The Australian reports that Labor’s lead in this fortnight’s Newspoll is down slightly from 57-43 to 56-44. Kevin Rudd is down three points as preferred leader to 65 per cent while Brendan Nelson is up two to 14 per cent.
The latest weekly Essential Research survey shows no change in Labor’s long-standing 58-42 lead. Also featured is a national-level question on state voting intention which suggests collective primary vote support for the state Labor governments is 7 per cent lower than for federal Labor (40 per cent compared with 47 per cent), although Coalition support is only 3 per cent higher (38 per cent compared with 35 per cent). Further questions involve federal Labor’s performance on various individual issues, and attitudes to the balance of power in the Senate.
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GB, That’s the problem with Global Warming. It’s progress is slow, but steady.
Make no mistake. If GW is half as bad as they say it’s going to be, we’ll be in wars and all other sorts of territorial shenanigans as a result.
Once upon a time the planet’s population could absorb the angst. Not any more.
It must be terrible for governments to fight GW. Every time there’s a cold night in winter people switch off. If one summer is slightly cooler than the last, they lose interest.
I guess it’s akin to a patient being told they have terminal cancer. They feel alright (except for the occasional twinge or bad day), so how is it possible that in six months they’ll be dead, weighing half what they weigh now and screaming in pain even with the morphine?
We need direction or else all the best will in the world won’t get the population into gear to fight GW. There’ll always be someone who naysays, quoting phoney figures or showing off misleading graphs, even as they fry in their seats.
There’s enough doubt out there to allow opinions like yours: that it’s hardly a war-footing subject. That may be true today and tomorrow, but in a few years time you may have to change your mind.
OK, better late than never, but let’s have a close look at the Christian Kerr FBN test this morning as it applies to his article ‘New Chapter’ narrative implies PM has lost plot’ in this morning’s OO.
In terms of Mr Christian Kerr’s balance test, let’s look at his judgment about who has lost the plot. In terms of balance, we could compare Rudd with Howard in his last years and Nelson right now. Pretty clear to me. Howard led his party to perdition and got kicked out of his seat. One can only conclude that Howard must have lost the plot completely. Rudd knows what he wants to do: meet his election promises. They are on the record. They are complicated. They are large. He is meeting them. Mr Christian Kerr takes this for granted and, in effect, says: ‘So?’ This compares with Howard who routinely reneged on his election promises and on Nelson… well, Nelson can say what he likes but no-one is listening. Well, Mr Christian Kerr, in terms of balance, we have: Rudd the election promise meeter vs Howard the election promise reneger and comprehensive plot loser, vs Nelson’s policy flipflops and negavitity but no-one is listening. At first sight, looks very balanced Mr christian Kerr, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it could actually be a journo belonging to a certain MSM organ who has lost the plot?
Now for nuance. Mr Kerr states that ‘narrative’ is the same as ‘message’ and we can more or less gather Kerr’s take on it from the heading of his piece. Literally, the PM has ‘lost the plot’. So, Mr Kerr, which part of the ‘message’ has been lost? Rudd is devastatingly ahead of the libnat leader in terms of satisfaction rating. What part of the ‘plot’ are the overwhelming majority of Australians missing? What message aren’t they getting? One can only conclude that they must be so stupid compared with the nuanced Mr Kerr.
Now for the facts in the article.
The article makes the following assertions and presents them as fact, or factoid, or whatever: ‘You don’t do a speech with nothing to say.’ Phew. That’s a clever fact Mr Kerr. I just hope all the dopey buggers in readerland are grateful for that one. And then, in a post graduate tone, of course,: ‘Just taking a spray at the Opposition would be demeaning.’ Really? Is that a fact, Kerr? So, is the Opposition doing anything other than taking repeated sprays at the Government? Has it come up with a single positive policy prescription? Could this possibly be demeaning for Mr Nelson? These latter are what Mr Kerr apparently regards as an irrelevant facts. I have a ’sneaking suspicion’ that Mr Kerr is particularly strong on ‘irrelevant’ facts.
Talking about ’sneaking suspicion’, here’s another fact Mr Kerr comes up with: There is a ’sneaking suspicion’ that something is about to happen in Canberra. Golly, Christian, is that the best an top-line journo can do in the MSM? Perhaps we could call you ‘Sneaking Suspicion’ from now on?
Another fact, apparently, is that ‘narrative’ is another way of saying ‘message’. Phew. We dopey buggers just have to live an learn and learn from these pearls of wisdom.
To give him his due, Sneaking Suspicion also has some good questions. Unfortunately, they are predicated on the crap above and lose their credibility as a result.
Applying the general principle as endorsed by the OO, namely that schools provide public reporting on outcomes, my score and comments on the Sneaking Suspicion in this article:
Facts 6/10. The Sneaking Suspicion could do better by including all the facts and by not referring to ’sneaking suspicion’ as it if had a factual weight.
Balance 3/10. Does not take all the considerations into account. In particular completely disregards the fact that Rudd is delivering on his promises and also completely disregards any any reasonable comparison with Howard and Nelson.
Nuance 7/10. The element is not a fail, because the article shows clever signs of nuance with the way in which it creates and presents the ‘truth’.
Diogenese @ 194
There was a wet/cooling period back about then as well in England. I don’t recall which century or centuries it was in. But… the agricultural and food storage systems then in common use meant that the population had about reached its level and when the cooling period arrived, lots of people starved in the country side. Sorry I don’t have references for this. Might need testing, but I’m pretty sure I have it right.
Compared with that, we are nowhere near reaching the limits of population with today’s technology. But we have gone way past it for lots of people in terms of the way we go about things. Some examples:
Water is scarce, and energy is expensive, (they are inter-related) but a small proportion of the world’s population use a hugely disproportionate percentage of the water and energy. If the wealthy all agreed not to have: fridge, washing machine, air con, and we agreed not to eat high energy, high water cost food (basically meat), and we agreed not to travel to work one-to-a -car, then today’s agricultural systems would flood the world with abundant food.
The UN figures are about 800 million people go to bed hungry each night and up to five million kids die of starvation or starvation-related diseases a year. These figures are dodgy but they point to a terrible truth.
Centre @ 197. Some of my reasons for calling this policy stupid earlier in the thread are that some families are very dysfunctional, and this is not being blaming of them, however, for example, if one parent has a severe and chronic psychotic disorder, a young person may come to be the parent’s main carer if the partner is no longer around, and so not attend school regularly in order to care for their parent; some parents may have poor parenting skills; some parents have moderate to severe substance abuse/dependency problems and have great difficulty paying attention to their children’s needs; children, themselves, may have significant mental health problems which interfere with their learning and lead to school refusal or avoidance, and lastly, bullying is a significant problem in some schools and contributes to school avoidance or refusal.
I cannot see how cutting off welfare payments, even as a last, very last step, is anything other than stupid policy.
If the family is unable to provide for the child’s needs, remove the child early, and place them where their needs will or can be met.
Victoria has recently revised the legislation in this area, and while services are still being re-organised to respond differently to children at risk, at least now children don’t have to repeatedly be returned to dysfunctional families till they are totally ruined, and early intervention is getting better.
Also, there’s some tentative steps being taken to tackle some of the more serious problem communities in the State – tend to be more remote, feral, mixed parentage between primarily Aboriginal and white, can’t tell who fathered who by the third generation.
Buggered if I know how this will go, but cutting off their welfare payments would only increase the thieving, the stand over tactics towards those who do have money, including physical violence.
Boewar
I hav great difficulty in accepting your article using terms like Fact , Balance and Nuance…it bestows a level of pre existing credibility that Chris Kerr has not earned here , nor since achieved
To me
Fact (Spin) , Balance (Imbalance) , Nuance(Twist) = “SIT”
Howver you or other posters may wish to experiment further , not wishing to over elevate Chris Kerr in th PB hall of fame , beyond his level of credibility
Harry Snapper Organs @ 204
I have to admit my gut feeling was, let’s just cut welfare payments off delinquent parents. But your post but the brakes on that. IMHO, your words are good stuff because they are well-grounded.
My follow-on question would be: ‘Do you think there is a percentage of parents who are just plain slack, and who would respond to having their dollars cut off by getting their kids to school?’ and, if so, how would you differentiate between them and the desperates you describe @ 204?
Ron @ 205
*grin* I was a bit disappointed that you didn’t give him his rightful name: ’sneaking suspicion’.
Boerwar @ 202.
Superb!
Harry Snapper Organs 204
Spot on.
Boerwar @ 206. If there are any, I haven’t come across them. There’s usually a reason, or a number of reasons for why people behave the way they do, in my experience.
Differentiating or diagnosing the different factors affecting parental capacity, or the lack or deficiencies of same, is actually very difficult, and currently hard to do, given silo funding and therefore, how systems operate at service delivery level.
You don’t need to read the OO to know what it will contain. It has made itself that predictable.
Harry ‘Snapper’ Organs @ 210
Thank you. *Thinks: I am frustrated by all this, there seems to be no end to it, regardless of what governments do.*
Do you think there is a bit of a role for ‘push’ as well as ‘pull’, that is, pressure as well as support? Or is this basically my question @ 206 being asked in a different way, and you have already answered it?
QUERY
For those interested on accessing my link from #171 re Rezko , hav finally worked how one can
Copy link from PB to a word document & paste , then use mouse to copy link from th word document then printed link (to override existing copy stored via mouse ex PB) , then open internet Google whatever home page , paste , and enter , and its there
Can anyone explain why such a process is necessary Originaly I had one internet open , access a 2007 investagative article on Rezko in New York Times on Rezko , I copied link , saved it in word to put into PB , then opened PB , then copied link from word & pasted to PB , but can not then acess link either direct from PB or copying it onto a new internet opening without going via word as per above para
202 Boerwar; the fact Kerr quoted Ronaldson pretty much allows you to regard its entirety as utter bollocks (so par for the course really).
H”S”O, I totally agree.
You have to understand the reasons for a kid not attending school and then try to find solutions. I am dissapointed, it’s not smart, and a policy I would have expected from the Fibs.
“a policy I would have expected from the Fibs”
It is. Labor should have grabbed the bits off Pearson it wanted and developed its own policy.
It seems the Rudd Government’s search for a narrative is taking up shades of the 1982 Star Trek classic “The Search for Spock”.
Could it be alcopops? Could it be slashing welfare, could it be dodgy emission trading schemes, perhaps it could be sacking long serving school principals?
Where could it be? Is it hiding under that shrub, someone quick activate the search beacon!
Grog @ 214
I met Ronaldson pere twice and it was twice too much. I may have been insensitive but he appeared to me to radiate a certain feeling of loathing and resentment. If Ronaldson garcon is a woodchip off the old block then enough said.
Beyond that, the stats that Ronaldson presented are interesting, and Rudd would do well to have a look at them. According to Kerr, Ronaldson analysed some things for the nine months before and nine months after the election. In the nine months before the election, Rudd used the term ‘fresh ideas’ 87 times, and he has only used it seven times since.
This is useful input for Rudd, and we should be grateful that the Opposition is spending time figuring out better ways for Rudd to present his case. Clearly, they are somewhat lacking in any substance on their own account.
Who knows, but the solution may not be difficult to find, but difficult to implement?
If you provide an environment that is conducive to learning, students feel safe and content and participate in activities that they like, they will go to school?
ESJ @ 217
lol. Poetic straw man. How about, at the next election: ‘We met our election promises’. Promises listed and actions itemised. Compared with the tawdry record of Howard/Costello, it differentiates the brand nicely, does it not?
What about AFL. Our indiginous Australians are sensational at it. Sport may be the answer. Maybe schools should take sport as a real serious priority.
If you can become a soccer star for e.g., you could end up richer than all of us here put together.
Boerwar @212. It is very frustrating. It seems to me, and quite a few others who have both worked and researched this area, that we need a uniform national approach. For example, at the moment, families with significant child neglect/abuse problems regularly move across State borders to escape investigation or action by Child Protection agencies. Sometimes, they also move because they have low level skills and simply have to move wherever there is work.
If you had some across gov’t agreements in relation to child protection, as there are beginning to be in relation to mental health (specifically people who are subject to involuntary treatment orders, now operating between Vic. and NSW for instance), you might start to get somewhere.
It is also a very difficult area in which to work personally. I lasted 9 years.
Statistics In Space for the week.
According to Newspoll, since June 15th Brendan Nelson has been making an extra 124,000 people a week dissatisfied with him, every week.
That breaks down to over 17 thousand per day, over 720 an hour, or for those that really care about their time, 12 people a minute.
Possum, that’s ver risible.
Sorry, very, and it should probably be in billable untis.
units, bugger the arthritis.
Centre @ 221
Hmmm, taking it from the top:
Australia was colonised by an empire with the following qualities: it was slave owning and slave trading, it was not a democracy – corruption meant that you could buy certain electorates; it was thoroughly corrupt in terms of governance and fraudulent abuse of the public purse; in Australia, it used rum as a currency, and its missionaries used tobacco to addict Indigenous folk into coming and working for the missions; the age of consent was then about 12, but I may be wrong.
The British empire slaughtered its way across Australia in military terms and it introduced new diseases that killed well over half the Indigenous population. The last full scale recorded massacre was as recent in 1927 in Coniston and the Northern Territory.
It then paid a wage differential to workers, took generations of children away from their parents, and any time Indigenous people made a go of it (eg Corranderrk) it shifted them off to rotten soil land like Lake Tyers. I saw a documentary the other day in which Indigenous women were talking about their menfolk who were driven off some good farming country on which they were wheat farming.
The women said, ‘That is what finally broke the spirit of the men.’
In Western Australia at times Indigenous children were simply excluded from formal schooling. I have seen the miserable letters from their parents, begging their children be allowed to attend schooling.
The empire herded them on and off reserves for a century and a half, depending on the flavour of the day. Until the last part of the last century in Queensland, Indigenous women and men had to get the permission of the Minister or his delegate to marry or to leave, or to go back onto government settlements. A small fortune in Indigenous wages were sequestered by the Queensland governments of the day.
About 27 men were executed for rape in Queensland in the 19thC (may have gone into the 20thC). Not one of those men were white.
I could go on, but I would make two points:
(1) we have no real idea how to decolonize when the colonized are in the minority
(2) a game of footie might help, but it is tragically short of what will fix two centuries of systemic and racist bastardry.
P C @223. No wonder the Fibs are begging Tip to take the leadership LOL.
so people are dissatisfied with him even in their sleep.
at least he is making an impact
That’s very sad Boerwar. But now we must go forward. That’s all I can say.
Harry Snapper Organs @ 222
OK. Thank you. Perhaps something for cooperative federalism to focus on.
12 people a minute?? Now that’s substance!
Today was a real abdication for our Prime Minister boerwar! Does the man believe in anything?
Centre @ 230
Agreed. There is plenty of excellent stuff happening which never sees the light of day. I just get a burr under the saddle when people expect 200 years to vanish from where people are at. When you spend 200 years damaging people and then expect them to respond as if they are just early-stage middle class whites is ludicrous. But it is the way the ‘debate’ is being framed at the moment.
I would hasten to add that I am not in any way excusing bastardry by Indigenous people on Indigenous people, or for that matter non-Indigenous people. There is no excuse for it. Criminals should be treated as criminals.
abdication? doesn’t believe in anything? You’re talking about Nelson aren’t you?
ESJ
for starters:
that nelson should stay opposition leader for as looong as possible
ESJ @ 233
Being elderly, I had a bit of snooze this afternoon. I hope the world did not continue turning while I slept?
Oh wait that’s right, I forgot – it’s all Liberal policy – I guess they just didn’t have enough time in office to carry it out. Yeah 11 years, is far too short a period to do anything (unlike 9 months, which apparently is more than enough time to have done everything)
ESJ,
233 is a real blah comment.
The fact that life has continued iunabated in Australia despite a change of Government is a testament to our versality and general disdain of politics and politicians.
What were you expecting: Mass executions?
GG After 12 years of conservative rule I was foolishly expecting progressive Labor policy
239 GG
“What were you expecting: Mass executions?”
Well at the very least I was expecting those awful union bosses to be in charge.
ESJ @ 240
OK, goaded by your allusions I will try to stay awake until sunset at least from now on. What happened?
ESJ,
After 12 years of conservative rule, you were expecting and supported three more years of conservative rule.
Given Rudd and Co have implemented the Howard/Costello budget it is churlish to expect that the economics have changed that much in 9 months.
As I have said before, Labor has done much in the 9 months of office to set themselves up for a long reign.
But, keep throwing pies.
240 ESJ what were you expecting?? Weren’t you listening during November last year?
I guess it’s hard to get used to a Government actually caring about election promises…
Golly. Pies? Progressives? Promises? Mass executions?
*thinks: must try and stay awake next time*
In only 8 months , this is a diferent Country & sometimes its easy for some to forget what was , W/Choices , Haneef , Hicks , Iraq war , discrimatory GST , no appology , worse little ‘care’ , tax cuts for th rich , kids overboard , no Kyoto , etc s etc s , now green paper on CC ETS , roll out start National sppeedy broadband , internet & panels in schools commenced , 13.9 +further 3.7 billion Water program , price watchs , assault on indigenous health and welfare , bigest tax review in 50 years commenced , but in a democracy you do not get a revolution , nor want one
Ron,
As always, you say it far more eloquently than me.
I know it’s not worth a lot but there have been MSM polls on Rudd’s education “reforms”. Both the truancy benefits policy and the sacking underperforming teachers policy are popular, at least with those who voted. I’ve spoken to quite a few fairly left-wing people today who are happy with both policies, much to my surprise.
Rudd certainly knows what he’s doing. But then again so did the Rodent for four elections.
In the Tiser, 66% agreed with the sacking principals policy (500 responses).
In the OO, 70% agreed with linking truancy with payments (1000 responses).
GG – 243
After 12 years of conservative rule, you were expecting and supported three more years of conservative rule.
Well put and that’s exactly what we have. Labor Government that even a conservative can feel happy about.
tis a nice list Ron.
The Hollowmen was pretty targeted at Rudd tonight – Kirribilli open to charities.. keeping the Genereals waiting.
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