{"id":1887,"date":"2013-02-28T22:46:30","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T11:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/australiansforhonestpolitics.wordpress.com\/?p=1887"},"modified":"2019-04-13T23:24:21","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T13:24:21","slug":"the-round-up-for-whom-the-poll-ticks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/the-round-up-for-whom-the-poll-ticks\/","title":{"rendered":"The round-up: For whom the poll ticks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sarah

Sarah Capper<\/p><\/div>\n

By Sarah Capper<\/a>, Sheilas Editor<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

VOTER support for Labor <\/a>has jumped to its strongest levels since the last election to put the federal government within striking distance of the Coalition \u2026
\n<\/a>
\nThis story appeared not two years ago, not six months ago, but less than six weeks ago, on 15 January, 2013 (in The Australian newspaper, \u2018Labor starts poll year with bounce: Newspoll<\/a>\u2019 by\u00a0David Crowe<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

Fast forward six weeks and it\u2019s an entirely different story, with the mainstream media\u2019s coverage on the federal Government\u2019s opinion poll fortunes as being incredibly dire, with doom and gloom scenarios abounding \u2013 the resurrecting of has-been Kevin Rudd leadership challenge possibilities, with commentators once again (gleefully) issuing death toll bells for Prime Minister Julia Gillard.<\/p>\n

The Murdoch press has never been a great fan of the Gillard Government, with a history of editorials and columnists aplenty going on the attack throughout the course of this minority government\u2019s duration. Following last week\u2019s Nielsen poll, which has the gap widening between the Government and Opposition, calls for Gillard\u2019s head were not just limited to reports by News Limited journalists.<\/p>\n

ABC Drum columnist\u00a0Barrie Cassidy<\/strong>\u00a0noted the switch<\/a>\u00a0in collective commentary, writing that:<\/p>\n

Troubling for the Government, Fairfax at varying levels has joined News Ltd in baying for Julia Gillard’s blood.<\/p>\n

Cue\u00a0Mark Baker, Alan Stokes<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Waleed Aly<\/strong>\u00a0(and a raft of others) who wrote scathing opinion pieces last week which could cause even the most ardent of social democrats to choke on their Weeties and feel that all hope was lost.<\/p>\n

Baker:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s time, Labor. <\/a>Time to end the delusion that Julia Gillard and her battle-scarred camp followers have any chance of political resurrection. Kevin Rudd might well be a very naughty boy, but Labor has no choice but to test whether he still has the makings of a messiah. It is the only card this discredited, demoralized and dysfunctional government has left to play.<\/p>\n

Stokes:<\/strong>\u00a0Julia Gillard, it is time for you to make your graceful, dignified, humble, selfless exit from the prime-ministership.<\/a><\/p>\n

Aly:\u00a0<\/strong>Labor’s problems are not nearly so managerial and technocratic. <\/a>They are much, much bigger than that. Labor’s problem is ideological. It doesn’t really mean anything any more, and probably hasn’t since Paul Keating lost power in 1996.<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, even\u00a0Waleed Aly<\/strong>\u00a0joined the chorus of doom and gloom naysayers dominating the media at the moment. But amongst the largely negative commentary in Fairfax, there were some lone voices registering an alternative view. As if spurred on by Mark Baker\u2019s piece, political author and editor\u00a0Nick Dyrenfurth<\/strong>\u00a0got a run<\/a>\u00a0in the opinion pages, arguing:<\/p>\n

Gillard must remain as PM in the name of what this paper’s Mark Baker terms the ”greater good”. First, the demise of our first female PM would be a devastating blow to our political culture. It would reward the bilious campaign waged by misogynist nut-jobs, Tea Party-style activists and the policy-free zone that is Tony Abbott’s Liberal Party.<\/p>\n

Removing a second-straight PM without reference to electors, based upon poor but not irreversible polling numbers, would seriously damage the public’s trust in our democracy. The now-exuberant Liberals would not be immune. Celebrity politicians who think Sunrise is more important than Parliament would be here to stay.<\/p>\n

Second, this is not a ”dysfunctional” government. It has produced a raft of nation-building reforms: a carbon price, the national broadband network, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, paid parental leave, and the first serious attempt to formulate an industry policy in decades. The mining tax is a work in progress. This is a welcome departure from Howard-era style ”reform”: workplace laws which treated human beings as mere commodities.<\/p>\n

In the News Limited opinion pages, a particularly special response came from\u00a0Graham\u00a0<\/strong>\u2018Whatever it Takes\u2019 (the appropriately named title of his book)\u00a0Richardson<\/strong>, the old Labor power broker who, through his regular piece in The Australian newspaper, loves to take a swipe at Gillard. His response to last week\u2019s polls was to write that should Gillard stay on in the leadership position,\u00a0\u201cthe legacy [she] leaves behind would be the near destruction of the modern Labor Party\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n

Ah, no Richo, many believe that legacy is actually yours. (And as Health Minister\u00a0Tanya Plibersek<\/strong>\u00a0directed towards Richardson in 2011 on the ABC\u2019s QnA program,\u00a0“I hope when I retire I never make a buck trashing the Labor Party.”<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at the source of this kneejerk media response with a bit of perspective. The favourable January Newspoll (published by Murdoch papers) quoted at the start of this piece (worth mentioning again that it was published last month, just six weeks ago) put the Gillard Government \u201cin striking distance<\/a>\u201d of an election win come September.<\/p>\n

The figures had the two-party preferred count (the figure which most closely reflects our preferential voting system) at 51 per cent for the Liberal and National parties, compared to 49 per cent for the Government. Striking distance indeed.<\/p>\n

By looking at the same figure in last week\u2019s Nielsen poll (published by Fairfax<\/a>), the Opposition recorded a 56 per cent two party preferred figure, to the Government\u2019s 44 per cent rating.<\/p>\n

These figures were similarly reflected in\u00a0this week\u2019s Newspoll<\/a>\u00a0(with a 55 \u2013 45 two party preferred breakdown). Both polls put the Government within 3-5 percentage points of being \u201cwithin striking distance\u201d of a win (and there is some argument to suggest that if a government can achieve figures of 48-49%, incumbency can often carry them across the line). But don\u2019t let that get in the way of the bizarre narrative adopted by large parts of the mainstream media. (Note: this is the same media that presented the Margie and Tony \u2018family man\u2019 Abbott non-story over not one, but across five pages in one of the tabloids late last year).<\/p>\n

Incidentally, for a breakdown of the polling figures, check out Crikey\u2019s\u00a0\u2018Poll Bludger<\/a>\u2019\u00a0column, which regularly dissects the opinion polls.<\/p>\n

So why are many media commentators going ape%^&* over these poll results? Yes, Gillard\u2019s personal approval rating has fallen, and yes, perhaps more significantly, Tony Abbott has overtaken her as preferred Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

And certainly the news doesn\u2019t seem as glamorous or \u2018sexy\u2019 (for want of a better word when discussing politicians) if commentators focused on the two-party preferred figure, by simply reporting that Labor\u2019s position has fallen by 3-5 percentage points, within \u2018striking distance\u2019 of winning the actual poll that counts in September.<\/p>\n

Certainly selling newspapers must be a contributing factor to the hysterical poll reaction.<\/p>\n

Fairfax columnist\u00a0Paul Sheehan<\/strong>\u00a0addressed the calls to resurrect KRUDD ala Mark Baker\u2019s plea to the would-be \u2018Messiah\u2019, arguing that:<\/p>\n

Driving all this public speculation are the opinion polls. <\/a>Who creates the opinion polls? The media. Who drafts the questions? The media. Who promotes the results? The media. Who acts as if opinion surveys are surrogate elections? The media. Who profits from the publicity and the speculation? The media.<\/p>\n

The only group that takes these polls as seriously as the media is the political class, the group of politicians, courtiers, aides, ideologues, lobbyists and power groupies to whom politics is a career and a living.<\/p>\n

And ABC Drum contributor\u00a0Jonathan Green<\/strong>\u00a0took it a step further (we\u2019re hoping tongue in cheek), by suggesting:<\/p>\n

A journalistic consensus does not add up to a successful leadership vote,<\/a> but maybe it’s time we changed all that. We’ve had years of trial by media and that practice is now well and truly established, and quite often cruelly effective. Perhaps it’s time for political leaders to be hired and fired in the same kangaroo court of mirror-image columns drawn from nervously reflective groupthink.<\/p>\n

That would save a lot of mucking about. We could dispense with the now time-honoured practice of anonymous internal whisperings reported as self-fulfilling certainties. After all, if anyone can construct a narrative – and every right-thinking political party should have a narrative – then surely it’s the country’s journalists. Let’s leave it to the experts.<\/p>\n

Cough, cough, cough. Shiver indeed.<\/p>\n

At a Melbourne \u2018Switch in Time<\/a>\u2019 event late last year,\u00a0Mary Crooks<\/strong>, the Executive Director of the\u00a0Victorian Women\u2019s Trust\u00a0<\/a>(publisher of\u00a0Sheilas<\/a>), talked about ways to combat negative media and vitriolic public discourse dished out against the first female Prime Minister and her Government. Crooks noted:<\/p>\n

When we disengage, because it is just too awful<\/a>, we give in to despair and possibly even to the destructiveness that comes with being cynical.<\/p>\n

So what do we do?\u00a0Mary Crooks<\/strong>\u00a0argues that the first action is to encourage \u201ccourageous conversations<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an important message, particularly because doubt, and indeed an all-pervading collective doubt as demonstrated by the mainstream media, can be a contagious catchy concept. It\u2019s easy to lose hope, but that\u2019s all the more reason to continue to challenge what\u2019s being fed to the masses.<\/p>\n

Lawyer and commentator\u00a0Greg Barns<\/strong>\u00a0provides one of those courageous dissenting voices, as demonstrated in a\u00a0piece run\u00a0<\/a>in the Hobart Mercury recently. Barns by no means provides a glowing assessment of the Gillard Government, but rather, a more fair and balanced account. And he takes a good swipe at the media along the way.<\/p>\n

If the Gillard government were corrupt, venal or responsible for plunging Australia into a morass of debt then one could understand that the media was fairly uniform in its condemnation. But that is not the case \u2026<\/p>\n

The media campaign against Ms Gillard and her government can have only two foundations – a dislike of a woman as prime minister or a nasty conservatism that seeks to protect privilege. Either one is unacceptable. We should call on our mainstream media to play fair or not play at all. It is far from healthy for the media in a liberal democratic society to become so unbalanced on matters pertaining to politics.<\/p>\n

Check out the whole piece\u00a0here<\/a>. And hang in there. Keep the focus on policy and the real issues, speak out against the baying media pack and continue to encourage \u201ccourageous conversations\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sarah Capper\u00a0<\/strong>is the Editor of\u00a0Sheilas<\/a>\u00a0and the Policy, Advocacy and Communications Officer at the Victorian Women\u2019s Trust.<\/p>\n

Youtube clips of the speeches from the Melbourne \u2018A Switch in Time\u2019 event are now available. Speakers include VWT Executive Director Mary Crooks, federal Independent Tony Windsor and Professor David Karoly.\u00a0Click here to view<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sarah Capper, Sheilas Editor VOTER support for Labor has jumped to its strongest levels since the last election to put the federal government within striking distance of the Coalition \u2026 This story appeared not two years ago, not six months ago, but less than six weeks ago, on 15 January, 2013 (in The Australian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,65,35,39,43],"tags":[127,238,273,283,377,409,470,489],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-ur","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}