Remember when the Rudd government changed the Medicare surcharge Levy and the usual special interest pleaders, partisan interests and vending machine hacks all foretold of a massive collapse in private health insurance numbers?
Remember recently when the data demonstrated that their crystal ball gazing was complete rubbish?
Similarly, remember the hoo har about alcopops tax from – again – from the usual special interest pleaders, partisan interests and the same vending machine hacks all foretold how the tax wouldn’t reduce young people’s alcohol consumption, how it was a waste of time and could actually increase binge drinking among young people?
Now the data is in and the Nostradoofuses have again found to be full of it.
Also worth noting is how Access(able) Economics seems to regularly pop up with these things.
So I’m wondering folks, can anyone remember any other predictions made since the Rudd government’s election about the way public policy will impact the country which have turned out to be pure piffle?
16 Comments
Ha! I was a nostradoofus on this one. I thought kids would just go back to mixing their own drinks. just like back in the day. I stand corrected.
By reading the MSM newspapers after the access economics study came out you would think that the tax wasn’t working and the government should be embarrassed. It wasn’t until after reading Pollbludger comments, which showed that access economics put a disclaimer at the end of their study not to use it as a complete study. I think the MSM are still playing “Labor bad – Liberal good policy”, and their are too many far right journo’s and not enough George M’s.
I also wonder how Steve Fielding is going to justify voting no on the tax now.
In the 1980s when the Hawke govt proposed introducing a fringe benefits tax the restaurant industry came out and said that it would cost 75,000 jobs. Which at that stage was more jobs than there were in the industry!!
It’s Chicken Little yelling the sky is falling and it is shameless.
not a public policy issue, but aren’t there some nostradoofii still predicting the end of the Rudd polling honeymoon?
So the predictions and comments by the pundits served their purposes admirably?
A successful operation , or two or more, in influencing public oppinion?
Muddied the waters, created false understanding of the situations and contexts, gave the changes a bad image and denigrated the policies and performance of one party and improved the public perception of the other.
The details being largely irrelevant, what price truth?, the public impression being all important, the nostros can ignore that they were wrong, hell who remembers back more than a week back anyway, and continue to do the sme thing again safe in the knowledge that know one follows the history sufficiently to realize the truth.
Apart from a few people on a minor [sorry about that] blog.
There’s three kinds of piffle involved here, at least.
Firstly, vested interests are spinning as usual because they benefit from obscurity, deflection and focus on adverse impact of worst case scenarios. No science there, they just a need to sound vaguely plausible, credible and push some buttons. From my reading of newspapers, Access Economics certainly *appear* to be guns for hire of this ilk, more often than not nowadays, but that may be due in part to selective reporting by the press…
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The second kind is professional commentators whose judgements are opinions – “chief economists”, financial journalists and the like. Many of these would understand that they comment on complex situations, or at least should understand that. These guys (well, mostly guys) need a story to tell, and that story ends up being catchy and simplified. The need to make it newsworthy leads to selectivity and a focus on the alarmist and conspicuous tidbits rather than reliability and comprehensive coverage.
The third kind of piffle is where the research methodology is flawed. Galaxy has shown some notably examples, but they are not alone. Not too many years ago when electricty was about to be de-regulated, research “showed” that about 70% of consumers would switch suppliers. This didn’t happen. It’s a reflection of (inter alia) the difference between stated intention and actual behaviour.
Sometimes you just can’t tell without waiting and seeing. The “how much of the $10.4B stimulus package will be spent and how much ’saved’/etc” question was pretty much of that kind, because (a) consumer sentiment is fickle, and (b) there was no recent history to work from.
Tom.
Not so sure GroceryWatch work out all that well
Being that demographic the alcopops tax is targeting at, I don’t know if I should be happy or disappointed by these figures! We…we…just capitulated like that to a tax? awwww
But Sertse – we decide what you will drink and the manner in which you drink it
Oh dear
http://www.theage.com.au/national/stimulated-first-home-sales-boom-20090302-8mh6.html
so the HIA and REIA are happy… not sure it was really wise to try and keep the bubble inflated
Oh geez Possum, you and your “facts”, and your “data” and your “statistics”. Sorry but they’re no match real on the ground truth!
Ah yes… who needs “Medical Journals” – anecdotal evidence!! that’s the king!
God bless the ABC.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2008/s2500521.htm
Australia’s new yardstick for observable reality – The Daz!
It’s funny how these anecdotal sagas are trotted out as empirical evidence…
Well the US had Joe the Plumber…
Hopefully the ABC will check back with Daz today to see if he thinks we’re in a technical recession or not.
Actually its a more significant reduction than might appear from the figures. The increase in bee is basically just population increase – per head there’d be no change. The increase in spirits is real, but not much more than a third of the alcopops decrease.
As the article says, it would be interesting to see which groups were responsible for the decrease. My guess: people with less disposable income who don’t like the taste of spirits. Without wanting to stereotype too much, that’s probably primarily teenage girls.