No FuelWatch effect from Morgan either: indeed, their face-to-face poll conducted last weekend shows Labor’s lead up to 63-37 from 61-39 the previous week. Labor’s primary vote is down slightly from 53 per cent to 52.5 per cent, but the Coalition’s has fallen further – from 34 per cent to 31.5 per cent, their worst result since mid-March.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
Morgan: 63-37
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Gary,
Whenever you wish to write to one of the reptiles, it’s always handy to remind them of what good journos actually do. You can start with Ed Murrow:
“Mainstream historians consider him among journalism’s greatest figures; he was noted for honesty and integrity in delivering the news.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_R._Murrow
If he isn’t enough, you can add Walter Cronkite:
“the most trusted man in America,” because of his professional experience and kindly demeanor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Cronkite
And if he/she’s a real reptile of Jurassic proportions, then throw in Seymour Hersch to clinch it:
Hersh received the 2004 George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting given annually by Long Island University to honor contributions to journalistic integrity and investigative reporting. This was his fifth George Polk Award, the first one being a Special Award given to him in 1969.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersch
Rx 292
‘The quality of some of the postings to this thread explains why William’s blog probably gets more ‘viewers’ than Insiders does. ‘
Spot on!
It’s worse than sad. It’s blooming disgusting and running true to form on my previous post on the subject.
How long can the opposition keep getting away with the “its spin” line? They didn’t “spin” when in government? Really?
Pritam at 304, its sites like this that help me survive the past 18 months of getting angry at the mostly-idiotic MSM
One causality of the expanding internet as a source of news and discussion is the reputation of hitherto ‘respected’ journalists. pre-internet if you were a journalist at a MSM establishment you gained some sort of grudging respect simply because the real facts and context wouldn’t be fully known to the general public, they had journalists only to rely on and, in the past a diversity of media ownership.
Now information flows much quicker and gets a variety of feed back much quicker. Murdoch journalists and other are exposed, their dishonesty more easily revealed and available to be known to the general public.
SO the choice for partisan journalists is to either reform or to bear the reputation and continue on their way. For some opinion is up for sale to the MSM boss, others will be intent on prosecuting their job to favour their partisan choice regardless of truth and honesty.
None of the partisan journalist enjoy respect and as time goes on they will appear not much more credible than a red faced supporter screaming from the sidelines at a footy match. AND so to the paper/TV they come from.
At the moment they justify and get away with their dishonesty by calling it Opinion.
If the source of people’s news and opinion becomes more and more the net the public may again get the benefit of being exposed to a range of views.
The more prevalent the notion that all MSM is inherently bias and dishonest becomes the less effect their partisan campaigns will have.
I think the better message to get out to the public is not that such and such an item is ant-this, but that the MSM has its own agenda and partisan plans that causes it to try and manipulate public opinion with ‘dishonest’ reporting. In particular that murdoch papers generally pursue an anti-labor message and so on.
People should be encouraged more to use the net to find information on news and current affair.
I wonder who commissioned and paid for this poll.
{More than 50 per cent of Australians believe they have become worse off financially since the Rudd government swept to power last November, a new survey shows.
An online poll conducted last month by mortgage brokers Loan Market and X Inc Finance Group found just 17 per cent of respondents felt their financial position had improved since Labor returned to power after 11 years in Opposition.
Some 54 per cent of respondents believed things were worse than before Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister last November.
A further 29 per cent said there had been no change in their financial circumstances since the election.}
http://news.smh.com.au/business/most-aussies-say-theyre-now-worse-off-20080609-2ns1.html
I found this statement a bit strange though.
{”Australia had enjoyed a strong domestic economy, employment growth and relatively low interest rates for around a decade under the previous coalition government,” she said.
“But the uncertain global economic situation, triggered by the sub-prime lending crisis in the United States, and the Reserve Bank of Australian attempts to tackle rising inflation by twice raising official rates this year have changed the domestic economic climate considerably.”}
Wasn’t the sub-prime crisis well underway early last year and hadn’t we had about 10 consecutive interest rate rises under the previous government.
No, must have missed that. Looks as though it’s all the result of that nasty Rudd Labor government. Incompetent lot they are!
I wonder how Howard would have reacted to this.
{Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is expected to unveil a plan to force industry to cut carbon emissions in a bid to step up the fight against global warming despite resistance from the business community.
In a speech scheduled later in the day at the Japan National Press Club, Fukuda will likely announce a self-imposed target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60 to 80 per cent by 2050, according to media reports.
He is expected to support a so-called “cap-and-trade” system which would require major businesses to reduce carbon emissions while creating an economic incentive by allowing the trade of emissions credits.
Fukuda’s announcement is aimed at showing his determination in the global battle against climate change before he hosts the July 7-9 G8 summit, where global warming will be a key issue.}
http://news.smh.com.au/world/japan-pm-set-to-unveil-action-on-climate-20080609-2nv7.html
Kevin Rudd should get a bit of an idea how the vested interest, large emitters here will react following the Garnaut Report recommendations after seeing what happens in Japan.
Have loook at http://www.xinc.net.au/ the online poll is 3 questions. Hardly scientific – who would go to this website?
What were the questions they asked last month?
So 54% of people looking for a mortgage broker on this site who bothered to click on “Your Say” think they are worse off.
So what.
Why is the SMH even publishing this, oh thats right they got it of the AAP wire. 
Lazy bastards.
Why would mortgage brokers Loan Market and X Inc Finance Group commission such a poll? AND why tie the questions to the change of government instead of time frame if it was intended for business decision making?
The answers might be found in looking at who owns and runs these companies.
They commissioned the poll because quite obviously given international events and oil price increases they would get a negative result and, they tied questions to the changed of government so fault could be implied, why else?
Channel 9 simply uncritically posts the story.
Australia’s ‘Green Mafia’ will do all it can to halt any real policy from Labor and attempt to gain the most windfalls they can from the process.
The only way to make these type of companies behave in an honest way is to create personal penalties. That way owners and managers cant just depend on the company to pay fines but themselves face prison or fines. It can be strategically beneficial for companies to break the law when the gain is greater than the penalty.
Nothing would shut the green mafia up and amend their ways more quickly than if they risked a few years in prison themselves for unlawful practices thus rorting any system put in place wont be an option for them.
Landeryou has something on the Tele’s Della Bosca error.
http://andrewlanderyou.blogspot.com/2008/06/defamation-diner-false-stat-decs.html
The SMH should go a row too.
I am going to disagree with some of the pollbludgers on this one.
I honestly think Insiders had been fair and balanced so far this year until somebody posted a list of all the guests who had been on the show for the year two weeks ago claiming a bias towards the coalition.
It’s as if those behind the show have said “stuff you” and now (over the last two weeks) we have had bias.
How dare the Prime Minister go to Japan and say that the world should be free of nuclear weapons. The gall of the man.
To think that different nations could co-exist in a peaceful manner on this planet? It’s simply outrageous that is!
I honestly have the solution for the MSM who seem unable discredit the Prime Minister in any way.
They should try to recruit Mark Latham for the Liberal Party!
Mark Latham is the man, If Latham can’t, no one can.
Another “Beat Up” by Their ABC”, quoting the Shadow Minister For Google
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/09/2269385.htm?section=justin
Piers Says:
June 8th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
“My track record would not indicate a career spent flogging dead horses. My advice to you is don’t speak too soon about matters you know nothing about.”
This is from the man that pushed for a Liberal win; and is now trying to make a bunch of right wing nutters competitive.
It really is what it has come down to, labor against the Canberra press gallery. If they keep this up for months and labor continues to be ahead in the polls, what happens then.
It is already the case that if you interested n politics you read the comments and the blogs if you want to know what is going on, and take what is written by the press gallery with a grain of salt. If the press gallery continue writing rubbish the trend can only continue.
ABC 7 pm news couldn’t find fault with Kev & Therese in Japan so they decided to attack him for not making up his mind if he was going to meet the Dali Lama or if he was going to the opening of the olyimics.
They had old news footage of the Rodent at the Sydney games being tossed in the air by atheletes (throw up!!! pity they hadn’ta dropped the silly old c**t) and carping quotes from Robb saying Kev should go to the opening and why is he dithering and to end their anti Government diatribe words to the effect that the dithering was having a negative effect on our atheletes.
Their news is as bad as Insiders!
Stuff ‘em all!
Anyway how cute are Therese and Kev holding hands like a pair of lovebirds wherever they go. And catching the train with all the common folk and looking like they were really enjoying themselves.
Frank
you beat me to it
pity they hadn’ta dropped the silly old c**t
I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to say ‘coot’ on this site.
lol, not coot … un instead of oo
I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you. The thought never crossed my mind.
Well, not too many times.
Just Me @323
classic
I can’t complain to C7. because I’ll get no reply (I’m a Howard Hater).Before I watch ABC News at 7.00PM,too fill in time I sometimes watch ‘Todaytonight’.Why is it that it is always a story about poor old struggling pensioners.I’m on a Pension (sole income),paying rent (not in a Commission home),yet I don’t struggle.It’s about time a lot of Pensioners got out and did a bit of walking instead of whinging about the price of petrol.And as far as Grocery Prices go,I shop around for the cheapest,and save a few pennys.They even had ‘call me Brenden’ on tonight.
Call me an insensivite ba$tard, but I’ve just been watching Australian Story on ABC TV about some Iron Woman of 23 (Candace Someone-or-Other) who’s been allegedly pilliored in the Press.
Ah ha! (methinks) more rabid tabloid mob behavior, this time accosting a young and beautiful Aussie gel who just wants to do well in her chosen field.
I should have switched off when I heard her say, after yet another of the seemingly infinite series of Iron Woman qualifiers conducted around the country in summertime, “I dug deep.” I really should have swapped for Judging Amy (my wide’s favourite) on the WWWW Channel when a little later on she intoned, “Competing at Maroubra – I come from there – is the nearest thing I can think of to Heaven. Imagine your office being the beach!”
But I didn’t.
So… on I watched. Apparently this little moppet at 14 joined the “seniors” training squad. By the time she was 18 or so she’d started to fall behind her PBs (or whatever they call them). This made snookums a tad depressed. So she started out annoying the older girls (not detailed how) and it all ended in her throwing a punch at one of them. Due to the fact she was dating some dopey League star, this made the Dailt Telegraph gossip pages.
I felt a few pangs of sympathy for her at this point, but then when her Mum (”her best friend in the world”) started breaking down on camera when she reported, “One day Candace rang us and said ‘Mum, I’m on the side of the road and I’m crying’.”, that was it for this nasty, grumpy old man.
At that point I thought to myself, “Poor diddums. What about the bloody women in China who’ve lost their children? What about Darfur? What about Iraq.. all places where whole families disappear overnight and no-one gets the blame. In the case of Iraq the Yank soldiers are acquitted of massacring an entire town because some smart lawyer did a deal with the prosecutor.”
What about the poor buggers with cancer, or who’ve lost their homes or their livliehoods. What about the poor fools who voted Liberal and still think they’re in with a chance at the next election?
Caroline Jones did nothing to help, as when she introduced the segment she was almost in tears herself (although still sufficiently self-possessed not to turn sideways to the camera).
This parading of sport and sports heroes, this blind uncritical love of the damn beach (as if that’s all anyone would want), this pap, this garbage put out by the ABC as being of “human interest” (you may be able to tell) is getting on BB’s goat.
Don Bradman as part of the citizenship test. Howard in Barbados for the cricket. The free-to-air stations getting, gratis, new standard definition broadcast stations so they can put even more sport to air. Foxtel in general. Sport in particular all day, seemingly every bloody day on ABC radio. And now we have a whole half-hour about some 20-something year old whyo got a bit uppity with ther betters and then was put firmly in her place.
Ultimately, this twirp gets a whole show to herself because she cried on the side of the road and whinged to her mum about it?
Call me callous. Call me an unfeeling sociopath. But this is not a suitable subject for our airwaves, particularly the airwaves we pay for.
Candace darling: GET A LIFE!
ABC: DO something useful with our money besides put this rubbish to air and playing gotcha with the new government.
End of rant.
(my wide’s favourite)
Umm, Freudian slip?
Eddie at 327, its amazing how the pensioners are now apparently so worse off now that Rudd is in power. He has done nothing to cut their pensions or allowances. Now Im not saying pensioners hae it easy but they shouldnt pretend their hardship started with the change if govt
Just me @ 329: It was so wide it went to a freudian 2nd slip.!
Vera 321, now lets see, Rudd has too many ideas, works too hard and expects public servants to work hard. Despite working too hard he hasnt been to Japan and they are very angry because Andrew Robb says so, Now he hasnt decided about the Olympics. Vote the man out I say!!
Is Robb going to the olympics and if so who is paying for his ticket is what I want to know after his performance in Parliament earlier this year? I would also be interested to know where he has travelled so far as shadow Foreign Affairs Minister and who is financing his travel so far?
Andrew @ 330: My dad is 80, on the pension and he said the same thing. Why blame a new govt for something that is the cause of the previous one. He does what Eddie @ 327 suggested and that is he shops around. The MSM are on a beat up crusade this year and it seems the govt are and MR Rudd are the targets
Well, Robb seems to have settled in as Chief armchair critic of Rudd, Smith and Foreign Affairs. Nothing in his press releases of him going anywhere or doing anything of significance on the world stage.
http://www.andrewrobb.com.au/news/Default.asp?sectionid=5
He does it all by using Google
I put the abundance of rubbish on the ABC down to Howard. No, seriously. The TV pap described by BB is run because it is cheap. Same with radio sport. Cheap to produce, and it fills hours and hours of airtime. Howard was mean with their funding (though, to be fair, all governments are/have been accused of the same thing), forcing them to these humiliating degrees of austerity.
Then, before leaving, he stacked the Board with sycophant-recruiting, agenda-running neocons, meaning we get cheap and partisan crap like Insiders.
Insult on injury.
He certainly doesn’t have the appetite for travel that Dolly Downer displayed, Frank.
Robb is actually a bit of turn off when he appears on TV, he has to take care not to seem spiteful which can seem to be his underlying motivation.
I can’t believe he is shadow minister for anything and it just shows how shallow the Liberal barrel is. He sometimes, like Downer, can do more harm for their side than good.
His effort with Google was disgraceful and deliberate and he should have lambasted long and hard by the media – except that we lacked a non-Howard media at the time.
337 Rx
It’s not just because it’s cheap. It’s the commodofication of everything – a nice little thread of that title existed over at Lavartus a while ago.
It’s the idea that an economic measure of something trounces all others. It’s not just the ABC – it’s a lot of things in Australia.
True – it’s not just Australia, but it does please me no end when I travel O/S and find people doing things where cost is a long way from the top of the priority list. This does not mean being over budget – it just means there’s a commitment to achieve something, not something for a price.
Economic rationalism is costing this country it’s soul.
It has infuriated me listening to the rodent crap on about values when he never understood the first thing about what they are or what drives them.
Bradman on the citizenship test is a case in point. It would be nice to think that potential citizens might be interested in Australian history, but a test is no way to trigger it. The controversy in fact it illustrates that potential citizens are not interested in Australian history. That is a failure in values that is not just limited to potential immigrants either.
Surely we might be reaching the point, after 3.5 million years of evolution (give or take), that it might be more important to know who we are, as opposed to counting how much we’ve got.
The frivolousness of the present ABC is fuelling the latter at the cost of the former.
I am a bit surprised there has been little comment in the MSM about the hypocrisy that Government has displayed about limiting emmisions yet encouraging OPEC to increase oil exports. There is at the moment an incredibly juvenile debate in Australia about the causes and effects of high petroleum prices. And this Government seems incapable of defining the debate in it’s own terms. What seems obvious is that both Federal and in particular state Governments should be strongly encouraging public transportation to mitigate private petrol demand. (and also improving our energy imports). Instead the whole debate seems to revolve around 5c discounts to petrol.
The Japanese seem to have the right idea about trying to limit demand. You would think the major item on Rudd’s agenda would be harmonising Japanese-Australian cap & trade carbon trading.
BTW I see a real lack of critical comment and thinking about Government decisions, actions and gestures within this forum. As a long time lurker and sometimes commentator it is disapointing that Pollbludgers has descended into a turgid forum full of backslapping and acceptance of the Status Quo. It wasn’t always like this.
The last time I heard of Andrew Robb being in Japan was way back when he was head of the NFF but his junkets of the past do not seem to be a part of his Parliamentary biography any longer.
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/biography.asp?id=FU4
Compare Robb’s overseas trips as an MP with Truss.
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/biography.asp?id=GT4
Onimod, #340
I tend to think of the rodent as having waged an ideological crusade against the Australian way of life.
Take the often-touted Australian values (though they are of course not unique to Australia) of mateship and the fair go. Both were assaulted with WorkChoices. The “fair go” was the most immediately obvious casualty. But the ideal of mateship in the workplace took a deliberate hit too, as his shitty laws pitted employer against employee, employee against employee, with distrust all round and at all levels.
His approaches to refugees, his obscene upper-class welfare, privatisation (admittedly he was not the first cab off that rank), funding decline of universities, his constant divide-and-conquer culture wars – all struck hard into the, as you put it, the soul of Australian-ness.
Worse, he wasn’t even original. He sourced most of his, ahem, economic ideas from Thatcher and Reagan, and his dirty style of politics from American neocons including Karl Rove. Alien attitudes rudely injected into the veins of Australia.
This observation always does it for me: Economic rationalists know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
341 zedder
I agrees with you that the government should be talking about limiting oil demand rather than encouraging greater production, but that’s a long term view that ignores the political reality of now. The Rudd government will have no long term impact if they are unable to implement emissions trading because of the short term political pain. We’re not the only country on the brink of large scale emissions trading and demand reduction.
Just have a think for a sec, if you were big oil, on how you might delay or railroad that happening….That’s right – a price spike would do it, wouldn’t it?
The idea that the price of oil is supply-demand controlled has been blown out of the water this year. The world has finally come to the view that oil is finite. The current pricing system is NOT designed on this basis. I’m not stupid enough to predict what might happen, but I do believe it’ll be a wild ride from here.
I suspect the government’s tactic is to get the price of oil down long enough to get a scheme implemented that encourages demand reduction locally, and shifts the cost burden on to larger consumers rather than smaller. Of course the large consumers also have more organised lobbying power than the smaller, whom they will try and divide into as many minorities as possible.
Of course if this had happened even 5 years ago I suspect it’d be a non-issue now, and the longer we leave it now the greater the pain. Big oil will be doing everything it can to use that pain as a discouragement.
Oh – and having a go at the posters here for having a particular view different to yours, illustrates your lack of input rather, than having anything constructively critical to add. Democracy has always been about being a participating citizen. A whinger on the sidelines adds nothing to the democracy.
All of us can learn from each other, but only if all of us engage.
I’ll be looking forward to your contributions to balance the debate!
Rx,
I disagree – Workchoices re-inforced the notion of a fair go – it said that if you are prepared to do a decent hours work for a little bit less than the union enforced wage level, then you would could have a job.
The power to do something cheaper than your fellow human being is a liberating thing….check it out …if you are unemployed you might like it
Reading the posts on Andrew Robb. The Liberals seem to be experts at making trouble/wedging out of trivia- often personal trivia eg “Jeeves”. They do not seem to say a word about anything of any importance, at least anything that makes sense. Media lap it up as it is probably easy for them to understand, especially shows like Today-Tonight, Current Affairs but also News Reports. I mean this besides the present anti Rudd slant.
I wonder if this is the reason the Liberal Party are at each other’s throats all the time eg Victoria, NSW, Qld, WA and I don’t know about Tas or SA. Also even in their own Fed party ie Turnball/Nelson, Costello. I mean this besides the idealogical differences in their party.
Seem to be a small minded lot. It is more like backyard gossip than anything.
Would be quite premature to start attacking the Rudd government over action or inaction after 6 months. You would really need to wait at least two years to get the real and whole picture.
BTW I wonder what the nature of the Japanese media is and if their government can expect to get support, neutral or big oil attacks etc on their policy.
Rudd Labor do need to put in a range of policy but their difficulty is having to fight the Green Mafia, the MSM and Liberal party over a likely coordinated misinformation campaign. There is little point in going all the way upfront only to be voted out then have everything reversed as it would be – the murdoch guys and Liberal party are not believers in GW/CC or in really doing anything about it. So as we are talking about the future of the planet I guess Rudd is entitled to play this strategically.
Criticism of the MSM is well deserved and of the previous govt well deserved.
Rudd Labor has been criticised here over its handling of the Fuelwatch issue.
“..John Howard was an enthusiastic captive of the carbon lobby. In recent times, however, inaction by Australia has become much harder, so our greenhouse mafia have had to come up with a more sophisticated approach that focusses on delaying emission cuts by their sectors.”
“Oh, and if you needed any proof that the greenhouse mafia is still kicking just as strongly as ever, have a look at Matt Warren’s latest greenhouse mafia-friendly piece in The Australian. Surprise, surprise! The oil and gas industry (through APPEA) has commissioned polluter consultant of choice (CRA International) to do a paper saying Labor’s MRET will cost $1.5 billion and hammer consumers, then Warren gets the scoop on the story.”
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20080319-Reading-the-fine-print-on-emissions-trading.html?CurrentDate=21+%2F+05+%2F+2008
little bit less? $90/week is not little!
344 Rx
I agree to an extent, but I believe it was because he was a stupid man, not because he was necessarily malevolent. Even worse is that he had an entire party organisation that let him do it. They either collectively turned a blind eye, or are similarly perspectiveless in their understanding of Australia and it’s place in the world.
I believe your final observation is abso-F’ing-lutely spot on.
From a cultural point of view I have a thesis that the 2000 Olympics is one of the major things that prolonged the rodent era – it became socially and culturally entwined with the time of Howard by luck. Without it, I think the cultural disenfranchisement of 2007 would have occurred much sooner.
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