‘Twas the night before Newspoll, and a new open thread was stirring.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
The night before Newspoll: episode two
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345 Comments
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I think Glen is a genius. He continues to expose the rancid soul of the Liberal Party.
Hearing on ABC Radio this afternoon a report on the impact of the APEC lockdown and how local cafes etc have lost 70% of business since the fences gone up, and they are contemplating whether to stay open, or just shut up shop for the duration.
I wonder how many of these owners are Liberal voters, and whether this will influence their vote ?
CTEP it is a catch-22 if he goes early and is too far behind he wont win…but if he waits longer people will think he’s hanging on for dear life and subverting democracy as Mr Rudd claims so…either way neither going early or late is guaranteed of success for Howard.
While he likes being the underdog there is such a thing as being seen to be a spent electoral force and Howard is working hard to insure this imagry is not with the voting public…whether it will work is another matter entirely…id rather be in Rudd’s position 10-12 points ahead against an incumbent government months away from a poll…im sure Howard does too…
Makes me think we’ve gone back to 2004 and the “27 Lies of Howard” document that was doing the rounds back then.
There are two sorts of lie in this world…I do and I did.
People who make a promise intended for the future will often find that their intentions change, are all divorcees liars? Clearly howard thought he would never ever intoduce a GST even though he, Keating and anyone else with any sense knew it was in the best interest of the nation. He found the need for Australia so went to the people with the policy (and probably thereby saved us from the worst of the Asian meltdown).
People who tell untruths about the past are different but there are normally verifiable facts. To lie about what you did or your life growing up is an “I did” not an “I do”.
Boll #251
I am thinking mid November.
Thanks Glen… that makes a lot of sense. I’d imagine there’s probably more in it for Howard to wait than to call early.
There’s always risks things could get worse though…
Yes, I think this. Glenn Milne wrote an article about this in the News Ltd. papers on Sunday.
To me this rules out a December election. The polls have be stuck at 55/45 all year, I don’t think they will change much. But I guess the News Poll in 1 hour could prove me completely wrong!
cheers, interesting stats.
I wonder if the Equine Flu inquiry will have an impact on the Election date and whether being in caretaker mode may result in any inquiries being able to continue during an election campaign ?
Ifonly says: “Clearly howard thought he would never ever intoduce a GST.” That is not clear at all. He intended all along to introduce a GST. He was in favour of a GST in 1993, and he was in favour of one in 1998. The only reason he pretended to be against one in 1996 was to get elected – Glen admitted as much a few minutes ago. You can argue if you like that this was a necessary lie to save the nation from bolshevism or whatever, but please don’t insult our intelligence with this silly claim that Howard changed his mind about the GST and then changed it back again. I doubt even he would claim that.
( Equine Flu inquiry )
They will delay any report on findings until after the election.
Yes but Adam at least Howard had the balls to do what was best for the country even though they didnt like it…it had to be done but Keating was gutless and did nothing…Hewson stuffed up the GST and gave it a bad name…the moral of the story is ‘never say never’….
Also i think it funny how you accuse Howard of lying but not Hawke, Keating, Beazley or Rudd of that same attribute…one should accept that all politicians do it because lets face it politics is dirty…
Chris
Yeah good point about the topic, I do tend to stray.. this one started on the Lindsay thread and we moved it over here but, to be honest, there are only so many comments one can make essentially reading entrails on Newspoll and reading Glen’s trolls
(Hey Glen, I do actually enjoy reading them, even the long ones!! Heck, I can’t talk!!).
Yeah, really this was not a public sector/private sector comparison, just commenting on our high taxation and (relatively) inefficient service delivery in Australia for that tax take, but, like many issues, I think we are comfortable in our fox holes. I have no time for the mindset of a bureaucrat and like forests too much to see them waste forests and eating donuts while I work until Tuesday afternoon each week to pay my government! So I’ll leave it there, mate!
Just Me
“Don’t complain about the public servants, or the PS bureaucracy, blame the government for requiring it and not funding the system properly.”
Sorry, a lame duck argument. Same argument can be used for pimps working down Kings Cross. Our public sector is large enough to swing governments without one other citizen changing a single mindset. You can’t work in a system, push the paper, take a snooze after lunch and say “it’s the government’s fault”. It’s the lowest common denominator, some people (I’d like to include me, when I was a PS) will always demand excellence and try to change the system, others (mostly) will cruise their way to retirement.
Both our parties are atrocious at calling the PS to account.
To be honest, it really amounts to theft. Other Australians work really hard so that (some) bureaucrats can either do very little or create meaningless work to justify their salaries. Yes it happens in private industry too, but the whole country doesn’t contribute to that, nor do they last forever in most companies. Jasmine made the point that the “dead wood” is put in a corner with a title generally with “strategic” in the title to keep them out of trouble. Exactly, thanks Jasmine, so why do we pay a cent EVER for deadwood. If they have that much time, they could join a centrelink queue (and probably have a job by 2019 or even earlier!!).
Chris, if you were in education, surely you remember that dark corner of the library where they store the dusty “Government information Packs”, with their glossy brochures, smarmy videos and (now defunct) helplines/websites that were bought with millions of taxpayer dollars for the latest initiative and were never once used in a classroom ever?
I do.
ALL pollies are liars. The point is not whether they lie but what is the effect of their lies. Howard is the only PM in recent history to lie about the reasons for going to war and therefore the reasons why our soldiers lives were put in danger. Rudd lies about seeing a pair of boobs at a strip club. Can you see the difference?
Glen, I sure you must have noticed that most of the left leaning and centre commenters on this, and all of the other blogs, can string an argument together, and spell drivel and hypocrisy and other hard words, while people like you, and the other Howard apologists, have trouble assembling your stream of self-contradictory garbage into meaningful sentences. The difference, it seems to me, is that we have the mental furniture to think for ourselves, arrive at logical conclusions based on the evidence, and express these opinions lucidly, and, on occasions, with wit. Whereas, you splutter and scrabble around, repeating the same monotonous untruths, so demonstrating the total bankruptcy of your intellectual foundation. Kevin Rudd is playing with your mind. Just imagine how John Howard feels.
cheers
Alan H
Glen you’re right. All politicians lie. It’s when the public get sick of one group of people lying to them and can’t distinguish truth from lies that it’s time for them to go. Then we can get lied to by another group of people until we get sick of that.
If we’re talking about P Keating being too gutless to initiate the GST, Howard was too gutless to initiate a lot of reform when he was Treasurer in the Frazer Government.
No, I don’t accept that all politicians are liars. Howard is a liar in a class of his own. However I don’t agree with Paul K about Iraq. I think Howard believed what he was told by Bush about Iraq’s WMD. After all, Rudd also said that Iraq had WMD. I think the villain in that story is Ahmed Chalabi, a Cheney protege, who cooked up fake info about Iraq’s WMD and fed it to the CIA, in the hope that Cheney would put him in power in Iraq after the invasion. Cheney also bullied the CIA into giving him the “facts” he wanted, which he then used to fool Bush (not hard), and also Powell, Blair, Howard and many others. Chalabi and Cheney ought to be on trial for war crimes – the crime of provoking a war. Bush is too stupid to bother with. Blair and Howard were duped.
Glenn won’t be around after the election results come in. He won’t be game to pop his head up. Then in January the big one starts. Heres a very good site for those that want to follow the US election. The owner is a Democrat. But he correctly predicted the two Bush victories. This might be a good link to have on this site permanently.
http://www.electoral-vote.com
I just saw the snippets of Kevin Rein’s press conference from today aired the 7:30 report, done on the edge of some highway somewhere, I presume near Sydney
It was truely appalling, ….just woeful…..he had to shout to be heard and came across as desperate. ON the few occasions when you could hear him properly, all he was saying was ” I agree with John Howard on APEC” or “I would do exactly the same as John Howard is doing….”
He appeared and sounded like a desperate man. Very out of character with his slick media persona to date.
Putting my own politics aside, whoever was responsible for this incompetent piece of image-making for Labor needs to be re-assigned.
It was totally against the play….
Paul K (OK I’ll say this and get painted as a Howard Lover but I’ll say it anyway).
I don’t know whether Howard DID lie about Iraq and I don’t know that you do either.
I suspect not, however. Think about it. It was a VERY unpopular decision (on polling, worse than Workchoices is now) and if he KNEW there were no WMDs when he called it… what a twit.
You invade, you don’t find WMDs and you have to explain it. You cannot have it both ways, Howard cannot be “mean and tricky” and make a stupid blunder like this knowingly.
It is a sensationalist thing to say. I’m sure they fudge the truth at times but this really doesn’t stack up. More likely, the “junior partner” in this foolhardy war was not privy to intelligence. I also think he has done the honourable thing in this complex situation with egg over his face for over three years now. The simplest political thing to do would have been to pull out and let it all fade away. Credit to him, he has stuck with it and worn the flak all this time. Poor decision? Yes. Lies? I think not.
The polling I’ve seen is 70% against the IR and 60% against Iraq. To keep on topic I think the poll will be no change.
The key Howard lie about Iraq was his denial that he had made a decision to join ‘The Coalition of the Gullible’.
At a press conference in Washington on 9 October 2003, when asked directly wheteher he had decided to jioin the coalition, he said “..Look, there have been contingency discussions going on between the American and the Australian military and it’s always important in these situations to leave those sorts of things to the militaries of the two countries.”
On the following day at a joint Bush-Howard press conference in the Oval Office, the following exchange took place:
Journalist: “Could you tell us whether you count Australia as part of the coalition of the willing?”
President Bush: “Yes, I do”.
A direct barefaced lie, by Howard.
cheers,
Alan H
Funny, I saw the Rudd interview with highway background noise. Didn’t strike me as particularly negative or positive. Probably just good for Rudd to keep his face in front of the camera while APEC is on even if it just to repeat some messages or just a little insert. Product recognition/reminder.
#271 I don`t think anyone has ever suggested that the Whitehouse knew there weren`t WMD`s in Iraq. What many people have suggested is that they thought there were, told us all they KNEW there were, concocted/cherrypicked/were spoonfed some soon to be refuted evidence to prove this, and passed it on to the public as fact.
If WMD`s had appeared as they expected, no-one would have disputed their initial claims. The fact is they didn`t surface and their claims of surety were shown to be what they always were – untruths.
That`s my take. Anyway, back to the polls…
Chris hey ill still be around if we lose god the Liberals will need some/any support if they get pumped come November…anyway if it happens they’ll be alot of change happening and alot to debate on the poll bludger…
Im sure if it does happen you will all have a laugh at my, steve and nostros expense but either way the election goes lets not go nuts…most of us should have another good 50 years of life left in us so thats ummmm another 18 elections at the least…
I dont think you can say Howard lied about Iraq he was getting info from the US, Russians and Brits which said he had them so its not his fault they all stuffed it up is it….still im glad Saddam is dead at least something good can come out of Iraq…
Adam and GO,
Howard lied about Iraq. Whether he believed that WMDs were in Iraq or not is irrelevant. He didn’t care if they had WMDs or not. His lies went far beyond WMDs. I don’t want to rehash old arguments about Iraq but he told many lies about Iraq, not just about WMDs.
Re: the Iraq decision being popular or not. They thought the war would be over in six weeks and that the people of Iraq would welcome them with roses and kisses. So they ignored popular opinion. They thought they end up being heroes.
Twas the night before Newspoll, and all over the nation
The bloggers were goggling in anticipation
Of a new poll, a Newspoll, the psephologists’ grail,
Which appears every fortnight, Monday night without fail.
The bloggers were placing their bets one and all:
The two-party vote, would it rise, would it fall?
Would it hit 55, 56, 57?
Would it move towards John, would it move back to Kevin?
I thought we weren’t discussing foreign affairs anymore.
Saddam, and what, a few hundred thousand other people? You bloody beauty!
Ollie, you are in no position to tell me that I should ban Glen or anyone else. Your comments are in no way superior to his. In fact, I just had to delete one of your comments because it consisted entirely of abuse with no political content. I don’t ever recall having the same issue with him (that’s not to say it hasn’t happened, just not in the past week or two).
Every one seems to forget that Howard was a lawyer before entering politics and would therefore be well versed in the difference hearsay and proof and I clearly remember Howard stating that “I have sighted the proof”. Also, why do you think that the coalition of the drilling were in such a hurry to get Blix out of the country – before he could declare Iraq was free of WMD’s.
Tom.
Glen if you want to find about the real facts about your hero Howard, check out this site: http://howardfacts.com/index.php
Finally the ALP is going on the attack. Howard has been getting away with too many lies, spin, distortions and myths. Here are some hard cold facts.
Paul K
No. I stand by original comments. I can’t see evidence of lies and you know as much as we do through the media, so it sounds more like your bias presented as evidence.
I also dispute your assertion that a world leader can march into a war, for which the public has given no support and expect to be crowned a hero, whether it took six weeks or six days (as another unpopular war did in the late 60s). Just not plausible.
Love him or hate him (presumably the groundswell sentiment here) Howard is an ideologue and a strong leader, insofar as he has made some unpopular decisions and worn them.
I agree with Adam, he did honestly think he was doing the right thing and (like Blair) now regrets it.
What people seem to forget, is that it is the government’s job to be right on matters of such import. It’s not good enough to saythe information was wrong, this is a war, not buying someone new shoes.
It doesn’t matter why you thought you were shooting someone in the face, if people warn you you are wrong, and you are, and you then shoot him, it’s simply not good enough. Same goes for many of the other lies, or lack of information – At the end of the day, even if they are not actively malicious in their intent, it is their job to get decisions that cover matters as important as war, gross corruption, national policy, it is their job to know, or say they don’t know, not to pretend to have knowledge.
We seem to have reached a climate where corruption and evil is wrong, but incompetence is ok.
But coalition v Labor has always been competent evil vs incompetent good intentions, so wheeeee!
anyone want to guess the time newspoll will break in the thread?
Adam#278
Love ya work
Oops, should read “difference between hearsay and…”
10:34
Newspoll will break in this thread at 10:39pm
Lateline is at 10:36pm
I think that even many Liberals agree that a defeat may be the best way to save their party lurching over the edge. There is only so far you can stretch a rubberband to the right – it will either snap back or completely break. Another 3 years of Howardism and it will be more than a snap back.
My SO wants to go to bed early but I sooo want to catch Tony Jones!
GO,
Believe what ever you want. History won’t be as kind to Howard’s foreign misadventures as you are.
If you were the Govt how much would you pay for even a fake 53/47? It would be worth every cent for them.
Saw the Rudd kerbside interview too, looked tacky and cheap. He had to shout to be heard above the highway din..Probably should have kept his comments to the issue he went there for [a new tunnel on Kessels Road] and left the other stuff to later in the day elsewhere.
Still, its the only tacky, non air brushed presentation of Rudd I have seen so far.. it won’t do him any harm.
Paul K
Thanks for the invitation. I think I will believe what I think is reasonable, as will we all.
History is good at story-telling but I think she is more of a journalist than a judge
Kina the best option for a political party is just never to lose an election. I somehow doubt many LP supporters will be praying for an election loss.
Although I can’t imagine how boring it must be to be a government backbencher. All those Dorothy Dixers and “we are great” speaches make me hurl.
OLLIE, I think the roadside interview may be an attempt to counter the attacks that Rudd is just an image politician. Road says in touch with the average punters, and going somewhere (sorry about the pun).
I think history will be extremely scathing about Iraq but it will pin 90% of the blame on Cheney and his puppet Bush. I think it will conclude that Blair and Howard were duped. The problem with saying that Howard lied about Iraq’s WMD is that you then have to say that Blair lied too, and I don’t believe that. Blair’s problem was his messiah complex, not dishonesty.
That was my shortest post ever. Ooops, no, this is
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