible angle, but this year, it failed. Australians wanted to hear what the Coalition had to offer as an alternative budget. We needed to feel confident that in the face of years of economic absurdity from Abbott, Hockey and Robb, the Coalition Treasury and Finance teams could produce a credible alternative budget, not just some vague promises about fairness and language classes.

Instead, when asked to explain why the Government’s Education handout is different to his own Baby Bonus handout, the answer was “They just are.”

Noted blogger Peter Brent said in his Mumble blog in the Australian

 Today voters want grownups in leadership positions.

With their undergraduate, one-dimensional “us against the toffs” rhetoric, Swan and Gillard present the opposite.

They’ve made Tony Abbott a statesman.

No-one has made Abbott a statesman, nor have they turned around the fortunes of the careworn government. The Opposition’s failure to mount a substantial response to what was a pretty average budget is not going to be the One Big Thing that turns around the fortunes of the Labor Government. I don’t believe such a political marvel exists.  

It might, however, force the Opposition to reassess their approach, and convince them to offer more than just a dogmatic black hole with nothing to offer beyond “we’re not them.”

The Damage Done

One of my colleagues, Anne, asked me today if I’d blogged about Craig Thomson. No, I hadn't. I wondered why,  and I’ve narrowed it down to three possibilities:

1.      I don’t care about Craig Thomson or his credit card
2.      I don’t know enough to feel confident I know enough about the details
3.      I have nothing new to contribute to the conversation

It’s really a little bit of all three.  A sitting MP has been accused of serious wrong-doing in a job he held prior to being elected to parliament;  he has been investigated, has been expelled from his political party…but not convicted of a crime. Yet. 

If that’s not intrigue enough, the precarious state of our hung parliament means that any movement - by Thomson, Slipper or any other member of the lower house - could tip the balance and set up a chain reaction leading to the new election Tony Abbott wants so badly.

Overlay that with last night’s Newpoll figures, and Mr Thomson’s situation is simultaneously a Labor nightmare...and entirely irrelevant.

Why irrelevant? Because even though  Labor’s numbers showed some bounce last night, all that is left for the ALP is their rusted-on supporters. Just about everyone who's going to desert the ALP has already gone. Craig Thomson's slow motion political implosion probably won't do a lot more damage.

As for the Newspoll result, it's not easy to determine whether it was simply a correction after the horror story in the last poll, or whether it was a genuine ‘budget boost’. The next set of Newspoll numbers will give a clearer picture of how deep the ALP's hole is...but it won't tell them how to fix it, and might even stabilise Julia Gillard as Leader.

Right now, I can't think of anything that could convince voters to trust this Labor government for another term with Julia Gillard at the helm. 

In the 20 or so months since the last Federal election, the situation has only become more dire for Labor, and despite that, the Coalition has failed to offer a viable alternative. On current numbers, the Coalition would win an election held now, but not because they are liked, or trusted or respected, because they are disliked less, considered less untrustworthy and disrespected less than the ALP. Note that I haven't mentioned Coalition policy: they don't seem to think policies matter, and maybe, in the end, they won't.

Right now, if given a choice, many Australians wouldn’t vote for either of the major parties. In the past three months, the Labor primary has decreased from 35% to 30%...but while the Coalition primary has been above 50%, it's fallen back to 45%, exactly where it was three months ago. The Greens have picked up a whole percentage point, but “others” have picked up 4%.

And really, Craig Thomson's mess is not relevant. While the Coalition makes loud, monotonous and ultimately fruitless calls for Prime Minister Gillard to disregard Thomson’s vote, we know it won’t happen. Thomson is another convenient ALP failure that the Opposition can use to embarrass the Government. Thomson is still a member of the parliament, and his vote is valid. 

Of larger concern is the damage this disgraceful series of events within the HSU has done to the union movement, and to progressive, people-driven, policy in Australia. Organisations like GetUp! will continue to gain relevance and influence, long after Craig Thomson has lost both.

The Federal Clivening

The events of the past two weeks or so, since the accusations against Peter Slipper frustrated the nation, are the best arguments yet  against fixed parliamentary terms. There is already so little faith in the government, so little trust that it’s going to get better…

Sometimes, you can’t predict failure, and you can’t control it. Despite a successful legislative programme, and despite Tony Abbott’s censure attempts, the ALP Government’s has run out of time. The choice now is a daily crawl through fire towards the next election, trying to govern as if they had a mandate, or to call the election and start the rebuilding now.

Yesterday’s presser from the Prime Minister was an appalling start to the week, a desperate attempt to look as though she is in control. It didn’t work – it was too late, and her words lacked conviction. Under public and media pressure, she has consigned to the cross benches two members who as yet have not been convicted. There were no winners on the ALP side yesterday.

It was, in comparison, a better day for the Coalition, if only because they were able to point and mock. That doesn’t make them a better prospect for government; it just makes them “not Labor”. Tragically, that’s all it takes to get elected in this country right now.

In the next act of what is an increasing bizarre week, mining magnate Clive Palmer has raised his hand via talk radio, and announced that he will be seeking Liberal Party pre-selection to run against Treasurer Wayne Swan in the Brisbane seat of Lilley. Known for supporting the LNP’s Campbell Newman in his successful bid to become Queensland Premier, Mr Palmer has always harboured some parliamentary ambition. In 1984, he lost a pre-selection battle in Fisher to Peter Slipper. Assuming Mr Palmer wins pre-selection for Lilley – and given the amount of money he’s pumped into the LNP, he will – he’ll probably steal the seat for the Liberals.

It’s really not a bad idea though. Clive Palmer is a very smart man. Wouldn’t we all be better off if our government was made up of people who know how to be successful, who know how to achieve results, who know how to think? I’ve long thought that part of the problem in our parliament was the number of representatives who had never proven themselves outside of the government. Most of the current crop have spent more years working as political advisors, union officials, press secretaries and chiefs of staff before entering politics themselves than they’ve spent in private enterprise. Malcolm Turnbull is the obvious exception to the rule, but being richer than god tends to remove one from the day to day struggles to pay for the groceries.

Of course there’s a range of issues contributing to the gulf between where our politicians are, and where voters want them to be. Even the lowest paid of our federal politicians is earning $185,000 plus per year. That’s more than twice the average wage.

There is an argument that I first heard at the ripe old age of 12, that we get the politicians we can afford, and if we were willing to pay them more, we’d attract better credentialed candidates to public office. All the really good business and management minds are living it up in the private sector, earning ten times a backbencher’s salary.

I’m not sure that increasing the salary of our representatives would have the desired effect– there needs to be a passion to serve the nation. No amount of money would make up for the lifestyle, travel, time away from your home and family, the constant intrusion and the inability just to have a bad day. That’s a different kind of driver –it’s the desire to serve.

Does Clive Palmer have that ambition? Does he really want to be elected to public office and serve his country – where his salary would most certainly be less than it is now – or does he just want to kick Wayne Swan out of his way. Perhaps this politics lark is another item for Clive to cross off his personal bucket list. Perhaps he really does think he’s god and is behaving accordingly.

Or maybe Clive’s the Real Deal.