Election 2010: Day 31 (or, the ALP wedding reception, and Boatman needs a new identity)

Today the ALP launched its campaign. It didn’t of course – campaign launches are no such thing. The ALP’s launch was a pared-back affair, in great contrast to the hubris and self-congratulation of the Liberal launch last week. There were less jokes than the Liberal affair – this was a good thing, unless it was the Liberal Party’s intention for Warren Truss to be more memorable than Tony Abbott. It had the air at the start of more like a wedding reception than a political event.

It started with Anna Bligh as the matron of honour – she was off the stage quickly so as to not overshadow the bride. Wayne Swan played the role of Best Man. His speech had a bit of humour but mostly focussed on how good a sort was the bride. And then Bob Hawke stepped up to give the father of the bride speech.

Like all father of the bride speeches it rambled a bit – at times you wondered if he had indulged a bit too much in the amber fluid prior to getting up – such as when he slipped up 1953 for 1983. But most of all, like all father of the bride speeches it was full of passion – passion for the bride yes, but in Hawke’s case it was really a passion for the Labor Party. He extolled the party faithful to keep the fight going, and ripped into the “tories”:

We made the Australian economy much more competitive. We were a party who had the national interest of Australia in mind.

What about the other mob, the alternative? They were sitting in their usual posture, on their bloody hands, do nothing. No they were against doing anything. Is it any wonder my friends that Tony Abbott is playing the chicken?
…
We have the form, the record, the policies and the leader.

Then the woman of the moment spoke. No she didn’t come across all Shakespearean, for that type of speech never appeals to Australians – we are a humble lot and on any occasion where a speech is given – be it wedding reception or campaign launch – we don’t ask for great oratory, but what we do ask for we want. And Julia she did do what she had to do – she announced some policy which would get a mention on the 6 o’clock news – and then importantly she told us a story that grouped together the themes of the campaign and her vision for Australia. She gave us a narrative. A campaign launch speech without a narrative on the future is a waste of time.

Abbott in his speech last week announced no real policy of any note – some guff about asylum seeker laws – and when he looked to the horizon to paint a narrative he could only see three months ahead – a three months in which would spend most of the time not doing things.

Julia’s vision was based around jobs, education, health and broadband. It was a message many Labor supporters had been calling for for a long time – in point of fact Rudd needed to be making it 12 months ago:

Let’s have a look at the track record of creating jobs.  In this country since 2007 we have created more than half a million jobs.  In other advanced economies they have lost 16 million jobs – 16 million working people who are now struggling to find a future for themselves and their families. 
…
And as Bob has rightly said, what do we hear from the other side of politics? We don’t hear about this great opportunity.  We don’t hear about how we can build for the future as we emerge from these troubled economic times. No, all we hear from Mr Abbott is to be afraid, to be afraid as he goes around talking about debt, as he tries to sell you his slogans. But of course what Mr Abbott doesn’t tell you is he doesn’t tell you the simple facts.  The simple facts that the global financial crisis caused debt and deficit for economies around the world and when we look at other major advanced economies, they have a debt, on average, 15 times greater than ours. 

He doesn’t tell you that when you look at the debt of this nation, it’s the equivalent of someone who earns $100,000 a year having a $6,000 loan. That’s where our nation is positioned.

Her policy announcement  linking the NBN and health was nicely done:

I ask you once again to imagine the power of this, in the middle of the night: a child with a rash, in the middle of the night a child with a swelling – you don’t quite know, is it not very much?  Is it something really serious?  Well imagine, in your own home, being able to show the child with the rash, the child with the swelling, being able to get assistance and help through the power of broadband, through the power of the internet. 

Being able to get some guidance in that moment when you’re truly anxious, truly anxious and don’t know what to do next.  About whether this is something benign and just staying at home with mum and dad and loving care is all that is required.  Whether you need to see a doctor the next day in your own community or whether it’s something really serious and you should be thinking about calling an ambulance or driving to the emergency department of your local hospital.

Imagine being able to do that.  Not by talking over the phone, desperately trying to describe what you see and anxious you’ve got the description wrong, but by being able to show a healthcare professional what it is you’re worried about and getting the advice you need. This is the future of healthcare, and for our GP After-Hours Line, it starts on the 1st of July 2012.

It is something that looks ahead. As someone who has rung up a health line late at night due to a sick child, I can say the idea of being able to talk on a video phone is appealing – it is something that should be common place. Yes it will require the doctors to be available and it will require training and funding, and it needs to be done sensibly. But it is something that at least we should aim for. It may not be the boldest ever sweeping vision of the future, but it is new – and if done well will be something that will change the way we do things. If it works it will stop people going to an emergency ward and waiting for 3 hours to be told to give you child some neurofen and fluids. And that is no small thing.

Her announcement of a Medicare rebate for online consultations also got approval from the AMA – never the ALP’s best friend:

AMA President, Dr Andrew Pesce, said in a statement that the $392.3 million investment would help doctors use technology to provide services to patients who would otherwise have limited or no access to them.

This is a recognition of the need to embrace communications technology to modernise our health system," Dr Pesce said.
"It will allow doctors to overcome the tyranny of distance when providing care and advice for patients in rural and remote Australia. Some patients will no longer have to travel long hours and incur significant costs to access medical care."

Yes it is disappointing that climate change got no mention – but today was not the day for that fight.

And then she ended with the closest you are going to get to a call for arms in Australian political rhetoric invoking Obama and the most Labor of Labor PM’s Ben Chifley:

Ben Chifley spoke to us about that light on the hill in a different age, in a different nation, in a different time.  President Barack Obama inspired a nation by saying ‘yes we can’.  Well friends, I’m too humble to compare myself to either Ben Chifley or Barack Obama, but I am asking you when you vote on Saturday, to say, as you cast that vote:  yes we will.

Yes we will move forward with confidence and optimism.  Yes we will keep our economy growing stronger day by day.  Yes we will offer people the benefits and dignity of work. Yes we will transform our education system so every child, every child gets the benefit of a great education.  Yes we will show care and concern for each other through a decent health care system.  Yes we will work together and tackle the challenge of climate change.  Yes we will embrace the technology of the future by embracing the National Broadband Network.  Yes we will close the gaps between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians and we will recognise the first Australians in our Constitution.  Yes we will move forward together. 

By way of contrast, Abbott’s big policy today was again about the bloody asylum seekers! His asylum seeker tourettes continued this time farcically announcing he would get the commander of the Navy vessel to ring him on the phone to make the final decision on whether or not to turn back the boat! It took about 00.1 seconds for this to become dubbed Boatphone and even the very Liberal friendly Daily Telegraph made fun of it on its front page.

It is a stupid policy but it is also potentially dangerous. Abbott is under political pressure to turn back the boats – the Navy’s job is hard enough without having some git back in Canberra deciding what they should do. What happens if he says turn back the boat and the people then scuttle it – does the Navy have to ring him up again to ask if they can rescue them?

You give officers in the Navy the ranks they have because they are able to make the decisions. The Navy is not Abbott’s own personal border patrol guard. Abbott today was unable to explain why, if as he says, he will always take their advice, they need to ring him.

Julia was right to mock him today:

And Mr Abbott says to you he wants to stop the boats but today we’ve actually found out what this plan means. Just imagine it – a Commander of one of our patrol boats out on the high seas.  What Mr Abbott wants that Commander to do is to take their eyes off the safety of their crew, take their eyes off the ocean, take their eyes off people smugglers, go inside the cabin and give him a call. That’s Mr Abbott’s plan to stop the boats. 

And then presumably, from the safety of Kirribilli as he watches luxury yachts go by, Mr Abbott is going to provide some advice to that Commander about how to stop the boats. Friends, this is a nonsense.  This is a nonsense and every Australian will see through it I’m sure.  I trust the skills, capacities, energy, decency and dedication of our hard-working Defence personnel.  We put the nation’s safety in their hands.  We do it for a reason and my trust is with them and for them.  That’s what I believe in.

Abbott had a serious brain fart with that idea today. And he knows it. He also knows today’s Newspoll which shows the Liberal Party only in front by  a mere 1% on the question of better economic manager (down from a lead of 12% last month) is not good.

It is why tonight at 7:40pm he held a snap press conference to announce he will now debate Julia on the economy. But of course he wants to decide the terms. Instead of debating at a town hall forum as Gillard had proposed, he wants a pathetic 30 minutes on the ABC with Chris Uhlmann as moderator and he then wants another separate town hall forum in Brisbane – where they do not share a stage together.

The ALP will be fools if they don’t say yes – BUT on the proviso that Julia goes last. The set up of the town hall forum is massively stacked in favour of the person who goes last. The person who goes last can see what was said earlier, can rebut it and also knows that anything he/she says will not be able to be challenged. It’s a format Abbott loves because he can play loose with the truth. If the ALP agrees to it with Abbott going last, they’re agreeing to a rigged game. They don’t need to.

Some in the media are saying this is Abbott upping the stakes. In fact he is asking for less than Gillard wanted – she wanted two hours in Brisbane in a town hall with the first half a debate on the economy, and the second half a forum with both of them on the stage at the same time. That would have been new and innovative. This is nothing new – it’s just another Q and A.

The fact is Abbott needs this forum more than Julia does. He was asked repeatedly yesterday and today about debating her, he said no. He would not have come out after the 6pm news to call for this debate and forum if he hadn’t started smelling the wind.

The problem is the biggest stench he could smell was his boatphone idea and his economic credibility wafting away.

Election 2010: Day 30 (or, answer the question!)

A short post tonight because I was busy doing real life things today and thus missed most of what happened – which wasn't much.

Gillard was on Oakes this morning – she did fine. Abbott was on Insiders – he did ok I guess, if you can accept him dodging the question on whether or not Australia's economy is the envy of the world and also think his comparing the cost of installing fibre to the home in Korea and Singapore to the NBN is apples to apples. Here’s a tip Tony, take a look at this map of Australia and ask yourself if you think if might be a little bit bigger job than that of Singapore or Korea?

But then the “big” news of the day was the debate over a debate.

Abbott on Insiders also came out with the dopey idea of having another Rooty Hill type town hall meeting – which was rather odd given that he was appearing on an ABC program and tomorrow night on ABC he is appearing on a Q&A episode that is essentially a town hall meeting.

As soon as he suggested it, I and most likely the rest of the Insiders audience, knew that the ALP would respond by saying yep – but let’s have a debate while we're doing it.

And so it was. Abbott of course doesn’t want this. In a debate he won’t be able to sprout his usual bullshit and not get picked up on it (David Speers at Rooty Hill developed selective deafness and decided not to pipe up with a “well that’s actually complete tosh, Tony”). He also won’t be able to just get Dorothy Dixers such as “what will happen if the ALP and the Greens get in and bring in an ETS?”.

Pretty much Abbott loves town hall meetings because he can lie during them, and then later say he was just caught up in the moment.

You can’t do that in a debate.

In the US Presidential election they have a “town hall” debate – why not here? Well we know why not.

Abbott hates answering questions on anything other than debt, boats, mining tax and boats. The economy? Nup. Even on the mining policy they put out yesterday for a good period of the press conference he was reduced to second banana as Ian MacFarlane took all the tricky ones.

Today he gave the press pack a whole 12 minutes – and refused to give an answer on why he wouldn’t debate Gillard. Later tonight he came out for another quick presser to say he was challenging Gillard to hold another town all meeting – saying

“That's my challenge to the Prime Minister to have a town hall meeting in Brisbane where the two of us can spend an hour talking to the Australian public about the issues that matter to them.”

Sorry Tony, that dog won’t hunt, and if the media give him a free pass on that then they don’t deserve anymore than 12 minutes.

Both Abbott and Gillard can spend two hours talking to the Australian public they just should both be on the stage at the same time  so they both get the same questions and so that if either says something full of fertiliser the other can jump in. Otherwise the exercise is a sham.

Today there was also lots of attention on polls.

The Galaxy marginal poll taken from last Sunday to Thursday across an odd assortment of marginal and not really marginal seats was extrapolated for no logical reason and also done incorrectly to have the Liberals winning by a seat. Well all I can say is if they have to use the dodgy reworking of statistics that we saw today to get the Liberal Party over the line, then the ALP will bolt it in (not that that is a prediction!).

The Newspoll will be out tomorrow (actually tonight). Last week it was 52-48 to the ALP, my guess is this time the ALP 2PP will be anything from 50-52. They had a very good week last week, but that doesn’t mean they can’t go down – remember 50% would still be within the margin of error and could be classed as statistical noise, but of course that’s not how it will be reported. Anything less than 50% would be completely rogue – you don’t have the good week the ALP had and lose 3 percentage points.

The ALP to be honest the ALP won’t mind too much people thinking it is close – this week they will run long and hard on the “Do you REALLY want this fool to be your PM?” (or words to that effect). She may not have been PM for long, but Julia does have some incumbency value – remember all the periods she acted in the job while Rudd was OS – in 2008 everyone was saying how good she was at it. Whereas Abbott… geez… that is still a step the voters haven't quite taken yet (even the Galaxy marginal polls had Julia well ahead as preferred PM, and only around 30% believed he would actually deliver on his 4 part campaign pledge).

So strap yourself in for a fun, neurotic fuelled 6 days. Oh and for the journalists following Abbott around, perhaps you need to take a tip from John McEnroe…

UPDATE: Well the Newspoll is 52-48. No change from last week, the ALP’s primary vote is steady on 38%, the LNP has gone down 1% and the Greens up 1% to an amazing 14%. My calculation have Newspoll calculating the Greens preference flows to the ALP of around 77% and 45% of “the Others” going to the ALP. The Nielsen Poll had the Greens preferences flowing the the ALP at 86%. If that were done with this poll the ALP’s 2PP would be 53.19%. Either way, while the ALP + Greens Primary is over 50, the Libs will not win (regardless of what the marginal polls say).

Election 2010: Day 29 (or Hubris and the underdog)

Back on 3 August, when the world was a different place, a Newspoll came out showing both sides locked on 50-50 in the two party preferred stakes. Liberal MP Alex Hawke tweeted the dopiest tweet of the campaign:

I love the smell of newspoll in the morning

What everyone else could smell was “hubris”, that word that John Howard was so fond of using to try and describe Kevin Rudd’s attitude in 2007. Rudd of course did everything he could to make it seem like he was not expecting to win – and he was very careful to make sure everyone else in the ALP acted likewise. 

When the Nielsen Poll came out 53-47 last night, Channel 10’s Stephen Spencer suggested on twitter that ALP hard heads would be worried because it would mean that they wouldn’t be able to play the underdog card.

I suggested that the ALP should “forget the underdog thing and run like they are the ones who should win - be the Govt”. He quickly slapped me down saying:

“But that's what Abbott did last week, and where it went wrong. The triumphalism during the ALP horror week was a big mistake.”

And he is right of course – triumphalism is never a good look; but my suggestion wasn't that the ALP go round acting like it’s all in the bag (it isn’t); but they should not be scared by the poll into thinking they have to protect a lead – that I think was Abbott’s biggest error. The Libs’ campaign launch when they were doing well in the polls was full of self congratulatory glee. They spent more time cracking jokes about Labor than they did putting forward any vision or policies.

I think the ALP should stay bold – keep putting out policies – don’t try and keep small. And also at the campaign launch Julia should keep doing what she has for the last week or so and drop the “moving forward” shtick. This is an election where slogans are really wearing thin. Abbott today tried to start talk about Labor’s “Great Big New Filter”, after which most of the listeners went out and had a great big new chunder. He may have had a good point to make, but labelling it a “Great Big New…” just killed it, and instead made it laughable. 

Julia on Monday needs to display some vision. Abbott can only see 3 months ahead and most of what he foresees is him not doing things. People want vision they can believe in. Julia needs to not be afraid to show us hers.

And so after a small-target launch, Abbott had his worst week (if you discount the first one which no one can now remember), and the Nielsen Poll went from 49-51 to 53-47.

Thus today Abbott is talking about him being the underdog – fighting against the big money (gee here I thought the mining companies were the rich guys…), the evil union movement and 5 state premiers (yeah Labor are so grateful to have Labor premiers in NSW and QLD).

Julia as well was declaring how close it all is, and she could point to the various marginal seat polling that show it will be close.

This happens during the last week of every single election – the stories about how one side might be in the lead in the national polling, but will lose “where it matters”. The stories which say ignore the national figures, focus on the marginal polls. It’s an odd sort of a narrative – it makes you wonder why they bother doing the national polls for 2 years and 50 weeks, only to in the last two weeks of an election cycle say they don’t matter.

And yes it might happen – I certainly do believe the ALP could win the popular vote but lose the election. But there are limits.

Here are the winning 2 Party Preferred figures for every federal election back to Whitlam in 72 (change of Government in red):

Election	Winning Party’s Two Party Preferred
2007	52.7
2004	52.7
2001	51.03
1998	49.02
1996	53.6
1993	51.4
1990	49.9
1987	50.83
1984	51.77
1983	53.23
1980	50.4
1977	54.6
1975	55.7
1974	51.7
1972	52.7

A couple things – apart from the Fraser wins of 75 and 77, the biggest two party preferred win is Howard’s of 53.6 and 11 of the 15 elections had the winning two party preferred less than 53%. What this means is ignore any poll saying the winner will get 54% or more. It won’t happen (though if there is a phone poll suggesting that, you can put down your glasses and call the election over)

You can also see that in 1990 and 1998 the incumbent Governments won with less that 50%. But in 1990 the Peacock opposition only got 50.1% – so hardly a win, and in 1998 Beazley got 50.98% – the biggest ever non-winning 2PP.

But we’re not talking about the LNP getting over 50% and losing, we’re talking about the Government winning the popular vote and losing, which is a different thing – because the Government already has more seats than the opposition. And as you can see every time the Government has won the popular vote it has won the election.  You can also see that that the five times in the last forty years there has been a change of Government the opposition has won with at least 52.7 percent of the two party preferred.

So if it were to happen we’re talking about a first in post-WWII federal elections.

However, as I say it could happen – but there are limits. I’ll put the limit at about 52%. If they get above that the ALP will win without any problems. And that 52% is really just a theoretical limit.

Using Antony Green’s brilliant election calculator, you can play around with the state swings and work out the result. The best situation I can come up with for the Liberal Party was the ALP winning 52.1% on the Two Party Preferred and the Libs winning 74 seats, the ALP 73, and 3 going to the independents. Technically a hung parliament – and Oakeshott, Windsor and Katter would have fun working out who to go for. Katter would go to LNP making it 75-73, and thus making it almost impossible for the other two  independents to do anything but side with them – otherwise the house would be 75-75 – an untenable position.

But for this to happen the seats would need to fall exactly the right way – for example the LNP would have to win Eden-Monaro, which no one suggest will happen. They need to win Longman and Leichardt which on Friday Patricia Karvelas was writing that the Liberal Party was conceding were “as good as gone to Labor”.

But this result would also see the ALP winning Sturt – which I think is a hard ask – Chris Pyne has a very high profile – but I still think Boothby is a chance.

I have also worked the calculator so it gives the ALP the biggest swing in any state just short of wining a seat that will tip them over into a winning position. So we have the NSW having a 2.8% swing to the LNP, QLD a 4.8% swing and WA a 0.7% swing. But I hear you say – the LNP could get much bigger swing than that! And I would agree – but if they did the ALP’s 2 Party Preferred would drop, and this exercise is about finding the biggest vote the ALP could get and still lose.

So yes in theory it can happen. But ask yourself, do you really think an opposition will take government with a mere 47.9% of the vote? Not only would that be a first for an opposition it would be 1.9% less than any Government has held onto power with.

Theoretically possible yes, likely? No.

But it will help to sell newspapers, keep people watching TV news, and keep neurotics like myself wishing like hell it was 22 August and all this is behind us.

It will also keep both sides claiming it’ll be tight (of course it will be – they always are) and they’ll continue to play the underdog tag for all it is worth.

UPDATE: Well on the back of a big Newspoll of marginal seats today which showed the ALP “fighting back in key marginals” We have a Galaxy Poll of key marginals, which shows the ALP losing seats all over the shop. On Twitter Rhys Muldoon (who has been following around Tony Abbott’s campaign) tweeted:

Just heard that Lib private polling has them way in front. (but maybe they would say that) If true, it's now a battle for underdog status.

See what I said yesterday about more ups and downs ahead – a great poll for the ALP today, and tonight a bad poll for them. Don’t you love the 24 hours news cycle.

Election 2010: Day 28 (or, the longest week)

So we’ve got seven days to go. Yes I know it is eight, but nothing that happens on Saturday the 21st is really going to affect any votes. In fact you could argue nothing much on Friday will affect them either – unless some really bad news about one of the candidates comes out – and even then it better come out before the 6pm news. And given Wednesday night is the advertising cut-off date you could almost say that Thursday as well is a bit of a non event.

Of course anything could happen – and you know both Gillard and Abbott will hardly sleep on those days, but at that point the only “game changers” can probably be bad ones. In terms of good “game changers” the ALP has got till Monday and their campaign launch. The Liberals I think are pretty much done on that score. Take today – they made a big announcement about spending money on technical colleges – essentially reviving Jon Howard’s old hatred of the TAFE system. And yes it’s a lot of money, but to be honest I’m not sure if it is much of a vote changer.

The ALP have trades training centres, the Libs have Technical Colleges. Most voters will be hard pressed to see the difference – and to be a vote changer there needs to be a discernable difference. Like a no NBN or an NBN – no MRRT or an MRRT.

In 2007 Rudd made a big deal of the trades training centres – it was a set piece of his budget reply speech in 2007 and it flowed through with his message that education was his priority. Abbott may too want to make education a priority but in all honesty, no one is thinking of Abbott being the education Prime Minister.

It’s like the Liberal's health and hospitals plan. No one really could tell you unless they had been paying particular attention what the difference between it and the ALP’s is. The big difference in health is the Liberal’s Mental Health Policy, and the ALP’s GP Super Clinics.

Today Julia Gillard announced a $334m plan for apprentices. Again it may very well be a good policy, but it’s not a game changer. What it did do (as with Abbott’s policy) was allow her to get some good pics of her with workers. Some days policy is about the policy, other days its more about the vibe and the visuals.

Today was a visuals day.

So what do we have ahead of us? Well we have a big weekend – especially Sunday. Julia is fronting up to Laurie Oakes; Abbott has the more easier task of Barrie Cassidy on Insiders. Cassidy is not much of an interviewer it must be said. But given we;re at the pointy end of the campaign he might step up and try to get in some hits.

Then on Sunday night on Channel 7 Kevin Rudd will chat. I doubt there’ll be too much in the way of “bombshells” – if there was Channel 7 would be letting us all know about them – you know adverts like: “the bombshell interview that will change the election!” Commercial TV advertising is never subtle. Over on 60 Minutes the biggest wanker in the Australian politics new reporter Mark Latham will give his report. I expect basically a plague on both you houses story.

This weekend we’ll also get a Nieslen Poll – and given last week the Libs were up 51-49, the ALP needs to improve or they really will start to panic. UPDATE: as I write this the amazing “Ghostwhovotes” has leaked that Neilsen Poll has the ALP on 53 and LNP on 47 – a 4% swing to the ALP from last week – which is not too great a surprise given how bad things were for the ALP seven days ago, and how pretty pathetic the Libs have been this week – I mean can you think of anything of any real worth that Abbott did this week? He didn't even turn up to a $6b announcement. One hour at Rooty Hill RSL ain’t going to cut it.

On Monday we’ll get the last Newspoll before the final ones on election day – they will be crucial for giving either side any “momentum”. The ALP will do its launch, and that night Abbott will have a go on Q and A – I expect him to do well, though the audience will perhaps not be as friendly as the multi-planted Rooty Hill event.

Just think, this time last week Mark Latham was still just a writer of columns in the AFR and occasional talking head on Sky. Kevin hadn’t met Julia. Julia hadn’t knocked them for dead on Q and A and the 7pm Project, and Abbott hadn’t gone on the 7:30 Report and made a fool of himself. It was a long week; and this week looks to be just as long.

For Julia Gillard it is a very long week. Lose and her career is effectively over. If she can’t win as PM she won’t win in three years as the opposition leader. It’s all or nothing. Lose and she’s a trivia question; win and she’ll ironically reap many of the benefits of Rudd’s term – the GP Super clinics will start to spring up, the trades training places as well. The computers in schools will be pretty much done; the NBN will be well and truly on the way – and certainly passed the point of winding up. Of course overseas the economy looks bad, so it won’t be all smiles and sunshine, but win this and she will have a lot firmer foundation than did Rudd – because a lot of his plans were long term.

For Tony Abbott I will say it is not as long a week. Sure he wants to win. But if he loses I don’t think he loses any where near as much as does Gillard. The expectations for Abbott were so low, that even getting to this stage is a win for him. If he loses does he stay around? I can’t see him wanting to hand over the leadership – for a start the pay is good. Unless things go bad and it does become a big win for the ALP, he’ll have strong support in the party. That said if he loses I can’t see him leading them to the next election.

For Kevin Rudd it is a long, odd week. The ALP has to win or his Prime Ministership will be trashed forever. If they win then at least the seeds he planted – NBN etc – will grow and bloom. If the ALP wins and the swing in QLD is not big, he’ll also be a bit of an ALP hero, and will be able to demand whatever position he wants. I’m just not sure he actually wants any position – I think he just wants to be able to demand it.

For Joe Hockey it is an interesting week. If the Libs win he’ll be happy as a pig in poo, knowing that he can be treasurer and just do whatever Treasury tell him to do. If they lose he has to decide if he wants to be leader. I’m not sure he does.

For Malcolm Turnbull it is a very big week. If the Liberals win he will never become Prime Minister (he might as well start his own party for all the chance he would have). And you just know he really wants to become Prime Minister. I mean he really, really wants to become Prime Minister. He would like, you think, for the Libs to be pretty well beaten. It would show the Party that the far right way is not the winning way. He has repaired a lot of damage within the Party through the way he has campaigned for other MPs. Whether or not he’s done enough for them to give him another chance and the merry go-round that will inevitably occur is another thing. Either way Turnbull will do all he can to look like he wants the Libs to win, and in his heart of hearts you know he wants Abbott to lose almost as much as does Rudd. At 55 years of age, time is running out for him

For Greg Combet and Bill Shorten and Tony Burke and Chris Bowen it will also be an interesting week. If the ALP wins they will all want to get a promotion – that Finance Minister spot would look tasty. If the ALP loses, then all of them will have to think about doing a numbers count. I’d back Combet – he at least has a reputation as Mr Fixit, so he would be a good solid option. But Shorten is as ambitious as perhaps all but Turnbull in the parliament, so I doubt he’ll die wondering. Burke is still young – 41; Shorten is 43 and Bowen is the youngest at 37. So they all have time on their side – they don’t need to win in 2013. Combet is 52. If he is going to lead, he would need to lead now.

For Julie Bishop it’s not a big week at all. She’ll probably remain deputy whatever happens.

For Chris Pyne it’ll be a long week. The betting market have him an easy favourite, but he would be a fool if he is not worried about the local girl swing in SA. And if there is a swing on in SA not even his personal standing will be able to hold it back. Personally I think Boothby is a more likely loss for the Liberals, but at $3 I’m tempted to put $10 on Rick Sarre.

For me it will be a long week as I know I will go through more highs and lows than a bungee jumper taking a cocktail of Ecstasy and Mogadon.

I have to say I can’t wait for the damn thing to be over.

Election 2010: Day 27 (or, what the hell is a gigawatt?)

After a night at the RSL, the campaign got back to the 21st Century today with Julia Gillard and Stephen Conroy in Tasmania to launch the first stage of the National Broadband Network. At the launch they also announced that the NBN would now be able to deliver a maximum speed of up to 1 gigabits per second. Now a gigabyte is essentially 1000 megabits, so since they were previously offering maximum speeds of up to 100 megabits, you can see that they certainly have kicked it up a notch.

Tony Abbott was suitably non-plussed:

"This idea that, hey presto, we are suddenly going to get 10 times the speed from something that isn't even built yet, I find utterly implausible," he said.

You get the impression Abbott thinks all this talk about gigabits is just a lot of mumbo-jumbo that is being used to trick him in to looking like a fool. And to be honest the journalists following him around must be tempted to through in some questions like:

“The NBN Co has announced it has increased the flux capacitor on its DeLorean output to enable it to reach speeds of 88mph – what’s you response?”

Abbott on this subject reminds me of the old Not the Nine O’Clock News Gramophone skit:

Last night at the Sky News Rooty Hill wannabe QandA, Abbott said of Broadband:

"I might want a really fantastic car, but I've got to buy the car that I can afford, not necessarily the car that in a perfect world I would like.”

Which misses the point by so far it is almost embarrassing. The NBN isn’t the car – it’s the road. Tanya Plibersek this morning on Sky News made the right analogy saying that moving from copper to fibre is like moving from gas lighting to electricity.

I know some think it will be a big white elephant,but the best thing about he NBN is the splitting up of Telstra into wholesale and retail. That is just an absolute must. But personally I think if the ALP wins, in 10 years we will look back at this debate and laugh that there was a party suggesting it not be built. I agree with what Senator Ludlam said in the communications debate on Tuesday – we don’t actually know how much the NBN will change our lives.

Five years ago I was content with Dial-up. Thirteen years ago I remember going to a mate’s office so he could show me “the world wide web”. Eighteen years ago I remember being amazed that I could go to Flinders Uni library and use a computer to search the Barr Smith Library catalogue at Adelaide Uni!

Now at work if our email and internet goes down work just about grinds to a halt.

We have no idea how the NBN will change our lives. And if the Libs’ dopey patchwork policy gets put in place we never will – we will look overseas and sigh.

***

This morning Tony Abbott was at a school in Sydney that didn’t go over too well with the BER. His message didn’t exactly cut through – it got about 1 second air time on the news tonight – because at his next engagement at the Penrith RSL where he spoke to some war veterans (though they all looked like WWII vets rather than from the Vietnam War) he was joined by Mark Latham in his new role as biggest tool of the nation 60 Minutes Reporter.

The coverage on Sky News was fantastic as their reporter gave us a blow by blow account of what he was up to – yes he’s getting a cup of coffee!! It was truly Australian political media’s worst moment (and yes I do realise I have said that a lot this past two weeks). It was such a distraction they said, so quick let’s cross back to our reporter at the scene to tell us about how distracting it is!! Kieran Gilbert, perhaps finally realising that Latham was at an Abbott event, declared soon after “I’m over the whole Latham thing”. Well yes we all were last Saturday but sigh you’re the ones who keep talking about him.

The nightly news of course made Latham’s appearance the top story so Abbott’s announcement about his policy to provide every tax payer a a tax receipt so we know where our money is being spent didn’t rate a mention. Which I guess is a good thing for him given it is a pretty dopey non-idea. You see we already get told where our taxes are spent – it’s called “The Budget” – it happens every year – second week of May or so. And as for finding out where each and every dollar of your own personal taxes go, we can already find that out on a nifty website called TaxCheck. For example if you earned $60,000 this year, here’s where your taxes went in the area of Social Security and Welfare:

$3,903	Social security & welfare
$1,510	Assistance to the aged
$1,094	Income support for seniors
$221	Residential care
$134	Community care
$43	Veterans' community care and support
$25	Flexible aged care
$22	Mature age income support
$6.48	Allowances, concessions, and services for seniors
$2.33	Aged care workforce
$1.47	Ageing information and support
$1.10	Culturally appropriate aged care
$1.06	Dementia
$0.34	Other aged care spending
$1,043	Assistance to families with children
$609	Family Tax Benefit
$191	Parents' Income Support
$114	Child care fee assistance
$60	Parental payments & care incentives (including the "Baby Bonus")
$40	Child support
$14	Support for the child care system
$6.58	Family support
$5.62	Family relationship services
$1.75	Other assistance to families with children expenses
$658	Assistance to people with disabilities

So yeah, thanks Tony for promising to bring in something I can already get on the internet for free. Peter Martin likes it. I think is a bit of a gimmick that will have people ringing up talk back radio wanting to say “I don’t want any money going to family support”. So maybe it will make Government’s more careful with the spending – personally I think it’ll just encourage cranks.

***

Today’s big economic news was the release of the labour force figures showing unemployment had increased from 5.1% to 5.3% seasonally. In trend terms it was stable at 5.2%. The figures were somewhat surprising – not the job growth – the economists had got that about right with an increase of 23,500 jobs in the last month. The problem was firstly the growth was in part time jobs (full time employment actually fell by 4,200), and also the participation rate increased – ie more people started looking for work.

Joe Hockey on tonight's 7:30 Report tried to sell the participation rate increase as meaning that people were having to look for more work to pay for their bills. Seriously, yes he said that.  You’d think even Joe knows the participation rate actually means more people are feeling confident enough to start looking for work – you should WANT the participation rate to increase.

In fact here was Joe Hockey back in 2007 reacting as Minister for Employment when the participation rate fell:

Federal Employment Minister Joe Hockey says he will monitor the workforce participation rate in the next few months, after new figures show it has fallen slightly, along with the unemployment rate.
…
"The participation rate has fallen slightly, we will continue to monitor that," he said.

Why was he monitoring it? By Joe’s logic of tonight, he should have been happy that the participation rate was falling back then!

Say what you like about Joe, but he never saw a statistic he couldn’t mangle to fit his own illogical argument.

***

Julie Bishop and Stephen Smith had a debate on Foreign Policy at the National Press Club today. It was pretty dry and dull. The only thing I can remember is Bishop saying we should encourage Fiji to come back into the world community because they have produced such good footballers.

***

Late tonight Morgan Poll’s Labor friendly face to face poll came in with a 2 Party Preferred ALP 57.5% – LNP 43.5% It is complete tosh of course, but the ALP will like the jump of 7.5%. Momentum is a thing you always want in an election campaign, and you’ll take it wherever you can get it.

Election 2010: Day 26 (or rooty toot toot)

While watching the health debate between Nicola Roxon and Peter Dutton as the National Press Club during lunch today I bit on something hard, which was rather disconcerting since I was eating a ham and cheese toasty. I quickly realise a filling in my back tooth had fallen out. I thus felt like I was actively getting into the spirit of the topic, but it did mean I didn't pay as much attention as I normally would have because I kept saying to myself “Dental Plan!… Lisa needs braces… Dental Plan!… Lisa needs braces”.

The debate was again a good one – these portfolio debates are generally good things because they don’t have the attention that does the leaders debates, and because the ministers are supposed to be across policy, the debate is very policy heavy and not so big on the waffle and motherhood statements. The debate was also moderated by The Daily Telegraph’s Sue Dunlevy who is hands down the best journalist on health policy in the country, and truth be told, we’d probably be all better off if it was she who was Health Minister.

Both Roxon and Dutton did well. Dutton, by virtue of the fact he didn't start drooling and mumbling incoherently exceeded expectations.

The problem with the ALP’s policy is it is a more wide ranging than the Liberals – the Liberal Party’s health policy is more targeted at doing small thing well – or more to the point focussing on which ever lobby group is in ascendency – and at the moment the mental health lobby is strong. Now I have no problems with people saying we need more spent on mental health, but the way the Liberal Party is paying for  their mental health by taking money away from things the ALP is doing. Dutton and Abbott would have you believe they are spending $1.5b in addition to what the ALP is spending on health – they’re not. The problem for Roxon was she was trying to sell a plan whereas Dutton was talking more about specific projects, and ignoring the piecemeal aspect of his policy.

The leaders meanwhile were doing their thing in South Australia and Melbourne. Abbott was down at Lake Alexandria talking about putting more water into lower lakes. It sounded nice and got an okish response from the media – The Advertiser front page wasn't that bad, though it smacked a bit of “he’s not doing quite as much as Julia said she’d do”. And The Advertiser's editorial was pretty equivocal about it:

The Government has made a promising start by purchasing more than 900 billion litres of annual entitlements. Now it has committed to buy back all the water recommended by the scientific assessment contained in the MDBA guidelines. It is a game-changing move.

The Coalition has responded with a plan that promises immediate action where it is needed most - at the mouth.

It may be hard to decide which is superior but that is infinitely better than having no choice at all. Which ever side wins this election, the river may have finally got a score on the board.

Julia meanwhile was in Melbourne talking up welfare and also then whipping off to Sydney to pledge $2.1b for a rail link between Parramatta and Epping.

Now for some (especially the Liberal Party) this is just another promise that won’t happen, for others it is about time. It certainly got good coverage in the Sydney papers:

   Whether or not the voters will “buy it” remains to be seen. But someone certainly did buy it, because one punter slapped down $200,00o on the ALP to win, and the odds for an ALP win moved in from $1.55 on the weekend to $1.36, and the odds on a Lib victory blew out from $2.45 to $3.10.

After the morning’s announcements both leaders trooped along to Rooty Hill RSL for no good reason to indulge in a little Sky News/ Daily Telegraph bit of piffle. Basically is was a Sky version of Q and A.

Rather oddly Sky decided not to allow the feed to go out to other networks, meaning probably around 44,000 would be watching – ie it is meaningless.

The audience was supposedly “undecided” but in reality it was about as undecided as the Tony Abbott household. Julia Gillard got a noticeably tougher line of questions – but she did handle them with aplomb. Abbott – who was smart to go and stand with the “people” rather than stay on the stage – was given a long line of slow long hops . One woman essentially read out the Liberal Party’s broadband plan and asked if he agreed with it.

Another supposedly undecided voter was quickly identified as former Big Brother contestant Joel Scalzi –the son of a former Liberal Party candidate in SA , and whose Big Brother bio lists:

Joel is an elite athlete, a neat freak and a Young Liberal.

It was a joke forum that won’t change a vote. Yeah The Daily Telegraph will run it – they did sponsor it, but these things don’t change votes unless you;re actually there, or at least watch it – and not enough people watched it. 

And because it wasn't a debate Abbott was able to get away with an inordinate amount of bullshit. He was able to talk about the NBN being like the government building a really fancy car, and he just sprouted away about how much debt there had been built up etc etc.

He was asked about R18+ ratings for computer games, and he expressed ignorance on it, and suggested he was in favour of it, which is kind of interesting given the Liberal Party is not exactly in favour of it. But still I’m sure he’s happy to have publically supported a policy advocated by The Greens.

He also ended by saying that these type of forums where fantastic and that politicians needed them to keep it real. Which is rather interesting given one of the first cuts he made in this election was to dump the community cabinets. Guess he doesn’t like them when The Daily Tel isn't picking the audience.

***

Yesterday I had a bit of a quick go at the Liberal broadband policy. But for a real take down of it. Head over to Andrew Elder’s blog, and see him take it down line by line.

Election 2010: Day 25 (or, pity they don’t have broadband on Nauru)

Today was a day that showed where Tony Abbott’s priorities lay. The Liberal Party announced its broadband policy in Canberra. In attendance were the usually unsighted Tony Smith and holding his hand was Andrew Robb. Tony Abbott? Where was he for this $6b announcement on the major issue that distinguishes the Liberal Party from the ALP? He of course was in Sydney doing what you would expect in a week where the attention has firmly become fixed on the economy – he was talking about asylum seekers in Nauru with Scott Morrison.

The press conference had a real odd vibe about it – like everyone in the room knew this was a side issue that had long since been passed by. Abbott – no doubt having seen the front page of the SMH – had his “Last question face” on right from the get go, knowing that most of the questions were not going to be on his favourite topic. To his small credit he answered 18 of them – beating his average by three. And to the credit of the press pack following him, they were good questions.

Malcolm Farr for example pointed out that over 90 percent of those who were sent to Nauru under the Pacific Solution ended up in Australia. Another wanted to know what was in it for Nauru – why would they do this if there was no financial incentive. Abbott’s line that Nauru just wanted to be of help was not exactly a winning argument.

Ben Packham asked a ripper about debt saying that given debt was about 6 percent of GDP and most people’s home loans were massivly greater than their income – including Abbott's own, didn’t that make him personally a bad financial manager? Abbott umm’d and ahh’d and talked about how he had a “normal family”, and then he talked about how much debt we would owe in 2013-14. Packham quickly followed up by saying it was minor compared to our GDP, whereupon Abbott pulled out the standard tosh about how he would rather be spending all that money on hospitals and schools rather than interest – yeah because the Howard Govt did so much of that when it was in surplus…

It was topped off by Abbott having to admit that the Liberal Party’s media release which claimed to have found a black hole in the ALP’s election promises costings had “a couple of typos” – namely they added one program twice and they also claimed that one ALP program would cost $15m, when in fact it would cost $1.5m, . Whoops. Don’t you just hate those pesky decimal points.

All in all it was pretty much a nothing press conference – evidenced by the lack of attention it was given on the nightly news.

Meanwhile in Canberra, Robb and Smith were having the time of their lives answering over an hour’s worth of questions from a media pack that had the smell of blood.

Tony Smith might be a nice bloke, but he would be great to play poker against because his face betrays when he is bluffing. And the entire press conference his face screamed “look they told me to say this, why are you asking me all these questions??” It got particularly bad when one of the journalists suggested, “Isn’t this a bit of a joke – you’re offering us what we can get already!”

And the policy was a joke. It essentially boils down to: Telstra will do it, because they are nice. Anyone hearing Smith say that 97 percent of the country will be guaranteed a minimum high speed of 12mps must have wondered if we had gone back 10 years. And anyone hearing Robb say people will get high speed broadband wherever there is a demand for it, should have laughed out loud. Demand ain’t got nought to do with it – it’s all about cost and profit – if it is not cost worthy for Telstra to do it – because they figure people will keep paying for their ADSL – then Telstra won’t do it. I have an ADSL 2 connection, but because I live more than a mile away from the exchange my line speed is a slack 3.92mbps.

The Liberals’ plan won’t help me. When Smith was asked in the communications debate at the press conference today whether or not the Canberra suburb of Gungahlin would get fibre to the home, he couldn’t say. It would be up to the market, he said. Well I can tell Smith, the market hasn’t done it, ain’t doing it, and won’t do it.

Smith looked so lost during the debate and the press conference that I was sure he was going to start talking about the “internet doohickey” and the “broadband thingummy” – and when talk got on to spectrum, well geez, you just wanted to rush the stage and say, there, there, don’t worry, you’ll never actually be in charge of all of this.

The industries response was hardly in raptures. They all pointed out that yes $6b was a lot less than the ALP’s NBN, but telecommunication’s analyst Paul Budd put the policy in perfect frame when he said:

“….the opposition’s talk of improving competition doesn’t add up. For 10 years under the Howard government they were unable to create competition and there are no details about how they plan on changing that. The only way to get to 100Mbps for 97 per cent of the population is to build a fibre network. But without measures to address Telstra’s dominance there will be no competition, because Telstra will use its network to control the sector."

The Libs are all about “wireless broadband”; completely ignoring that with it you can’t get anywhere near 100mbps. Kelly O’Dwyer – the bright young hope of the Liberal Party – on Sky News said that fibre to the home could well be outdated by the time it is rolled out. This is quite amazing because it seems the Liberals have a plan up their sleeve to alter the laws of physics. I guess the speed of light will always be faster under a Liberal Government.

The debate at the press club between Smith, Stephen Conroy and the Greens spokesperson Senator Ludlam was interesting, if only for displaying that both Ludlam and Conroy actually understood the subject and that Smith couldn't quite keep the “geez this wasn't in my cheat notes” look off his face. Ludlam was very good – once again displaying that he is the future leader of the Greens. The only issue Conroy was troubled on was his dopey net filter. But Smith had that covered, by essentially telling everyone that if you like the NBN and hate the filter that you should vote ALP in the lower house and the Greens in the Senate. Win-win.

In fact with the Libs now opposing the filter and the NBN, there is not much electoral need for the ALP to change its position on the filter, because it is effectively dead. Those who are most against the filter would likely also include those most in favour of the NBN, so they’ll be happy to vote the ALP to get the NBN, and know that as the Greens will get the balance of power the filter will be dead as well.

Tony Abbott’s performance on the 7:30 Report didn’t help things either when he repeatedly admitted to Kerry O’Brien he wasn’t really across all the technical stuff – and yet he had no problem signing off on spending $6b anyway….

***

Over in Adelaide Julia was (as I predicted she would)  stopping by her old alma mater of Unley High.

The local paper did her a huge favour by giving her glowing front page treatment with her announcement on the buy back of water for the Murray.

The press conference she gave (another chock full of policy directed questions – 22 of them) questioned how the ALP could pledge to do what they were saying to do given they didn’t know what the National Water Authority would recommend. Gillard responded:

We provisioned $3.1 billion in the Government’s budget - $1.4 billion has been expended to date.

We’ve made provision in the budget.  There is money in the budget to keep undertaking water purchases and we will. Then we will get the Murray Darling Basin Authority plan and we will, as necessary in the future, make the allocations to keep buying water. But we can keep buying water now because we have money in the Budget to do it.

Either way she didn’t give herself much wriggle room, and South Australians will take her announcement as meaning she’ll fix the Murray. Good luck meeting those expectations…

Coming off her strong work on QANDA last night, and another excellent and easy performance on the 7pm  Project tonight, Julia is looking like a good thing. And if the Lib’s biggest policy is a $6b one that is as dud as their one today she’ll stay a good thing till Aug 21.