Tony Abbott has apologised to Rob Oakeshott after the caller who phoned Oakeshott’s wife and identified himself as “the Devil” was outed as Bill Heffernan.
I have to say, I find Heffernan’s explanation that it was meant as a “light-hearted, well-intended” phone call entirely convincing. He just didn’t want to scare anyone. And what would you find more scary – taking a phone call from the Devil? Or taking a phone call from Bill Heffernan?
I’d sooner take a call from the Devil any day.
With the Coalition gaining a 3% swing in the poll, many of its supporters are enjoying a ‘told ya so’ moment about the electability of Tony Abbott. James Paterson (not the thriller writer) brought them all together in an article for the Oz Spectator, rounding up the usual suspects. Your correspondent was surprised and pleased to be included:
And Crikey’s resident angry former Marxist, Guy Rundle, after comparing Abbott to Taliban leader Mullah Omar… …boasted that ‘vanquishing Abbott shouldn’t be too hard’ because Abbott is ‘a weird little creep’ who would destroy himself without much help.
Please because at least someone is paying attention (former Marxist?), surprised because taken out of full context the quote is exactly the opposite of what I suggested. Here’s the full quote: Read more »
OK, before you do anything else, go back and read what I wrote in May about how a hung parliament works. Constitutionally, Julia Gillard is in the same position now that Gordon Brown was then. Politically, her position is a lot stronger.
It’s a fortunate coincidence that we’ve already had two opportunities this year, in Tasmania and Britain, to think about the dynamics of minority government in a Westminster system. The basic message is always the same: the incumbent has the option to stay put until it becomes clear their opponents can command a majority — by an agreement reached beforehand, or by being tested on the floor of parliament.
David Bartlett and Gordon Brown both tendered their resignations before their hand was forced in either of those ways: Bartlett because he had promised to do so if he lost the popular vote, and Brown because he knew that his departure would improve Labour’s prospects of reaching agreement with other parties. Neither reason applies to Gillard. Read more »
No subject for immortal verse -
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse. – C.D. Lewis.
“Defending the bad against the worse” is hardly the most inspiring political credo. Yet that is exactly what many voters will be doing when they cast their vote tomorrow. As disillusioned as they may be with Labour over issues ranging from carbon tax inertia to asylum-seeker “solutions” to mining tax deals, they don’t doubt that a Coalition government would be much, much worse. Read more »
If Mark Latham is planning to lodge a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the Australian government after the trauma of being “stroked down the front” by the Prime Minister, he hasn’t said so.
But I am waiting to see which prominent Australian male (or female, of course) will emunlate Allanah Hill by telling the ALP campaign launch that Julia can touch him/her up anytime. Read more »
After blasting the media contingent travelling with the Prime Minister for their appalling performance yesterday, it’s only fair that I note that today in Darwin the media were substantially better in focussing on policy issues. The transcript follows.
TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE
CASUARINA, DARWIN
8 AUGUST 2010
E & O E – PROOF ONLY
Subjects: National Rental Affordability Scheme; No School No Play Policy; School Chaplains Program; Election Campaign; People Smuggling; Private Health Insurance Rebate.
PM: I am here today in the Federal Electorate of Solomon in Darwin with our local Member of Parliament Damian Hale. I am also joined by Senator Trish Crossin and I am here today to make three important announcements. Read more »
The media’s role in this election campaign has been the subject of considerable debate, not so much in relation to the traditional accusations of bias – although there is plenty of that from certain outlets – but centred on criticism that mainstream journalists and the Press Gallery reporters accompanying the leaders are focussing on ephemera and trivia rather than issues of substance. In particular, the failure of journalists to ask leaders about policy detail has attracted much ire from bloggers and online election watchers.
But nothing so far in the campaign has matched the extraordinary press conference this afternoon given by the Prime Minister where she announced a range of significant election policies relating to senior Australians.
While the bare bones of the announcement, as is now usual, were leaked to the newsprint media ahead of time, the announcement itself covered the critical issue of reverse mortgages, the regulation of which Labor now proposes to tighten. Read more »
Dr June Factor writes:
In the few weeks of the election campaign, how many times will we hear about troublesome asylum seekers and wicked people smugglers?
These labels are very familiar to the Jewish community. The sad truth of centuries of oppression and discrimination in Europe, culminating in the horrors of Nazi persecution and mass murder in World War II, mean that most Jewish families in Australia have relatives whose lives were saved by desperate flight from imminent danger. Then as now, people escaping for their lives did not have the luxury of acquiring official exit documents. It was and is often safer to disguise identity when officialdom is your enemy.
Some Jews were helped by loyal friends. Others paid guides to smuggle them to safety. Whether altruistic or avaricious, these ‘people smugglers’ saved lives. Without their knowledge of hiding places, terrain, police and guards who could be bribed, far fewer fugitives would have found asylum. Read more »
Perhaps it’s because I’m running as a candidate myself, but I find the media focus on who is leaking what and why gets very tiresome very quickly. That’s not to say that voters aren’t interested at all in such things, but it does run a poor second to those issues that directly affect people’s lives – whether it be jobs, the economy, climate change, housing or transport.
The fairly empty nature of the national campaign run to date by the two larger parties leads me to agree with the view of a number of commentators that this election is likely to see local and regional factors have a much greater impact than usual, leading to greater variations in swings between different areas.
It is too much to ask for mainstream media coverage to drill down into the specifics of all 150 seats – as well as the 8 different Senate contests – so it is understandable that most of the focus is on the marginals. Queensland alone has 16 seats held by a margin of less than 5 per cent, and it’s hard not to have the feeling that there could be larger swings than that in a few seats. Read more »
Want to know what the Coalition will do about equal pay? According to the story in today’s Daily Telegraph, we can assume nothing will be done to raise the pay rates of the women who provide undervalued child care and community services.
‘MEN who opt to be the primary carer of their newborn babies will have their parental leave paid at the mother’s pay rate – not their own – under the Coalition’s paid parental leave scheme. Opposition childcare spokeswoman Sharman Stone says it would be too expensive to give men replacement wages for six months, while they took time off work to care for the baby, given the imbalance in pay rates between males and females. “In our policy, if dad is the primary carer he will be paid at mum’s wage rate,” Ms Stone told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.” Read more »
A week into the election and Labor’s strategy of sleepwalking to victory appears to be working. Even the recalcitrant Nielsen poll has swung in the ALP’s favour in today’s Fairfax papers.
Tony Abbott had a poor start. Eric Abetz ruined his attempt to shut down Workchoices – you certainly can’t say Abetz doesn’t generously share his incompetence with leaders progressive and conservative alike – and there was a strangely slow start for the Liberal HQ that Brian Loughnane will have to explain if he’s on the losing side again.
But even with those hurdles surmounted, there was an “is that it?” feel to Abbott’s campaign, which seems to lack a strategy beyond trying to shut down Workchoices. A big ticket and potentially attractive campaign commitment on the education rebate came and went in the media cycle, with no follow-up from the Liberals and questions about its costings. Read more »
Prominent shareholder activist and Crikey founder Stephen Mayne has formally declared a run for a spot in the Senate in Victoria at next month’s federal election, just hours after announcing a parallel political push for a seat in the Victorian upper house.
After warning of a potential run for the Northern Metropolitan Region on his website The Mayne Report for months, the serial candidate appeared to confirm his intentions on Facebook yesterday afternoon. But late last night, that post was deleted, and a press release issued in the early hours of this morning spruiking a Senate bid instead.
Crikey contacted Mayne this morning, who said that a “staffer” had included the reference to Northern Metro on Facebook, and that he was still in the race, pending the Senate result and negotiations with Manningham Council, on which he serves as councillor for Heidi Ward. Read more »
Press Gallery president Phillip Hudson has just distributed the rules for Sunday night’s debate as agreed between the two parties:![LEADERS DEBATE RULES 22 12 noon July[1]](http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/files/2010/07/LEADERS-DEBATE-RULES-22-12-noon-July1-724x1023.gif "LEADERS DEBATE RULES 22 12 noon July[1]")
A short time ago Press Gallery President Phillip Hudson sent the following email to Gallery members.
Dear Gallery Colleagues,
I have received this letter (see below) from the National Press Club tonight.
The details about the debate rules are still being negotiated.
The Press Gallery Committee has been kept informed about the progress of discussions but we have not made any of the decisions. It is an agreement between the Press Club board and the two political parties.
I can confirm TV networks will be given a live clean feed and there will be no restrictions on the use of audience response meters.
Phillip Hudson
Press Gallery President
-x-x-x-x-x-x-
Tuesday 20 July 2010
Phillip Hudson
President
Federal Parliamentary Gallery
Dear Phil,
2010 LEADERS DEBATE UPDATE
The Board of the National Press Club is able to advise that following agreement by the ALP and Liberal Party Campaign Directors that the Prime Minister Julia Gillard will debate the Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott this Sunday 25 July 2010 at 6:30pm for duration of One (1) hour at the National Press Club. Read more »
I had been planning to write a blog piece reflecting on the way that current political discourse was eching “Yes Minister”’s Jim Hacker: “It’s the people’s will. I am their leader. I must follow them.”
Only the Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher not only beat me to it, but cited a much more erudite source for the same sentiment – “It’s the sort of leadership that the 19th-century French democrat Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin described: ”There go the people – I must follow them, for I am their leader.”” Read more »
As anyone within hearing distance of a TV or radio will know, about half an hour ago at 10.40am the Prime Minister Julia Gillard visited the Governor-General at Yarralumla to call an election, expected to be on 21 August, for the House of Representatives and half the Senate.
The Prime Minister will hold a press conference at midday. More to come.
Julia Gillard has addressed the National Press Club and offered a continuation of the Rudd Government’s economic and fiscal policies, but with an emphasis on not distinguishing between public and private delivery.
However the address was overshadowed by Laurie Oakes’s revelations of the events of the night of 23 June, which formed the basis for his question following the address.
Gillard offered little new in her speech, beyond committing that all Labor promises during the election would be offset with savings. She made a point of stressing that she had moved beyond distinguishing between private and public service deliver, continuing Labor’s shift away from the sort of hostility toward private education that was used effectively against Mark Latham in 2004. Read more »
The key statement that sums up today’s economic forecast revisions is on page 14.
Since the 2010-11 Budget, parameter and other variations have led to taxation receipt estimates being revised up by around $310 million in 2010-11 and around $7.8 billion over the four years to 2013-14. A stronger outlook for commodity prices is reflected in higher than otherwise taxes on resource rents and company profits. This is offset in part by downward revisions in consumption taxes associated with a weaker consumption outlook.
In short, the mining boom is taking off again and propelling government receipts onwards and upwards. The only thing the Government has to do to return quickly to surplus is keep a lid on spending, the one thing this Government has been good at outside its stimulus packages in 2008-09. Read more »
I drew attention the other day to the analogy between the current federal situation and the aftermath of the 1999 Victorian election, when three country independents emerged with the balance of power. It’s worth also thinking about the big difference between then and now: Labor then was in opposition, whereas now it’s in government.
Siding with Labor in Victoria meant putting a new government in office, beholden to the independents – as did similar situations in Queensland in 1998 and South Australia in 2002 – but if Katter et al. side with Labor federally, they will be keeping an old government afloat. How much does that matter? Read more »
Two letters in Quadrant, referred to in my reply to Neil James in Crikey daily email, comments, Thursday 25th August
Quadrant Letters September 1981
SIR: Paul Ormonde (letters, July-August) accuses the Australia Defence Association of guilt by association with the National Civic Council because of my personal involvement with both. The reality is somewhat more complex.
Val Hancock (in Western Australia) invited me (in Victoria) to expand ADA’s work into Victoria. Although I was certainly a full-time official of the NCC, I had at that time never heard of ADA. As an ex-naval officer, I was interested in defence issues and had been writing on defence for both the NCC’s News Weekly and the Age, hence Hancock’s invitation. Read more »
I’m sure that I’m not the only Australian looking into the skies for political omens after the “wtf just happened?” election night.
Perhaps we should all be looking towards Mt Bartle Frere, Queensland’s highest mountain, which Bob Katter thinks could become a pilgramage site akin to Mecca or Jerusalem if a giant religious statue was placed at the summit.
The “Greenslide” is an important political shift, of course. But the Green’s power may not amount to more than the power to block in the Senate (a not insignificant power, of course), if Katter and the other ex-National MPs are the kingmakers in the Reps. Green-friendly measures would never get as far as a Senate vote.
But hey. It seems like the right moment for a giant religious statue. I for one am hoping for Divine intervention.
Many people (including me) have been saying that the media’s coverage of this election campaign has been slanted towards the Coalition. Most of the time, that’s a matter of subjective perception; we can say it, but we can’t really prove it.
Sometimes, however, it’s a matter of hard fact. Here, word for word, is ABC television’s report from tonight’s 7pm news:
A Newspoll taken in marginal electorates puts five Labor seats at risk in New South Wales. The swing to the Coalition in Kevin Rudd’s home state is heavier, with seven Labor seats in peril. But in Julia Gillard’s backyard the ALP is polling strongly, with a chance of gaining three seats. That scenario would return Labor with a slender margin …
On screen, a graphic showed the swings: 1.3% to the Coalition in NSW, 3.4% to the Coalition in Queensland and 6.2% to Labor in Victoria. Read more »
Jesus wept! Julia Gillard’s main media event on Sunday was previewed by the ABC at breakfast time as the announcement of more chaplains for state schools during campaigning in Darwin.
Why isn’t Gillard promising more Asian language teachers, or science teachers, instead of more priests or preachers?
What has happened to the secular values of the Australian constitution?
If Australians wish their children to have a religious education, whether Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim or Jeddi, they can enrol them at a religious school, except for the last group of course.
Why in a society struggling to remain scientifically literate, do we need government to spent on priests in public schools?
And why is Labor, and the Coalition, pandering to sects that don’t believe in voting or paying taxes, and whose premises include the exclusion from God’s love (from whichever God) of those who don’t subscribe to their particular set of fairy tales. Read more »
Disability has emerged as an election buzzword, with both sides pledging increased funding for support and making positive noises (although no firm commitment, pending a Productivity Commision report) on the question of a National Disability Insurance Scheme.
However, there has been disappointment at Bill Shorten’s announcement of an “aspirational” target for disability-friendly design standards in all new homes by 2020 – too little, too late… Read more »
Freelance journalist — and first-time voter — Alexandra Patrikios writes:
Everyone tells you your first time should be special, but for me, it was all just a bit anticlimactic. My hands didn’t tremble, my heart wasn’t a-flutter. In fact, as I impatiently tapped my personal details into the AEC search, the right to vote didn’t seem so much a ‘gift’ as a chore.
And it seems I’m not the only one. It’s been widely remarked that this election campaign has been a bona fide snoozefest. Tony’s on such a short leash he’s in danger of knotting an incidental noose, and Julia’s not faring much better.
Leaky and Rudd(erless) — little wonder the ALP is having difficulty with the boats.
Gone is the snap, crackle, pop jousting of the former Today regulars, whose energetic early morning altercations translated their personal chemistry into endearing public profiles. To paraphrase Wayleed Aly, this election — with its empty arguments and focus-group agenda — is an unimportant, altogether loveless affair.
One of the many things that worked in Labor’s favor in the 2007 election was the fact that it did rather better than its opponents in the draw for ballot paper positions. As I reported at the time, out of 41 at-risk Coalition seats, Labor improved its position in 16, but went the other way only in six.
On Friday the Australian Electoral Commission conducted the ballot draw for this year, and it’s much more even. Out of 48 marginal seats (Labor-held up to 6% and Coalition-held up to 4%), there are twelve where Labor had the benefit of the donkey vote in 2007 but has lost it this year, and thirteen that have moved the other way.
Here is the list, with margins (asterisks denote seats that have notionally changed party due to redistribution).
Donkey vote shifting to Coalition: Read more »
Adrian Foon writes:
When I first read about Penny Wong’s comments on same-sex marriage, I was extremely disappointed — and, truth be told, angry. Here was a high-ranking cabinet minister who also happened to be gay. Yet here she was, proclaiming a need to respect one particular “cultural, religious, historical” view of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
I wasn’t the only one who felt disappointed. Bob Brown claimed he was horrified. Tim Dick of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote passionately about Wong’s failure of nerve. This morning, Samantha Maiden has commented on abuse hurled at Penny Wong from within the gay community.
Meanwhile, the condemnations on Twitter and elsewhere rang loudly against Wong’s betrayal of the gay community. Read more »
The transcript of this morning’s Liberal announcement about its immigration target follows, featuring Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison. Abbott’s Parliamentary Secretary, dog-whistler Cory “ban the burqa” Bernardi is along for the ride.
Abbott and Morrison seem to have considerable difficulty explaining exactly what the policy means and how it will be implemented, especially in relation to temporary skilled and student visas. Read more »
The Liberal Party is clearly concerned that it is facing a heavy defeat on 21 August, with a crass piece of opportunism on immigration today – a plan to limit it to 170,000 a year.
The desperate appeal – from a party led by an immigrant, no less – has yet to be formally announced but has been heavily spruiked today by Tony Abbott in the regular column given him by News Ltd.
As Crikey showed in April, the Coalition’s record of rhetoric on immigration this year has been hopelessly confused and based on either blatant deception or simple inability to count by the Liberals’ appalling immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison. Read more »
Everyone knows the value of a second opinion in serious medical matters, but why not have five? Why not twenty? Why do they all have to be from doctors?
That’s the thinking behind Labor’s bold new health policy announced by Julia Gillard today. Should Labor go on to a second term life-or-death decisions will be taken out of the hands of inner-city tertiary-educated doctors and put in the hands of citizens assemblies.
‘From now on people facing the risk of life-threatening illness will have more backing them up than elite doctors’ Gillard announced ‘they will have hardworking, decent, hardworking, Australians…..
and their plain common sense to interpret key test data for them. That’s the Citizen Organised Medical Evaluation Oncology Network proposal.’ Read more »
Prominent shareholder activist and Crikey founder Stephen Mayne has made good on his threat to run for a seat in the state upper house at the Victorian election in November.
After warning of a looming run for Northern Metropolitan on his website The Mayne Report for months, the serial candidate finally confirmed his intentions on his Facebook page this afternoon.
He is expected to campaign heavily on a populist blow-up-the-pokies agenda that propelled South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon all the way to Canberra. The machines are a known scourge in Melbourne’s north, stripping millions of dollars out of addicts’ wallets and into state government coffers.
On Facebook, Mayne described the independent campaign as a “Nick Xenophon-style anti-pokies platform”, before urging followers to “get on board!”
Mayne has lauched a bevy of failed political bids over his carrer including an ambitious run for the Mayor of Melbourne in 2001 and the Federal seat of Higgins in 2007. He was finally elected to Manningham Council’s Heidi Ward in 2008. Read more »
What election? It’s hard to miss the coverage in the conventional media or even the political junkies using twitter, but the general population seems not to be engaged in the task of deciding our future. Young people contacted through a Vibewire project seemed fairly unaware and uninterested and calls for involvement by some advocacy groups has not been answered by a rush. The media managers know that the debate can’t compete with MasterChef and an hour of slogans will probably be more than most people want.
Is this just apathy or are the issues on the agenda in this particular election so far from what really matters to most of us that people are not bothering to switch on? One odd marker of this disconnect is the emphasis given to asylum seeker/population/immigration dog whistle efforts by the politicos and media. Expert poll readers claim it is not a major vote changer but it has become a hot media issue and obliging interviewees are ready to express probably quite genuine fears and anxieties displaced from other sources. Read more »
From economic illiteracy, savings are born. Thank heaven for small mercies.
It seems increasingly clear the Coalition’s economic policy for the election is to continue its scare campaign on debt and deficits and hope Australians are economically illiterate enough to connect a possible interest rate rise by the RBA in two weeks with Labor’s economic policies. The Coalition’s economic team of Joe Hockey and Andrew Robb will be sweating on the next inflation rate figure due out next week.
To this end, Joe Hockey – hitherto invisible in the Coalition campaign – was this morning continuing to run the discredited line that the Government is “crowding out” investment through its borrowings, which is less nonsensical, but no less incorrect, than Barnaby Joyce’s claims that Australia was at risk of default. Read more »
The 2010 campaign has kicked off with the least auspicious start we’ve seen for many elections. Neither leader offered a compelling performance in their initial outings. Read more »
The Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery committee looks forward to both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party delivering on their previous promises to participate in three leaders’ debates during the formal election campaign.
In particular, we look forward to a guaranteed debate on the first Sunday of the campaign (which is four or more days after the issue of the writs) and, most importantly, a debate on the last Sunday before polling day.
We believe this will allow a proper debate about all the issues and scrutiny of the promises made during the formal campaign launches.
We believe the debates must be designed for television, internet and radio broadcast and there must be no restrictions on the use of audience response meters or other devices.
The members of the Press Gallery are ready to participate in and facilitate these three debates.
Phillip Hudson
Press Gallery President
______________________
Earlier today, Liberal Party Federal Director Brian Loughnane sent the following letter to ALP National Secretary Karl Bitar: Read more »
Crikey intern Nikki Bricknell writes:
Looking at our domestic economy, it looks like the real GDP will go down just a smidgen, unemployment will stay exactly the same, and the consumer price index will go up.
Thanks to the huge demand for iron ore (which will drive nominal GDP up 9.25% this year), commodity prices are expected to increase taxation receipts by $310 million this year and $7.8 billion over the next four years.
But weaker economic growth means the benefits to the Budget bottom line are relatively limited. This year the deficit forecast has been revised downward from $40.7 billion up to $40.3 billion. In 2011/12, the deficit is expected to be around $10 billion, lower by $3 billion. There’ll also be a more substantial return to to surplus in 2012/13, up from $1 billion to $3 billion. However, the projections for 2013/14 have dropped by $600 million. Read more »
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