On the QT: No smoke, no fire

The day’s events in politics started with the massive scandal that Nicola Roxon back in 2005 wrote a letter to cigarette company Philip Morris seeking their attendance at a $1,500 a table fundraising dinner. This was of course after the period when Mark Latham had banned tobacco donations. The big scandal of course is that Philip Morris executives didn’t attend, and didn’t give her campaign any money. Which means… errr well err something.

Oh yeah, apparently as well back in 1999 she also attended a tennis match as a guest of Philip Morris.

Uhuh.

That’s it?

That’s the smoking gun?

That’s all they got?

Geez.

It reminds me (as so much does) of Yes Prime Minister and the episode The Smoke Stack. The PM, Jim Hacker gets behind (on the surface at least) a push to destroy the tobacco industry. Humphrey Appleby in an attempt to scare Hacker off brings up tobacco hospitality:

Sir Humphrey Appleby: All the hospitality that we've enjoyed at BTG's [British Tobacco Group’s] expense. Champagne receptions, buffet lunches, the best seats at sporting and cultural events.
Jim Hacker: What's the problem?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: The tobacco companies may release this embarrassing information to the press.
Jim Hacker: It's not embarrassing. I've had drinks at the Soviet embassy. That doesn't make me a Russian spy.

Now sure Roxon has been raging about the Lib’s donations from tobacco group – but while she did send out a letter in 2005 (back when she wasn’t even Shadow Health Spokesperson!) she hasn’t received any money from them, and she certainly hasn’t had anything to do with them since she’s taken on the Health portfolio.

If that’s all they got, then they’ve got nothing.

Abbott in his doorstop this morning said “she’s got a lot of explaining to do”. A lot? Really? OK, let’s see how she does:

"Our party does not take tobacco donations. It has not since 2004. I've asked for my records to be checked. No representatives attended and no donations were made to this event, but clearly those letters should not have been sent."

So Tony, need anything else?

The problem for the Libs is by attacking her for this inevitably it leads to these types of questions:

QUESTION: Isn’t it hypocritical though, considering you’re still receiving donations from big tobacco, to be going on about this?

If the Libs go this way they have to go all the way and ban their own receiving of tobacco donations. They’re not in a great hurry to do that, which is why this morning in Parliament they moved a motion to get Roxon to come in to the House and explain herself, but when the cameras were on during Question Time they did not ask one question about it.

I guess the problem for the Libs aside from the donations is that when you get down to it CIGARETTES WILL KILL YOU. And whatever the politics, whatever the “hypocrisy” the Libs have to decide whether or not to support a policy that will reduce the take up of smoking (and the only proof you need that it will work is the reaction by the cigarette companies – unless you think all their advertising against the policy is because they don’t want to sell more cigarettes).

Roxon sending a letter in 2005 or going along to the tennis in 1999 ain’t changing the fact that CIGARETTES WILL KILL YOU.

It’s nice to know that some issues are black and white.

Incidentally I want to award my special Press Gallery Mid-Winter’s Ball prize of the “Lisa Simpson Runaway Freight Train Soft Question of the Week” to whoever was the gun reporter who asked Abbott this question today:

QUESTION: Mr Abbott, the Labor caucus were called into line yesterday. The Prime Minister told them not to go out and voice their opinions out in the media. Is that a direct response to you calling on Labor MPs to stand up for their electorates, particularly mining electorates?

Wow. You really had him on the back foot there. What a cutting cross examination. Be proud.

***

The other issue of the morning was the Newspoll. It was horrible for Labor and worse for Gillard. 45-55 on 2 party preferred and Gillard with a awful minus 20 satisfaction rating. The Oz of course hid the results under a bushel (that’s a joke for you first time readers).

The last Newspoll showed the ALP vote going up by 2, this one showed its vote going down by 3. Let’s do our fortnightly compare and contrast. See if you can pick the Newspoll that showed the increase in support for Labor and the one which showed a decline:

    

Subtle ain’t it?

The polls are horrible, but they don’t mean too much yet. I can’t see them improving greatly until the carbon tax and MRRT are in place and we all see that Abbott has been talking horsesh*t.  But that is no comfort for any ALP member – especially if the polls stay at this 45-55 level then by the time the tax comes in it may just be too late to change – the electorate will be set. The Govt needs to get back to at least within shouting distance, or by this time next year (ie after the carbon tax legislation has gone through, the ALP might think anyway that it is time to make changes – because yes, they are that silly)

They could start by doing better at Question Time (and press conferences) and heeding some advice from The Oz’s excellent blogger, Jack the Insider who quite rightly points out they should stop talking about Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party. When getting questions from Abbott and the Libs on carbon tax etc, sure throw his own quotes back in his face, but how about using Dorothy Dixers to trumpet your own policies?

Aside from the Malaysian asylum-seeker policy (which is still in flux and I am somewhat content to see what the UNHCR says about it when it finally gets signed) this Govt has a fair bit to talk up – especially on the economy. It is not like the NSW ALP which was just a shemozzle of dodgy approvals and idiotic decisions on electricity generation and infrastructure.

Personally I think the Govt should ignore the opposition and so far from “stifling” the left winger Doug Cameron, he should become the ALP’s Barnaby Joyce. Back under Howard, Joyce was in effect the opposition within Government. He was there offering a supposed alternative and threatening to cross the floor (always to not do so when it really mattered). Senator Cameron would fill that role perfectly. He could be there arguing for gay marriage, talking up asylum seekers and any other lefty issues. Will he ever win any of these fights? Probably not, but much better for the ALP to be seen to be having a discussion.

Sure The Oz will run with dopey headlines like:

PM struggles with backbench dissent

But if properly managed such “dissent” can be a winner for the party. Cameron already is being described as “outspoken”, he has a quirky sort of persona – given his heavy Scottish brogue . So give him a bit of a head – let him say his bit on certain issues. The Govt should not worry about what The Oz writes about it – let Dooog get a national profile that has people in the suburbs thinking at least the ALP is interested in the social issues people assume the ALP should care about.

For all the laughs Barnaby brings when he talks about economics, there are people in the electorate who like what he has to say and like that he is in the coalition saying what he says. The ALP could do with an official “rogue Senator”.

Make people at least feel like there are those in the ALP  who are fighting for issues that make it seem to have a social heart.

Don’t stifle the dissent – use it.

***

The Governor of the RBA Glenn Stevens gave a speech. As ever his words were analysed like there are the economic Talmud. It didn't change the market’s expectations of a rate rise next month, but it did contain some interesting titbits:

… macroeconomic policies must be configured in the expectation that there will need to be some degree of restraint. Monetary policy has already been exerting some restraint for a while. Looking ahead, our most recent analysis (as published in early May) concluded that the underlying rate of inflation is more likely to rise than fall over the next couple of years. This central expectation – subject to all the usual uncertainties inherent in forecasting – suggests, as we said at the time, that ‘further tightening of monetary policy is likely to be required at some point for inflation to remain consistent with the 2–3 per cent medium-term target’.

This isn’t much different from what has been said in the last few statements after decisions made on the cash rate. But then he had a very quick look at fiscal policy (ie the budget).

Fiscal policy is also playing a significant role. The ‘fiscal impact’, calculated as the shift in the Federal budget position from one year to the next, is forecast to be minus 2 per cent of GDP in the 2011/12 fiscal year. A further, though slightly smaller, effect is forecast by the Treasury in the following year.

That is all those wanting to argue the Budget is putting pressure on inflation need to look elsewhere.

As I say – the Government has a good story to tell on the economy: it needs to keep telling it and forget about Abbott while they’re doing it. He doesn’t have any policies anyway, so just ignore him until he does.

Let’s face it – they’re at 45-55; there isn’t much point keeping with the strategy they have now.

On the QT: One sentence is not a report

The parliamentary nonsense started this morning with the latest Newspoll coming out in The Oz showing that the the ALP’s 2PP vote had increased 2 points and narrowed the LNP’s lead from 46-54 to 48-52.

Naturally this was reported as “Coalition’s Election Winning Lead Survives Internal Squabbling” and had Dennis Shanahan writing that “ALP Fails to profit from Lib ructions”. You can see this poll prominently there on the front page of The Oz… well if by “prominently” we mean squeezed into one lousy column over on the right. 

Apparently Hockey and Turnbull having a bit of fit in one week was, according to Shanahan, meant to destroy his leadership and put the ALP back in front. Yeah right.

But hey, when you need to make up a story that has Abbott looking, it is always best to start with a strawman.

On the personal ratings, the poll confirmed what everyone knows – no one likes either Abbott or Gillard.

The poll – like all polls – of course is flawed due to the premise of asking who would people vote for were an election held on the weekend, and we can pretty much bank on there not being an election till late 2013. The ALP will hope that is long enough to get enough people to change their minds; the LNP hope it is not so long that people will start to use them.

The poll was pretty well ignored because of two things that, unlike polls, dealt with real things that matter.

Firstly the announcement of the deaths overnight of two soldiers in Afghanistan. Such events always immediately serves to make politics so putridly stupid – especially when the politics seems not to include discussion of this real thing that matters.

The graph on the left shows the deaths in Afghanistan of coalition military servicemen and women.

The trend ain’t good.

Is it going to get better? Is it worth sticking out? I suspect there are a few on both sides of the political aisle who are having private reservations but both the ALP and LNP are trapped in a “can’t debate it” mode, for fear of looking like they are advocating “cut and run” or God forbid, suggesting that any of the 26 Australian servicemen will have died in vain.

When a death occurs, both sides adopt the appropriate tone, and we certainly mourn the loss and feel for their families. But we seem to dismiss debate. I have always been behind the Afghanistan War. It was a just war, and had Bush and Co not decided to go wandering off to Iraq in March 2003 there actually was a chance of success (just look at the casualties back then). But now?

How will we really know we have achieved success? Better still, how will we know we have failed?

Surely the lives of the men fighting and dying for their country deserve us having a bit a of a proper discussion about it. I doubt we’ll get one any time soon.

The other big discussion was that via Ross Garnaut, who announced his final review. It came in at 244 pages, and his summary a nice brisk 48 pages. So you’d figure that with all that meat the debate in Parliament would be pretty solid.

Well you would if you had never watched Question Time before.

Tony Abbott opened proceedings with a quote from Page 17 of the summary:

Australian households will ultimately bear the full cost of a carbon price.

He (and Hockey and Bishop after him) thought this belled the cat and also had shown Gillard and Swan (and I guess Combet) to be liars for saying that the carbon tax will be paid by the top 1000 polluters.

Sigh.

Yep, this is where we are.

Firstly no one since this debate has started has suggested the cost of putting a price on carbon won’t be passed on to consumers. Here is Julia Gillard back on 1 March in Parliament:

Ms GILLARD —… We will put a price on carbon, a price on every unit of carbon pollution. It will be paid for by businesses and as a result, because our business community is smart and adaptable and innovative, they will work out ways of pursuing their business and generating less carbon pollution. They will work out ways of making sure they pay less of a price when carbon is priced. Then they will enter into contracts, they will make investments on the basis of understanding the rules and understanding that carbon will be priced. And as they go about making those transitions, innovating, making the new investments of the future, we will work with those businesses in transition to a clean economy.

Having priced carbon and seen that innovation, yes, there will be pricing impacts; that is absolutely right. That is the whole point: to make goods that are generated with more carbon pollution relatively more expensive than goods that are generated with less carbon pollution. But because we are a Labor government this will be done in a fair way. We will assist households as we transition with this new carbon price.

Or then there was this on 21 March:

Ms GILLARD —Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. As I was indicating, the division here is whether you want to put a price on polluters and give assistance to households or whether you want to take money off households and give assistance to polluters. We will put a price on pollution. That price will be paid by polluters. We will generously assist households for the price impacts that they will experience. I have been very upfront about that.

One of the best things in my opinion in this debate has been that Gillard has not been afraid to state that a carbon tax will make prices go up. For Abbott, and other Liberal shills to suggest Garnaut’s report says something new, or something opposite to what Gillard or Swan or Combet have been saying, requires indulging in the most absurd levels of self-delusion.

The reason of course Abbott is making this argument is because he wants people to think a carbon tax is like a GST – in that 10% gets added on at the checkout – or even worse, like income tax, and so each fortnight people will see a deduction from their pay. It is not in Abbott’s interest to deal with facts. Facts are awful for Abbott – expect him to continue to steer well away from them.

The next bit of “gold” for Abbott was Page 77 (this time in the full review) where Garnaut writes this:

In the long run, households will pay almost the entire carbon price as businesses pass carbon costs through to the users of their products.

Again we should file this under “No sh*t Sherlock, see above”. But no, he thought he had nailed Gillard with this.

Gillard responded by saying Abbott was:

… misrepresenting the force of Garnaut’s words. You can’t rely on one sentence and ignore the force of others…  Instead of looking at the occasional words reads the whole lot.

Well let us not read the whole lot, let’s just look at some words from the very same page Abbott was citing:

Using direct action measures to achieve a similar amount of emissions reduction would raise costs much more than carbon pricing, but would not raise the revenue to offset or reduce the costs in any of these ways. The costs might be covered by budgetary expenditure, but this affects who pays the costs, not whether the costs are there. Other people’s taxes have to rise to pay for expenditures under direct action.

Oddly Abbott didn’t quote that part. Or how about:

In addition, unlike regulatory or direct action measures, a market-based mechanism can collect revenue in a way that is more efficient than some existing taxes, for use in raising productivity, promoting equity, encouraging innovation in low-emissions technology, providing incentives for sequestration in rural Australia, and easing the transition for trade-exposed industries.

Hmm, nope – guess Tony must has skipped over that paragraph. Oh heck, let’s be bold and even read on a few more pages further (page 79):

A carbon price has some short-term negative effects on productivity growth and incomes—although less than direct action that secures similar reductions in emissions.

The summary is not Abbott’s friend either:

We would be damaged in other ways, too, if we sought to do our fair share through direct action. We would rely on the ideas of a small number of politicians and their advisers and confidants. While some of these ideas might be brilliant, in sum they would not be as creative or productive as millions of Australian minds responding to the incentives provided by carbon pricing and a competitive marketplace.

That would not be the end of the costs.

The really big cost would be the entrenchment of the old political culture that has again asserted itself after the late 20th century period of reform. The big rewards in low-emissions investments would go to those who had persuaded the minister or the bureaucrat that their idea was worthy of inclusion in the direct action plan—if not under the government that introduced the direct action policies, then under the governments that followed. That would entrench the return of the influence of the old Australian political culture in other areas of economic policy.

As a public servant it warms my heart that Abbott has so much faith in our ability to pick the winners – though oddly, Abbott doesn't seem so desirous to brag about how and who will be deciding who gets the money under his direct action plan. Curious don’t you think?

And that was Question Time. There was an odd question from Bob Katter of live exports of meat, which to be honest I couldn't quite grasp if he was in favour or against a ban on live exports (though I believe he is not – purely because we shouldn’t foist our Christian non-torturing of animals beliefs on those of starving Indonesians who take delight in being as cruel as all Hell to cattle).

There was also Nicola Roxon having fun with Abbott’s back down on plain packaging on cigarettes.

But the big event (and by big I mean of zero interest to anyone with a life) was when Speaker Harry Jenkins named Bob Baldwin. This resulted in a vote to have him kicked out for 24 hours, which the Government lost – in effect meaning the House did not have confidence in the Speaker. The vote was lost because Tony Windsor and Bob Katter were not present and Rob Oakeshott voted with the Opposition (for reasons, not completely infused with logic).

Now you would think winning such a vote would have the Libs in raptures, but the mini-conference being had by Abbott, Pyne, Bishop, Hockey  and a couple others during the vote showed that they were rather worried about what it all meant. What it did mean is that Jenkins announced that he would consider resigning. This would require, under Standing Orders, there to be an election for the Speaker:

19 Vacancy in office of Speaker

(a) If the office of Speaker falls vacant during a session the Clerk must report the vacancy to the House at its next sitting. The House shall proceed to the election of a new Speaker either immediately or at its next sitting, using the procedure set out in

standing order 11.

So the job would not automatically go to the Deputy Speaker, Liberal Peter Slipper. BUT it would have been highly likely that the ALP would have nominated Slipper. This would have meant (had Slipper won) the ALP would need 1 less votes to pass legislation (through their gaining Jenkins vote).

Clearly this was not the election Abbott wants to have. The way he jumped to his feet as soon as the vote count was called betrayed his clear concern that Jenkins would resign. This was no mere politeness and courtesy on Abbott’s behalf – his body language and demeanour betrayed his worry. Rather than be triumphant at winning the vote, his face reminded me of the class clown who has just realised that the teacher can in fact keep everyone in the class in during lunch if they all do something wrong. Bluff seemed to have been called.

But the events did not reflect well on anyone. The Govt did poorly to lose the vote – where the hell were Windsor and Katter (OK Katter often buggers off as soon as he asks a question). What was Oakeshott thinking? Did he grasp the possible impact of his vote? And Abbott has also let the Govt know that he really does not want to push the Parliament to the point where Jenkins has to resign. If and when Jenkins does again name someone, I seriously doubt if any motions of full confidence will stop him from resigning if the Govt loses the vote.

One of the things about Brinkmanship is that when you pull back, everyone knows just how far you are prepared to go.

Poll them up, poll them down, poll them round and round

As we leave Budget week behind us for another year, two polls – by Newspoll and Nielsen - came out to see if there was any budget bounce. Actually there is no such thing as a budget bounce, and probably the only person left around who believes in it is Peter Costello who is still waiting for the bounce from the 2007 Budget to arrive.

The polls – regardless of whether or not there was a budget – were pretty dire for the ALP. Newspoll had the ALP at 46 to the LNP 54, the Nielsen was worse – 44-56.

The big news was though the disapproval ratings of the PM – in Newspoll her approval rating went up 6 points and her disapproval rating went down 4 – giving her a net satisfaction rating of minus 21! Abbott meanwhile was sitting on a relatively fun net satisfaction rating of minus 13.

Geez people hate the leaders at the moment.

The budget was also given a run by Newspoll, and not surprisingly it didn't go down well. The ALP rather intriguingly thought the best way to deal with Budget week was to start it by talking about asylum seekers (never the ALPs biggest seller) and to end it by talking about Tony Abbott. In between we had the idiocy from the media of $150,000 non-rich people whining about it not being fair they don’t get welfare, and Gerry Harvey saying he could install set-top boxes for less than the Govt says it will cost – although I’ve yet to hear if Harvey has responded to Stephen Conroy’s call for Harvey to put in a tender if he thinks he can do it for less.

On the issue of set-top boxes, Tony Abbott is taking the rather interesting approach of criticising it at every opportunity but not saying whether or not he will vote against the measure. Take this on AM this morning:

TONY ABBOTT: Well, the trouble with the budget is that it was tough on families but it wasn't tough on waste and that is the problem. I mean, this is a government which never seems to learn. I mean the set top box issue, I mean why should the Government be paying $350 to do something which the private sector will do for $168? Why should the Government be sending people into pensioners' homes to do a bad job at a high price?

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Well on that issue will you oppose that measure?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, again what I've said Alex on all of the various budget items is that our position will be clear when they come into the Parliament but we are not going to run a, you know, will you do this and will and will you do that just to suit the convenience of the Labor Party.

Huh? He cites it as a prime example of waste, and yet won’t say if he will block it? Talk about boldness of leadership! 

Perhaps his lack of clarity on this issue is because he realises that his argument that the private sector doing something more efficiently than a Government tender is the exact opposite of his reasoning for why he is against an ETS and is in favour of “direct action”….

So given all that it’s not surprising that the Budget did not perform well – only 37 per cent in Newspoll said they thought it was good for the economy, compared to 32 per cent who thought it would be bad (not a terrible result, but not great historically). The thing with such polls however is while it might be nice to say it’s all the fault of Gerry Harvey, or Wayne Swan’s poor salesmanship, a look at the same question on budgets going back to 2006 shows that people’s thoughts on whether or not a budget is good for the economy is very strongly linked to whether or not they think it was good for themselves personally.

The correlation between the two is pretty strong.

If we look at the opposite view – ie whether the economy has been bad for you personally and bad for the economy we see much the same thing:

They are pretty well lock step together except for 2008 where people thought the budget was not as bad for the economy as it was bad for themselves (32% to 23%) and again this year where 41% thought it bad for themselves, but only 32% thought it bad for the economy.

And so we really shouldn’t get too caught up in one-off polls – people not surprisingly have a tendency to see themselves as the centre of the economy, and fair enough –  you’d have to be pretty bloody altruistic, for example, to think losing your own job is good for the economy – though you may be more inclined to think that getting money is bad for the economy (but you’ll take it anyway).

But, yes, the polls were bad for Julia Gillard – killing-zone bad in fact, were it not for the fact that there is not going to be a change of leadership because any change of leadership would mean the end of the minority Government and a slaughtering at the polls. The ALP know the polls are bad, Laura Tingle in her column on Friday wrote:

…. the two important things to know about Julia Gillard's government this week are that it has boxed clever enough in framing a budget to offer no obvious grounds for a parliamentary defeat, and that everyone from MPs to senior cabinet ministers are working on the pragmatic assumption that they will lose the next election, whenever it is called.

So the polls are bad, but because of the minority Government, polls are actually less relevant than they have been for a very long time – at least since Rudd took over from Beazley. Sure backbenchers will be nervous (though show me any Government backbencher in any Government who isn’t nervous and I’ll show you one without a pulse), but life goes on – and that means at least two more budgets yet before the next election, and lots of policy – Carbon Tax and Mining Tax among them – to go.

Gillard is trying to run this line in her speech today at the Australian Agenda UBS Lunch in Sydney, she ended on this note:

As we move into the conversation stage of today, I do want to conclude by reinforcing the need to reform conversations. As Prime Minister, I lead a Government committed to reform and we, day after day, work as consultatively as we can to put together those reforms. Ultimately we will lead, and we have done, by the budget, having collected views across the business community and beyond as to how the budget should be shaped.

But reform leadership requires not just the Government to be out there as a proponent of the reform conversation. It requires all elements of our community to be in the reform conversation. We are a nation, I believe, with not a day to waste, not a day to waste in some of the more frivolous conversations that beset our national life. We need to make sure we are having a deep reform conversation about the changes our nation needs now, as we move into this history-making period of economic growth.

So, my challenge to you, to the nation more generally, is to be in that reform conversation. There are inevitably many issues that are intriguing in the moment, but we’ve got to look beyond those issues that are intriguing in the moment and work through those things that are truly momentous together.

Hmm “look beyond those issues which are intriguing at the moment”? Good luck with that – especially on a day that Newspoll and Nielsen came out.

In his Quarterly Essay, George Megalogenis wrote of the polls:

“Newspaper opinion polls – Newspoll, ACNielsen, Galaxy – have becomes the cheapest form of content for a political reporter.
…

The Australian no longer just publishes a report of the fortnightly poll and an accompanying analysis. The results are cross-referenced  in all sorts of stories. Every other media organisation covers Newspoll as well…
…
We have poll driven columnists tut-tutting at poll-driven politicians. Polls create a false sense of precision in what is an imperfect science

So was he on the money?

Well this morning Julia Gillard gave a doorstop press conference where she talked about the $3 billion skills package that was announced in the Budget – it was a key plank of the Budget, and central to Gillard’s outlook on economic policy. Let’s check in and see what questions were asked:

PM: I’m very happy to take any questions.

There’s her first mistake

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, have you been satisfied with the way the Government is selling the Budget?

OK. Not sure what the journalist expects her to say – maybe she thinks Gillard will say “No, Swan has been lousy”. Wasted question there.

JOURNALIST: But do you think that message has penetrated? I mean, is it getting a fair go, in terms of reception?

The reception? You mean the media coverage of it – unless you think most people receive the budget by actually watching it?

JOURNALIST: Are you frustrated with the Government seemingly just can’t take a trick in terms various initiatives, like the Budget, like the Malaysian (inaudible)? Are you getting frustrated with the reception of all these?

So you want the PM to talk about the media coverage? Look at moi! Please tell us off!

JOURNALIST: And yet day after day they’re seemingly being rejected. At least, that’s how the headlines would have it, and that’s how today’s poll results would have it as well.

Ah the headlines. Ah the polls. More “talk about we the media.” I would criticise this question, except, well as you can see it is not actually a question. So I think we should just take it as a statement.

JOURNALIST: Based on that poll result, though, can you claw this back in terms of your own popularity as Prime Minister? (inaudible) past the point of no return?

The poll! Please PM, talk about the poll – we the media pay a lot of money for those polls, we need to drag out the story as long as we can. We need your answers to focus on the polls so we can say you are focussed on the polls.

JOURNALIST: What does this say about your personal approval rating dropping today? Is that a reflection on the work you’ve done on the Budget?

I’m not sure if you heard – there was a poll out today. Buy the way, you know how many people in the real world it affected? Yep. That’d be zero. $3 billion in training, however, that might affect real people – or it might not. It would be nice if a journalist tried to pry open the policy and see what lies within. It may be awful, it may be great. Patricia Karvelas for The Oz is writing a lot about Work for the dole, why not read her article and come up with some questions?. The Budget was announced almost week ago so you think they’d have a few questions on it… 

JOURNALIST: (inaudible)

Question of the day

JOURNALIST: Do you think you need to change tack in how you communicate that to the people, and to stop them, you know, the Coalition, gaining momentum in the polls?

Remember this key fact if you want to get ahead in political journalism – polls are the important thing in life – they put bread on the table (well on the table of media organisations at any rate).

JOURNALIST: Well, aren’t the polls a representation that you’re not getting the job done, if you’re losing favour with them?

The polls are life. All around their margins is the gulf.

Let’s remind ourselves of something else Megalogenis wrote: “Newspoll has created a self-fulfilling cycle of anticipation, interpretation, rejection and impatience for the next instalment”. Now sure, politicians seem to live poll to poll, but don’t for a moment think journalists just follow like sheep – we see here the lazy desire of journalists to just ask about polls so they can then write about polls.

JOURNALIST: (inaudible) a number of Labor backbenchers who are feeling uneasy about how Labor is faring in the polls. Are you feeling under threat?

Ahh the backbenchers – guess this question explains this story. The backbenchers of course are all off the record. I guess it is only in the national interest to know just that there are worried backbenchers, and not to know which ones are undermining Gillard by talking out of school with journos?

JOURNALIST: Why do you think people are so unhappy with things as they are at the moment? (inaudible) good things about the Budget?

The frustration for these poor hacks must be rising here – there have been 10 questions about how the Government is travelling in the polls and she refuses to be obsessed about the polls. Time to change tack.

JOURNALIST: Two significant wage claims are being decided upon today. What does that mean for the costs of government and business if they do go that way?

Hurrah! Finally we get to a question on an issue affecting real people.

Fair Work Australia were to hand down a decision in which about 200,000 community and disability workers employed by the non-government sector are asking for a 25 per cent pay increase (yeah non-Govt community and disabled workers – not exactly a group synonymous with well to do. In fact doing it bloody tough would be most people's thought’s I’d wager).

The big issue they were arguing was that because the workforce was 87 per cent women they were being paid less because they were women.

Fair Work Australia found that they were right:

SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Fair Work Australia has found that the work of about 200,000 people like Jaina Devlin is undervalued. Eight-seven per cent of them are women. And the tribunal found that their gender is largely the reason they've been underpaid.
The question now is how much of a pay rise will fix the undervaluation.

It was good that one journalist thought it worth asking about.

JOURNALIST: Do you think there’ll be uncertainty surrounding Australia’s borders and your move with Malaysia may be having an effect on how people are feeling at the moment?

OK, asking about the Malaysian asylum seeker deal good – but for God’s sake not how people feel about it. How about ask her about the Malaysian asylum seeker deal, because geez if you can’t think of a question that may have the PM jumping around uneasily on that, you might as well give up being a journalist right now. Like – how for example will she be able to guarantee that the asylum seekers sent to Malaysia won’t be abused? Sure the UNHCR is involved, but what will the Government do to ensure the Malaysian Govt isn’t just treating them with lip service?

No? I guess time to move on to the big issue of the day

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, yesterday a Brisbane man died in a new craze called planking. What’s your message to people who are thinking of taking part in these kind of planks?

Seriously?

OK, here is how the PM answered this:

PM: Well, I guess there’s a difference between a harmless bit of fun done somewhere that’s done really safe and taking a risk with your life. This is a really tragic thing - there’d be a family that’s just devastated today – a really tragic thing. So, my message would be everybody likes a bit of fun, but focus has to be on keeping yourself safe first.

She gave a brief response – didn't overegg it. Acknowledged that a family is grieving and said a fairly standard message about playing safe.

Here’s how it got reported:

Julia Gillard joins warnings against the craze of 'planking'

Oz PM Calls For End To Planking After Death

Planking death prompts Australian prime minister's call for safety

PM appeals against dangerous planking craze

And two of those were from UK news websites!

Ah well enough of this, let’s get down to why we’re all here:

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister (inaudible) reports over the weekend, may you be attending your own wedding (inaudible)

Sigh.

The Taxing Times Have Yet to Begin

Today a Newspoll was released in The Oz that shows (we are told) that the public has abandoned Julia Gillard’s carbon pricing plan:

VOTERS are overwhelmingly against Julia Gillard's carbon tax after a sharp fall in support in the past two months among the young, families, women and even Labor supporters.

As Tony Abbott continues to campaign against the tax, the latest Newspoll survey reveals 60 per cent of voters are opposed to the government's plan to put a price on carbon next year and only 30 per cent remain in favour.

Since the election last year, opposition to a carbon price has been rising and jumped after the Prime Minister announced in late February that she planned to introduce a carbon tax from July 1 next year ahead of a full emissions trading scheme in three to five years.

Feel the joy from Shanahan…

There were a couple things that were interesting about the poll. The first of them is you should bypass Denis Shanahan, and go to a guy at The Oz who actually knows something about polling – Mumble. He notes that the poll questions are slightly different – and also that Newspoll has slightly changed its accounting procedures since the last time the questions were asked.

The poll is not completely horrible for the Government (talk about faint joy!). When Mumble compares the views of voters on the causes of climate change since last year:

He found that 78 precent still believe it is occurring (much the same as December last year), and up a bit from February last year, though down from the climate-change wonder years (pre-Copenhagen) July 2008.

But all in all that’s a good base to work from. This is also the case when you look at the figures when asked whether or not people would be prepared to pay more to help slow global warming.

Mumble has compared like for like by removing those who don’t believe in climate change. As you can see support is slightly down, but is still there.

But the big figure – the one that got trumpeted in the front page was this:

Yep – only 30 per cent of voters were in favour of the carbon tax proposal.

But the real point of the poll is not the result – but the question:

Question: Based on what you may know about it, are you personally in favour or against the federal government’s current proposal to put a price on carbon?

Now ask yourself this – what do you know about the Govt’s current proposal to put a price on carbon? Well not much really. We know they will put a price on, but we don’t know how much, we know they’ll compensate the public and companies but we don’t know how much or who or when or for how long.

In fact we know bugger all. So it is little wonder 60 per cent are not in favour of it. Why would you expect voters to be in favour of something that they know will raise the prices of things but don’t know much more?

It all comes down to the Government's strategy. Last year they brought out the Resources Super Profit Tax (still the worst name in the history of bad Government names). They stated everything – gave out Treasury briefings and details and what not and whosits and yada yada. And businesses cried foul and said they hadn’t been consulted and that it would kill them and capital strike and sovereign risk and my Dad says it’s not fair you big meanies.

And the Government responded by saying – oh did we say this was our final offer, no we meant let’s negotiate and umm yeah all those bright shiny figures we produced for you to use in advert campaigns they’re just our first offer.

And so it all turned to poo.

Yesterday the PM was asked what is the closest we can actually get to a policy question on the carbon tax at this stage:

JOURNALIST: PM: I just wanted to go back, you said something about the carbon tax before. Anna Bligh today has said she doesn't back a carbon tax yet, either. When you’ve got people like Anna Bligh, and last week or the week before Paul Howes, good Labor people, saying they're now feeling nervous about this tax, and we need more detail, I mean, isn't it incumbent upon your Government to actually release more details sooner rather than later about the impacts of the carbon tax, the rate, the compensation that will be available? I mean, is that something on the cards?

The decision to do the Carbon Tax this way and not the RSPT way is a political decision (in a beautiful world you could do it the RSPT way and everyone – the Government, the media, the opposition and business would logically and calmly discuss the policy – but that’s a dream world that never was. So the PM needs to defend her political strategy:

PM: Well, the important thing here is to consult and get the details right, and certainly I understand that many Australians will judge their final view about carbon pricing when they can see all of the details. That's very, very understandable.

What is also very understandable is as a Government we wanted to take a highly consultative approach, to canvass views about the best way of getting this right.

Now, I invite you to consider the reaction to the alternative. If we had walked out and said, ‘Here is the full details of carbon pricing. We've created this in a black box. We haven't talked to anybody. Here it is, it’s immutable, it’s written in stone’, then the business community, trade unions, indeed, State governments, would have said ‘How do we get a voice in this process? How do we get heard?’.

Well, we've taken a different approach. We’ve announced the way in which carbon pricing will work as a mechanism, and then we are intensively consulting - allowing business to have a voice, allowing trade unions to have a voice, allowing State governments to have a voice in the design of carbon pricing. That's the right thing to do.

The details will be announced when they're ready. I know - call me old-fashioned, but I think what Government should do is not march to the beat of the political cycle, but march to the beat of the policy cycle and get policy right.

Aside from the irony of a PM who knocked off Rudd in his first term talking about not marching to the beat of the political cycle, her answer is fair enough. She makes a logical case – but will it work?

It appears from what she and Greg Combet said today that the details will be released in a few months.

That is when the real selling begins. This is all the phony war period. Abbott is laying excellent ground work because he doesn’t have to worry about facts or figures (always a good thing for Tony). He can say pretty much whatever he wants, and if Gillard or Combet or Swan try to say that it won’t happen – even if we are talking the most ludicrous claims such as Whyalla being wiped off the map – they are asked to supply proof, and they can’t (you know, aside from basic logic).

But when the details come out, then the Government will have some ammunition. But here’s the thing – they will also be giving ammunition to Abbott. There will be people worse off. People will lose their jobs. If the ALP does not grasp this, then they will be dead the minute they release the tax. It won’t be enough to say that when it comes in that all will be OK. Yes it will surely be nowhere near as bad as Abbott and the miners and steel companies say it will be, but that doesn't mean it will be wonderful for everyone.

The Government needs to be ready to defend its policy. And I mean defend it. Not spin it. No weasel words, no hey look over there at the tax cut and ignore the tax hike. I mean defend it. I mean go on TV night after night if they have to and get ready to be put under the grill. The lobbyists will be supplying the media with lots of “research”, so don’t worry about them not having any policy questions to ask. Gillard and Combet and Swan and Wong and Ferguson will need to be advocates for this as though they were defending themselves against the death penalty (which politically they will be).

They need to know the policy, and what is more they need to be able to convey to the voters a strong level of belief that they know what they are doing and that it is good for the country.

Sounds easy, eh.

Luckily they have an economic ignoramus in opposition – so that is where they should start – get the argument on an economic and environmental footing rather than strictly political. While it is political (and lacking details) you get Abbott saying stuff like this yesterday:

An Australia that can't make buses would no longer be a first world economy and yet that is the kind of prospect that we face if the carbon tax goes ahead.

I guess I skipped the chapter of Adam Smith’s A Wealth of Nations that pointed out the crucial thing for an economy is making buses. 

Today as well in his big pre-budget speech to the Victorian Chamber of Commerce, he was dolling out the economic idiocy (though this time echoing that by AWU leader, Paul Howes):

What Australia needs now is a steady, orthodox government which doesn’t over-promise, which treats respectfully the people its decisions will affect, which builds incrementally on our country’s strengths and which understands that its first duty is to do no harm.

and later:

The government should be able to give the guarantee sought by the Australian Workers’ Union that the carbon tax must not cost a single job

Do no harm? Guarantee no single job lost? Sorry, but economics is not medicine. If we had that attitude in the 1980s we would still have high tariffs and and second rate backwards economy. The measures done by Hawke and Keating were not painless – they sure as hell did hurt people. But they were for the good of the nation (the Liberal Party back then recognized this). Adopting the economic attitude of “first do no harm” is a way of saying – do nothing.

Later in his own speech he contradicts himself when he says:

The forecast return to surplus is not the result of tough-minded cuts to government spending like those implemented by Peter Walsh in the late 1980s or Peter Costello in the late 1990s. It’s not the result of tough-minded economic reforms like those of the Hawke or Howard governments.

Think no one was first hurt by those cuts? Think no job lost was guaranteed?

Sigh. Yeah there is a sideshow, as Tanner has written, but there also needs to be a Government that can cut through the crud through the force of its argument.

The polls at the moment are not good for the Government on the carbon tax. But the fight is still there to be won.

***

Episode Number 1,743 in the Series of “Shite Questions asked by Journalists at press conferences”.

Julia Gillard gave a press conference today. The topics ranged across the spectrum, and they went to Osama bin Laden’s death. Then this one was let rip:

JOURNALIST: Has there been any suggestion that the operation on the weekend was delayed until after the royal wedding?

Now first of all. What the hell?? The US Govt has been waiting until the right moment to be ready to take out bin Laden (or “capture” if you want), and you seriously think they’d give a damn about the Royals? I think operational aspects like the weather and moonlight might have been a bit more important to the timing of the mission than what the 2nd in line to the monarchy of another country was doing.

Now talk of them delaying their honeymoon due to the bin Laden mission is much more believable – though I seriously, seriously, seriously doubt the US would have given the UK Govt (much less the Royals) any more detail than “major security/ terrorist risk” – unless you think after all the news about the Royals’ phones being bugged etc that the CIA would trust them with the biggest secret they have (well this side of the moon landing being fake). And in any event that is the US telling the Royals to do something, not the US doing something because of the Royals.

And secondly, what did this journalist think Gillard would answer? Did s/he (not sure which) think Gillard was going to say “yes”?

Who asked it? No idea, I just hope it wasn’t the same person who asked this question of Tony Abbott yesterday:

QUESTION: Mr Abbott, a more personal question. The town where Osama was shot is named after a Major James Abbott. Any relation?

Well there’s that journalist’s Walkley entry right there….

Sigh.

Inflating fashion; deflating toughness

So the big news today was obviously that fashion doyen Gai Waterhouse had criticised Julia Gillard for looking drab while touring the Japanese towns that had been utterly destroyed by the tsunami.

And I have to say, Gai is on the money. How dare the PM of this country not turn up at a scene of devastation without a beaut looking fascinator and a frock that would pass muster in the mounting yard on Cup day?

I do have to take issue with Ms Waterhouse though. When she decided to begin making comments outside of her usual orbit of horse racing, someone should have taken her aside and told her that criticising the fashion sense and general deportment of Julia Gillard is Niki Savva’s job, and she is more than capable of doing it without help from some upstart Sydney racing identity. 

Tony Abbott of course would never demean himself by making light of a woman’s looks – I mean the guy is the Opposition leader, and father of three daughters. So I guess we’ll just put it down to a “Gai moment” when in a pub on Christmas Island he

“… drank shots with fly-in, fly-out workers, played pool with the navy and got a loud cheer when he told a blonde perched at the bar that she was "better looking than Julia".

Yep, that is our alternate PM. 

Geez. This is politics, 2011.

***

Actually the big news of the day was the release of the inflation figures which showed a bigger than expected increase in the last quarter CPI of 1.6 per cent (for an annual CPI of 3.3 per cent).

The reason? Well the cyclones and floods are the main ones. Food went up by 2.9 per cent (mostly due to fruit and vegetables – bananas increased 100 per cent and cauliflowers, broccoli, lettuce, pumpkin and potatoes also went up – though who cares about broccoli is beyond me…). Petrol went up by 8.8 per cent and pharmaceuticals increased by a whopping 12.5 per cent.

All in all a nice perfect storm of big hits.

The RBA does not worry too greatly about the headline figure, and instead looks at the “weighted mean” which came in at a bit nicer level of 0.8 per cent (a rise from the last quarter of 0.5 per cent). Oddly the annual weighted mean did not increase – it stayed flat at 2.2 per cent (because the quarter it replaced this time last year was also 0.8 per cent). So while that might look ok, the problem is in the intervening quarters the weighted mean was 0.5 per cent – which means unless the inflation rate falls to those levels the annual rate will keep going up.

And if that happens, so to, one may suppose, will interest rates.

Now before we get too panicky we should have a look at inflation and interest rates over the past decade:

As you can see we are bumping along quite nicely, and the recent interest rate rises seem to have had an impact – unlike the situation from February 2006 to August 2008 where interest rates and inflation both went up – not a nice place to be.

If we look at the old Misery Index of Unemployment + Inflation, we see things aren’t as low as they were at the tail end of the Howard years in September 07  – when unemployment was at 4.2 per cent and inflation at 2.6 per cent, but we’re still doing pretty well:

But the bond market has already factored in an interest rate rise for the end of the year (and of course the bond market is never ever wrong).

What the inflation rise does give Swan is another reason for delivering a “tough budget” – all in the name of reducing inflationary pressures. This is of course true, however inflationary pressures come not only from Government deficits – they can come from Governments who fall in love with budgets in surplus but who fail to address infrastructure and skills shortages (both of which require expenditure – just remember, not all Government expenditure is inflationary).

***

The other big news – which flowed over from yesterday – was that of asylum seekers. Remember those halcyon days back in February when Scott Morrison was being castigated for attacking Muslims and Chris Bowen was even being asked by the media to show more compassion? Oh what a bright shiny balloon of humanity that was.

Yeah forget that. That balloon has well and truly been pricked.

A sad orphan boy is one thing, but three blokes burning down buildings in Villawood Detention Centre and sitting on a roof?

Interview with Steve Price, MTR

Steve Price: The minister's on the line. Thanks for your time.

Chris Bowen: Pleasure Steve, good morning.

Price: Morning. Are there still protestors on the roof at Villawood?

Interview with James Carleton, ABC Radio National

James Carleton: Chris Bowen is the Minister for Immigration and he is with us now on Radio National Breakfast. Good morning minister.

Chris Bowen: Good morning James, nice to talk to you.

Carleton: First to Villawood. An update on the roof-top protestors please.

Sigh. And let me tell you they aren’t interested in compassion:

Price: I think the Australian people would like the minister – you – or the government that you work for, to get tougher. I think we're sick and tired – as you said at the beginning of this interview, minister – this is not the Australian way of doing things. We wouldn't put up with this if it were prisoners at Goulburn jail or at, in any other prison around the country.

Ah yes, let’s just put aside the fact that the three men are not actually in Goulbourn jail for crimes, and in fact are not “prisoners”, but hey, I guess  Steve Price speaks for the Australian people, so who am I to point out facts…

In response to the protestors in Villawood and Christmas Island, Bowen has decided to increase the penalties for “manufacture, possession, use or distribution of weapons by immigration detainees will increase from three to five years' imprisonment.”

Is this a thing that will be applauded by the right wing shock jocks?

Interview with Nick McCallum and Justin Smith, 3AW Breakfast

Smith: I think – look, I think – that's fine, don't misjudge me, I'm not saying that you don't need it, but I'm picking up on Nick's point here, is that it's window-dressing. If you're just increasing it to five years, when is the last – I think it's an important question, when's the last time a person had a weapon, used a weapon, tried to sell a weapon in detention and received a three year penalty. What's the bloody point of putting it up to five years if we've never – nobody's ever been done for three years?

Bowen: Look, I agree with you that you do need to prosecute, and of course prosecutions under our system are handled separately from the government. The Director of Public Prosecutions handles that. But what government's do is send the signal to the courts and to people thinking of committing crimes is to how seriously we consider them by setting the appropriate sentence.

Smith: Couldn't you send the signal by actually somebody getting three years in the first place?

Yep, we should live in a society where the Government can decide how long each person gets sentenced. Who needs that pesky separation of powers – what has that ever done for us?

Bowen also announced he was getting tough on asylum seekers. We know this because here’s the title of his media release telling us:

Tougher character test to send clear message

The problem is the “clear message” being sent is this (via The Oz):

Temporary visas aimed at improving detainees' behaviour 'a return to Howard days'

and this (via The Age)

Ghost of Howard looms over asylum policy

You see part of the change in policy is that those refugees who fail the character test (which is being amended so that any crime committed while  in detention will cause you to fail it) will now instead of gaining a permanent visa will be granted “temporary visas”.

Now when I first heard that the ALP was proposing introducing Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) I thought, well that’s it. The ALP might as well disband, because TPVs are one of the few verifiable failures of Howard’s asylum seeker policy, and if the ALP was re-introducing them, well why bother with anything?

Thankfully they are not actually doing that – and don’t take my word for it, even The Oz’s own Editor at large, Paul Kelly, understands it:

Has Labor retreated to John Howard's policy? No, it hasn't. Howard applied the temporary protection visa across the board while Labor will apply it only in the small number of cases arising from convictions.

But Kelly also knows that this does not matter:

Have Abbott and shadow immigration minister, Scott Morrison, been given a useful propaganda weapon? Yes, they have. They will argue, in Abbott's words, this concession "is a damning admission of Labor's failure".

To whit – all the headlines talking about the Howard days, even though the Govt is not doing that (well not completely).

But surely Bowen should have seen this coming and chosen a different term? But no, here he is on Monday at a doorstop announcing the policy:

Journalist: Can a person who's genuinely facing persecution back in Afghanistan be sent home because he kicked down a door in Villawood?

Bowen: Let me make it very clear: we are not talking about breaching our international obligations. We will not be returning people who are genuine refugees to a country in which they are in danger. But there are a number of options open to the Government, the Government of the day, in response to any various events that can be applied. They include temporary visas existing under the Act. Those temporary visas can include a requirement to not engage in violent or disruptive behaviour; they can include steps to return them if the situation improves in the home country and they are no longer at danger; they include different rights to sponsor other people into Australia and to travel. Now I'm not pre-empting which visas may be issued to which individuals, but there are a range of temporary visas currently available under the Migration Act.

Gahh!!! “Temporary visas” were always going to be reported as TPVs, even if they are not the same. The visas Bowen is talking about are more akin to “probationary visas” (Heck, there’s a term! One that seems to make sense given they will only apply to those who have committed a crime and those are in effect on probation…). Yes that’s just spin, but geez, the Govt doesn’t need to give the media and the Libs a complete free kick – if they are different from TPVs then don’t call them that and then try and explain the difference. Given them a different name at least!

But still, in the end, what is the purpose? What is the desired outcome?

Well there is the policy outcome of hoping to stop asylum seekers from rioting. Will this do it? Well given the three men are protesting because they have been refused asylum and lost on appeal, they probably won’t care too much about being charged with a crime in Australia. To be honest I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the three men. They seem to have been given full access to the system – a system that as a rule sees most asylum seekers pass – so if they failed, and then lost on appeal, well, there comes a time when you say sorry, but you don’t get over the bar. (The important thing is that the bar is set right – and few people seem to be suggesting it is too high).

Will it stop prospective asylum seekers from rioting? There’s a good chance it will – though I would argue there would be a better chance of this happening if conditions were made better for them.

Then there is the obvious desired political outcome of the issue not being a problem for the ALP. This will never happen – the ALP will never be the most favoured party on asylum seekers. They never, ever will. Never. Ever.

They should just accept this and realise that it really doesn’t matter that much. Peter Brent in The Oz wrote today:

If elections were only, or even mostly, about ‘border protection’, the ALP would never win one again. But they are largely decided by incumbency and economic security.

I agree completely. Last year when Gillard was trying desperately to appear tough on asylum seekers I wrote:

On Sky News today while waiting for Julia Gillard’s speech to the Lowy Institute, it was breathlessly announced that asylum seekers would be "the most important issue at the next election".

Bollocks, says I.

The most important issue at the next election, like every single election, will be the economy.

And yet the ALP worries and worries and worries about the issue, and thus it gets “tough”. And so how does the Liberal Party respond?

"This idea that you should reward rioters with temporary protection visas is just wrong," the Opposition Leader said.”

Geez. This is politics in 2011.

What this chasing the tough image on asylum seekers does to the ALP however is reflected in the Essential Media Report poll results today:

Look at that bottom issue “Clear about what they stand for” – the Liberal Party scores 44%; the ALP only 28%. The only category in which the ALP scores worse is on “Keeps its promises” (though having 72% say it will do anything to win an election ain’t good either).

Doing what people expect is actually a pretty crucial thing in politics. It is one of the reasons why Turnbull struggles a bit with his NBN attack. The perception is that he would prefer to be the guy in charge of rolling it out, rather than the one charged with destroying it. Ditto the view of Greg Hunt whenever he attacks putting a price on carbon.

The ALP when it is confronted with an issue like asylum seekers – an issue which no matter how “tough” it gets will never be seen as tougher than the LNP, and if it ever does do anything “tough” will find that its policies will be attributed to John Howard – perhaps should ask itself whether it is better to be seen to be “tough” to please people who will never vote Labor, or if it is better to think about what people expect a Labor Government to do on asylum seekers, and do that.

If you’re going to lose an election, better to do it for doing policies that at least you can stand by proudly, rather than ones for which no one gave you any credit, and for which helped confuse all voters about why you are in power in the first place.

Time to go and eat worms?

A quick post tonight (family stuff got in the way of my usual night’s schedule, and also I want to relax and watch Paper Giants!)
Today’s Nielsen Polls has the ALP behind 44-56 (have been told if they did half percentages it would’ve been 44.5 – 55.5).
On tonight’s 7:30 Report Chris Uhlmann pointed out the Government has a few fights on its hands. He’s right. But his list was a little light. Here are the fights the ALP has

• Those who are against the Carbon Tax:
  • The miners
  • The manufacturers
  • The AWU and AMWU
  • Woolies and Coles and etc
  • Right-wing think tanks who for some reason don’t think the market is the best way to fix something
  • Those who think climate change can be solved by someone else
  • Those who think climate change is best solved by paying polluters to be nice
  • Those who are old and listen to Ray Hadley and know they’ll be long dead before their grand kids have to live with the effects,.
  • Those who say – hey I’ve got fluoro lights, what more do you want?
• Those who are against the mining tax:
  • The miners
  • Anyone who has anything to do with the miners
  • Right-wing think tanks who will say the world will come to an end if the mining tax will come into being
• Those who are against the pokies restrictions:
  • The clubs
  • Woolies (because they own a shirt load of clubs)
  • Australians (well it’d be un-Asutralin not to)
• Those who are against the tobacco packaging laws:
  • Tobacco companies
  • Woolies and Coles (haven’t really seen this yet, but who do you think sells the most cigarettes?)
  • Right-wing think tanks who will say that the Govt mandating packaging is acquiring IP even though the Govt already mandates packaging. 
• Those who think the Govt is about to hurt everyone on welfare:
  • People on welfare
  • People not on welfare but who think a Labor Govt should actually show some bloody compassion.
  • People who don’t really give a damn about people on welfare but who just want the Govt to act like what they think a Labor Govt should act like, so they can hate them for being that.
• Those who think the Govt is stuffing up the asylum seeker issue:
  • The Liberal Party
  • The Greens
  • Anyone who supports neither of the above but thinks the ALP should show some bloody compassion
  • The few One Nation supporters people bussed in to protest the ALP actually showing some bloody compassion by placing asylum seekers in decent facilities in the Adelaide hills.
• Those who think the Govt should not worry about getting back into surplus:
  • Those who think deficits are fine because the economy is slowing
  • Those who think the deficit is because the Govt wasted the surplus to begin with
  • Those who think inflation is a thing that the RBA can take care of
  • Those who don’t care at all about any of this but when they hear the word budget they swear and hate whoever is in power.
• Those who think the Govt has a problem with middle-class welfare:
  • Those who want middle-class welfare slashed to pay for everything they want
  • Those who are in the middle-class and think cut my payments and you will be dead to me
  • Those who are in the middle-class and think middle-class welfare is bad, but just don’t touch child care rebate, which happens to be the only bit of middle class welfare being talked about.
• Those who still think the BER was a waste:
  • People who aren’t real good at maths.
  • People who say, “But if the surplus worked why is the US is at 10 per cent unemployment?”.
• Those who are against the NBN:
  • People who think the country is a thing where you have your hobby farm
  • People who think the laws of physics have a left wing bias
  • People who think the Telstra will do it (despite it having shown zero desire in the past)
• Those who think the Govt has a problem with the gay marriage issue:
  • People who are gay
  • People who are not gay but think an ALP Govt should show some bloody compassion.
• Those who actually can’t think of any specific policy they don’t like they just don’t like the vibe":
  • Those who think Julia Gillard should cry
  • Those who think Julia Gillard should not cry
  • Those who think Julia Gillard fakes it when she cries
  • Those who think she needs to do something about her wardrobe
  • Those who think she needs to do something about the voice
  • Those who think she lacks gravitas
  • Those who think she is wooden except when in parliament
  • Those who think she should not be so attacking in parliament
  • Those who think “JuLIAR” qualifies as intelligent debate
  • Those who think she is a communist
  • Those who think she is more right wing than John Howard
  • Those who liked her once but don’t now
  • Those who never liked her and still don’t
  • Those who think politics is stupid and since everyone else seems to be not like her or Tony Abbott they might as well do the same.

So all in all, fun times ahead.
Happy Days.

Kev throws a QANDA grenade (of sorts)

A very interesting QANDA tonight – one that was at first interesting because of a decent policy discussion on foreign matters, but one that got very interesting about half way through when talk turned to Kevin Rudd and his dumping of the CPRS.

He admitted he was wrong to do it – “I think my judgement on that was wrong”, he said. This was great to hear – refreshing.

But he then let go some information about Cabinet discussions at the time – that some wanted him to press on, some wanted to delay it (as happened) and others wanted it dumped altogether:

"You had some folk who wanted to get rid of it altogether, that is kill the ETS as a future proposition for the country. I couldn't abide that”.

When asked if it was Swan and Gillard who wanted him to dump it he came back with “there was a diversity of opinion” line.

When talk turned to factional thugs and asked if some are in caucus he says “It’s an interesting and diverse caucus”.

The whole tenor of the show turned with his statements. It went from being an interesting discussion on foreign policy to probably front page news on domestic issues. It will be seen as his slapping back at Gillard. It will be blown up as a quasi attack on her leadership.

In reality, other than his admission of error on the CPRS, little new has been learned – perhaps the fact that some in Cabinet wanted to dump the plan completely. At a guess you’d say Martin Ferguson was in that camp. Gillard we already know was in favour of delay, Swan too. We’ve known that since last August. Sure Rudd confirms it, but that doesn’t make it new.

So what did we learn that was new? Errr not much really, just that a politician spoke the truth. It’s a shame such a thing is a shock to both the public, the media and the politicians themselves (no doubt ALP mobile phone were ringing madly during the show).

Gillard, regardless of what she advocated in the past, has said she has changed her mind and is now pushing for a carbon price. And just quietly she is pushing for it a hell of a lot harder than Rudd ever did. She at least is talking about the economics of the price – ie that prices would go up. Rudd was too invested in the whole greatest moral challenge riff.

So Rudd told the truth tonight and admitted he stuffed up, and that people in Cabinet were advising him to dump it. Why do it given he knows how it will be reported? Obviously he still thinks the leadership is there to be won. In Government it won’t happen – the deal with the independents pretty well kills much of a chance for change, and also the ALP just could not do it again – it’d be NSW ALP like suicide (ok, so given we are talking this ALP, let’s not count it out!).

Rudd you would think is looking ahead to a time when the ALP is in opposition and they turn back to him as some sort of return to a better time.

For mine, I liked the way Rudd talked tonight on QANDA, but I don’t forget that Annabel Crabb’s nickname of Ruddbot was well deserved. As PM he became monotone, and also failed to adequately stick up for the BER, the insulation program and the deficit (and other policies) in the face of a pile of bull from the opposition and the media.

Many from the left side of politics while watching QANDA tonight seemed to get a bit dewy eyed on the Twitter stream, and seem to have forgotten his faults. He is absolutely right to say he was responsible for dumping the CPRS. As soon as a leader is shifting blame to other members of Cabinet for a decision being made he or she is no longer the leader.  This guff about Gillard and Swan advising him to dump it would all be for nought if he had been a leader who said, sorry, you’re wrong, nope we’re going for it – I’m off to the GG and we’re calling a Double Dissolution.

He didn’t and he admits now his error in pursuing the policy he did. Bravo, well said. But let’s not make it into more than it is (the media will do that job for us, nicely).

***
UPDATE The Newspoll out this morning has the LNP up 55 to the ALP’s 45. Boom! So in the Last three Newspolls We’re had the ALP lose 4 per cent, gain 5 per cent and lose 6 per cent. A little bit too volatile for reality. Best at this time to look at the average of the polls – go over to Possum and let his Pollytrend lead the way. ALP are definitely behind, but 45? Bit low I think.

Let’s continue our look at how The Oz treats its poll – see if you can pick the Newspoll that was good for the ALP: