{"id":9655,"date":"2013-09-03T19:35:59","date_gmt":"2013-09-03T09:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=9655"},"modified":"2022-05-02T00:33:41","modified_gmt":"2022-05-01T14:33:41","slug":"bad-press-sets-stage-gloom-rudds-bid-griffith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/bad-press-sets-stage-gloom-rudds-bid-griffith\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad press, poll shock cloud Rudd\u2019s bid for Griffith"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"udd

Kevin Rudd and Bill Glasson campaign posters fight for space.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0By Jan Bowman<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

September 3, 2013<\/p>\n

When I wrote my first profile of Griffith, Kevin Rudd was still a backbencher and the electorate was apparently the safest Labor seat in Queensland. By the time I submitted my second piece, he was prime minister again and Griffith was the focus of national media attention.<\/p>\n

I could not have predicted that in this last week of the campaign, the media would not only be talking about a probable Labor loss in the national election, but the possible loss of Rudd\u2019s own seat.<\/p>\n

In this presidential-style campaign Rudd has been fighting on two fronts, on the national stage against Tony Abbott and locally against a popular opponent in in Griffith.<\/p>\n

While the high-profile Labor leader has been at the centre of vitriolic media attention and frequently away on the campaign trail outside his electorate, his Liberal-National Party challenger Bill Glasson has had a pretty free ride.<\/p>\n

Glasson is a constantly present, well-liked local bloke, a former head of the Australian Medical Association, who carries no political baggage. I have not heard a word against him, even from Labor supporters. On the other hand, locals seem polarised when it comes to Rudd and Abbott.<\/p>\n

Rudd was not given much of a honeymoon\u00a0after his appointment as prime minister\u00a0this time around. No sooner had the media got what they seemingly wanted, with Julia Gillard gone, than he became the target.<\/p>\n

In particular, the scorn heaped on Rudd by columnist Janet Albrechtsen and others in the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Ltd papers has taken a toll on Rudd\u2019s campaign in the past two weeks.<\/p>\n

Voters in Griffith do not have a lot of choice when it comes to newspapers.<\/p>\n

Rudd himself made the point on Monday night on the ABC\u2019s Q&A\u00a0program, when he was asked if he thought\u00a0it was\u00a0\u2018hard for Australians to get an honest, unbiased opinion of yourself and the Labor Party in this campaign\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear Mr Murdoch prefers Mr Abbott,\u201d he said. \u201cSeventy per cent of the nation\u2019s newspapers are controlled by Mr Murdoch, and in Brisbane, it\u2019s a one-newspaper town. You buy the Courier Mail, it\u2019s owned by Murdoch; if you buy The Australian, it\u2019s owned by Mr Murdoch; if you get your Brisbane throwaway newspaper, that\u2019s owned by Mr Murdoch. So you can choose between Murdoch, Murdoch and Murdoch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rudd said while he would be very cautious about government regulation of the media, the real question for voters was whether both sides of politics were being put under real scrutiny.<\/p>\n

\"One

One of Bill Glasson’s “gladiators”, reported to number 450 volunteers.<\/p><\/div>\n

Just a week ago, News Ltd and Fairfax in Brisbane reported poll results indicating that Rudd could lose his seat. The Fairfax-operated Brisbane Times also cited locals saying Rudd’s signage and supporters had been \u201cless visible\u201d in the electorate than Glasson\u2019s.<\/p>\n

This report came the day after Rudd had cancelled \u2018a six-week booking to attend a local House of Power debate in front of 550 voters\u2019, an event organised and hosted by the Brisbane Times.<\/p>\n

Clearly miffed, the paper quoted Glasson as saying Rudd\u2019s action \u2018sends\u00a0a very poor message to the people of Griffith and again reinforces the message that Kevin is never here, when\u00a0the people of Griffith need him\u2019. The ABC and the Courier Mail\u00a0took up the story.<\/p>\n

The Courier Mail\u2019s headline story on Saturday, August 24, was \u2018Poll shock, Voters in Rudd\u2019s own seat say \u2018Time to Zip\u2019, and claimed Rudd was \u2018on the verge of the ultimate political humiliation\u2019.<\/p>\n

In an opinion piece in the same edition, Madonna King reported on a \u00a0$60,000 LNP contingency fund targeted at Griffith, and cited\u00a0an unnamed senior LNP member as saying, \u2018Our people hate Kevin Rudd … and everyone wants a little bit of Kevin\u2019s death\u2019.<\/p>\n

The following day, Abbott was pictured in Brisbane\u2019s Sunday Mail under the header \u2018Blue tie to the rescue of the blue collars\u2019, a\u00a0positive piece on the Coalition\u2019s proposed\u00a0apprentice loans scheme. On the next page, Rudd was caricatured\u00a0as a goose, with the headline \u2018He\u2019s cooked his goose: he wasn\u2019t saving Syria, he was slaving in the kitchen\u2019.<\/p>\n

The possible loss of Rudd\u2019s seat, based on Fairfax polling,\u00a0has been big news, reported in national, state and regional papers and even as far afield as the Huffington Post.\u00a0The story sank for a few days after The Australian Financial Review\u00a0on August 31 published a JWS Research poll giving Rudd a strong lead in Griffith, but what damage\u00a0had been done\u00a0locally?<\/p>\n

The prospect of Rudd\u2019s downfall certainly seems to have boosted the confidence of Glasson supporters, and the story was back in the news again on Monday with ABC News Breakfast reporting from Kangaroo Point in the heart of Griffith.<\/p>\n

At this stage of the election, it is hard to find a positive story about Rudd in the Queensland media.<\/p>\n

The Courier Mail labelled\u00a0Labor\u2019s triumphal campaign launch\u00a0in Brisbane on Sunday as\u00a0Rudd\u2019s \u201clast hurrah\u201d with the banner \u201cThe Long Goodbye\u201d. On Tuesday its front page showed an 88-year-old Griffith resident and longtime Labor man reportedly wanting to ‘give Kev the boot\u2019. According to its reporter, he \u2018epitomises the mood in Griffith\u2019.<\/p>\n

Twitter, on the other hand, was abuzz over what many saw as a poll-turning performance by Rudd on Q&A.<\/p>\n

Preferences may be crucial to the outcome in Griffith. Hedging its bets, Katter’s Australian Party has printed two sets of how-to-vote cards for Griffith, one preferencing Rudd, and the other Glasson.<\/p>\n

The Greens are preferencing Rudd: they gained 14 per cent of the primary vote in 2010 and expect to do better in this election.<\/p>\n

The fledgling Palmer United Party, which is something of an unknown factor, is preferencing Glasson.<\/p>\n

When Margo Kingston put out a call via Twitter for people to cover their electorate for a citizen journalism project, I tweeted back that as I lived in the safe Labor seat she probably would not be interested. Who could have known?<\/p>\n

\"Rudd

Rudd supporters at West End markets<\/p><\/div>\n

more Griffith seat reports here<\/a>\u00a0
\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0By Jan Bowman September 3, 2013 When I wrote my first profile of Griffith, Kevin Rudd was still a backbencher and the electorate was apparently the safest Labor seat in Queensland. By the time I submitted my second piece, he was prime minister again and Griffith was the focus of national media attention. I could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":9657,"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,1591,3546,585,994,723],"tags":[1380,996,1378,1379,2591,2644,273,283,1381,419,1377,679,1375,1376,470],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Rudd-and-Glasson-compete-for-space-Boundary-Street-West-End-e1378198534908.jpg?fit=600%2C512&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-2vJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9655"}],"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\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9655"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56810,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9655\/revisions\/56810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}