With the media’s relentless and drawn-out campaign for a leadership spill (18 months in – thank God they’re patient and refused to give up all the time they were wrong and nothing happened) finally looking like they must be about to get what they’ve worked so hard to achieve, let’s pause to consider their enthusastic defence of their behaviour this week.
The main defence of course is – Look! It’s happening! We were right all along! As if the fact that it’s happening isn’t so much a reflection of the substance of anything they’re reporting, but the fact that they’ve largely refused to talk about anything else for so long the ALP has given in to the blackmail and is giving them what they want in the hope that afterwards they’ll let it get on with the thing it’s actually reasonably good at (and certainly much better than the other big party) – governing Australia.
As one of the commenters in last night’s thread pointed out, it’s like The Glaswegian Proof – you assert Glaswegians are violent, and then go into a pub in Glasgow and start punching patrons in the head until one of them responds. And then you claim proof of your original thesis.
Which leads me to the second defence from the media, and how they convince themselves they weren’t making up the story, that they didn’t just invent it.
And that is that what they were reporting – leadership tension between MPs – was true. MPs were briefing them off the record with bitching about their colleagues.
So what’s wrong with reporting that?
What’s wrong with it is that they declined to put it in any context, and by relentlessly talking about one set of private bitching sessions, one involving the PM and the former PM, they made them seem unusual and important. Which they weren’t. Both big political parties – probably the smaller ones, too – are full of ambitious people talking up their chances and thinking about ways to get ahead and ways to stop their rivals. Of people feeling slighted, or angry, or frightened, or resentful etc. But until it impacts on policy, it’s not in any way important to report this. It’s titillating gossip – it might sell newspapers, it might make the privately-briefed journalist feel all important and insider-y and powerful, but it distorts what is actually happening in government.
And when the press gallery focuses on this gossip to the exclusion of all else – well, that’s when Australians, relying on the nation’s journalists to let us know what’s going on, start thinking that nothing of substance is going on. That all that’s going on is this eternal gossip and intrigue – when in reality it’s nothing more than the expected, unavoidable undercurrent of all political environments.
So when I say that the media have beaten up and created this story, I’m not calling them liars. I’m not saying they have not been receiving these private briefings from MPs bitching about other MPs. I’m sure they have. I’m saying that the media have chosen to represent this gossip as news INSTEAD of actual news, and thereby turned it into actual news instead of the policy matters that actually affect the rest of us.
The ALP MPs doing the bitching are to blame as well, but only inasmuch as they’re ordinary politicians doing what ordinary politicians do. It’s the external approach of scoop-driven media – media who still resent not having realised Gillard was going to replace Rudd until after it happened and they had to report what happened rather than getting to feel all special and insider-y and knowing what was going to happen beforehand – that has turned Australian government on its head this week.
In the meantime, for those journalists interested in helping the Australian public not be deceived and make an informed vote, can I suggest some questions for the Leader of the Opposition? He’s more than happy to pop his head up this week, so how about you ask him some pointed questions about what he’d do if he were PM? For example, what’s he going to cut trying to get the budget back to surplus whilst retaining his middle and upper class welfare? Will he rule out cutting Centrelink payments in real or absolute terms? Will he rule out cutting public health funding in real or absolute terms? And so on.
You know, the “will you rule out” questions you’re happy to inflict on MPs on nebulous matters like their future ambitions, but applied to something that actually does affect voters, and should affect their choice.
ELSEWHERE: Tim Dunlop writes an excellent analysis at the Drum of how the media have allowed themselves to be played.
ELSEWHERE #2: Mr Denmore reports on the mounting pressure:
We also will be replaying Sunday’s special “Inside the Insiders”, in which we eavesdrop on the private thoughts of Peter Hartcher and other gallery gurus about the unrelenting and unforgiving pressure placed on journalists by the public, who just do not understand:
“We told them the challenge was on, but did they believe us? Mmmmm? No, they did not believe us. ‘Beat-up’, they said. Well, neagh, neagh, na-na-na. See! It was real! Take that reading public! That’s why WE are the professionals and you are mere bloggers and tweeters, without pinstripe suits.”
Also, don’t forget 730 tonight and Chris Uhlmann, who will be interviewing Barrie Cassidy about his exclusive interview with Tony Abbott about how the unrelenting pressures of the leadership crisis have placed our entire democracy in a powderkeg that is set to blow at any minute and destroy life on earth as we know it.
41 Comments
The feeding frenzy begins *sigh*
Thanks for this jeremy, rare sanity amongst all the self-serving dross.
The press gallery has cloaked themselves in “journalistic ethics” and refused to name those who were backgrounding them for months, thereby contributing actively to the destabilisation. Barrie Cassidy came close, but squibbed it. Dennis Atkins spoke of the destructive “negative feedback loop” involving journalists and their sources but did elaborate.
The media has been an inside player in destabilising the Gillard Government by protecting their sources for the sake of the “crisis” narrative, instead of giving us the real story, who was leaking and why.
_That_ was an excellent analysis.
Tim Dunlop’s piece was what you get when an intelligent person assumes the caricature of a rock drummer and bashes on an echo chamber in zombie land. “It’s the rules, it’s the politicians, it’s something else”.
No, they work for a soulless empire of jerkdom and most are either hard working corporate little bitches or they are just caught up in the rhythm.
Maybe Gina and co can finally bust a big enough hole in the sinking ship.
Reminds me of the bit from Waugh’s novel “Scoop” about the journalist Wenlock Jakes:
“Why, once Jakes went out to cover a revolution in one of the Balkan capitals. He overslept in his carriage, woke up at the wrong station, didn’t know any difference, got out, went straight to a hotel and cabled off a thousand-word story about barricades in the street, flaming churches, machine guns answering the rattle of his typewriter as he wrote, a dead child, like a broken doll, spreadeagled in the deserted roadway below his window – you know.”
“WeIl they were pretty surprised at his office, getting a story like that from the wrong country, but they trusted Jakes and splashed it in six national newspapers. That day every special in Europe got orders to rush to the new revolution. They arrived in shoals. Everything seemed quiet enough, but it was as much as their jobs were worth to say so, with Jakes filing a thousand words of blood and thunder a day. So they chimed in too. Govemment stocks dropped, financial panic, state of emergency declared, army mobilized, famine, mutiny – and in less than a week there was an honest to God revolution under way,just as Jakes had said. There’s the power of the press for you.”
“They gave Jakes the Nobel Peace Prize for his harrowing descriptions of the carnage…”
The aspect you are missing is implementation. While Gillard vs Rudd might not impact much on policy, the choice of leader and the leadership team will have a significant impact on implementation, and implementation of a vision is just as important as the vision itself. That is why this is news, and why it always has been news, ever since Gillard toppled Rudd.
It is trite to suggest it is a media beatup.
Maybe there have been constant mutterings from various MPs about various other MPs, and in a different world that wouldn’t be news because it is constant chatter. But the facts that makes reporting such discussions news at the moment, are:
1. Gillard axed Rudd, a PM in his first term.
2. Gillard is polling very poorly, and has been for quite some time
Rudd’s leadership ambitions combined with Gillard’s poor polling, and the history of how Gillard came to power *is* a story, and if journo’s are being leaked mutterings around these two politicians, then it is news. If the ALP wasn’t completely dysfunctional, and if Gillard’s polling wasn’t so bad, and if Gillard had never axed Rudd, then the story of the day would be and should be the policy differences between the govt and the opposition. But that is not the case, and the ALP is the primary source of blame here, not the media. In hindsight (and foresight for some) it was a terrible decision to replace Rudd with Gillard. Not because Rudd isn’t a jerk and Gillard isn’t a better leader, but because of what that act communicated to the general public, and what it would mean for the future of the ALP in govt. (see recent NSW ALP-in-govt history for further info).
Jeremy, exactly that. The whole charade has been going on since Cry Baby Kevin got turfed and I don’t think mainstream political churnalists have got over not being invited to the fireworks. It got worse and louder at the last election, and has got worser and louderer ever since – they couldn’t make the “It’s a MINORITY GOVERNMENT. IT WILL FAIL@!$!” schtick stick (because the electorate aren’t that stupid – after all we put it there) so they used Dudd/ Dullard. I have no doubt Rudd has fed them what they wanted to hear and what they wanted to “report” to the public, and now that Rudd has pointed his ar$e over the side of his pram and $hat on the carpet the back-slapping in the Canberra press gallery will be so hearty Michelle Grattan will look like she got sunburned.
For me, Mr Denmore has it:
Read the whole thing, too good to miss.
The first is very old news, and part of the problem with that is that the media have continued to indulge public misconceptions and misunderstandings about our system of government. The “Gillard knifed Rudd” meme depends on ignoring that the ALP actually voted for her. The “ALP chose to knife an elected PM without letting us choose” meme depends on not understanding that no Australian political party has people outside the party choose its leader. And that no Australian voter gets to choose who’s PM – we choose our representatives in Parliament, and then they vote for a person to speak for them.
Basically, a whole host of misconceptions that the hack media – for whatever motivations – have been fostering and manipulating ever since.
Hardly something of which to be proud.
As for the second – you don’t think the polling has anything to do with the above and the relentless beatup about potential leadership challenges? The media have been running this story – and being wrong – for a very, very long time.
@ dendy, yes of course, Scoop. Waugh pinned it over 70 years ago.
Its not old news that Gillard took over from Rudd – it feeds directly into the current state of affairs, and speaks directly about current ALP culture.
The memes you identify are not the salient ones I don’t think. I think the salient one is “the culture within the ALP that puts number-crunching and backroom deal-making over commitment to actual policy is dysfunctional and hurts rather than helps the party”. Do you really think that internal ALP culture is not news – after NSW for the past 10 years?
As for the second. No. I do not think that Gillard’s bad polling is a result of a leadership challenge beatup, I think the ALP polls poorly because:
1. the general public could not stomach the way she became leader, not after NSW recent history.
2. the ALP lost the battle in spinning the ‘lied about the carbon tax’ story.
3. the ALP lost the battle in spinning the spending to avoid financial crisis vs. creating debt.
4. it started raining a lot, and the momentum for action on climate change stalled, helped by over-eggers such as Flannery.
5. The ALP was successfully painted as pandering to the greens, and this made to look bad.
We still get the occasional turnbull vs abbott story. If the polling numbers were reversed, the coverage would be reversed too, and it would all be turnbull vs abbott with just a few stories about rudd.
All takes me back to primary school, with groups of children surrounding two rivals shouting FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! etc.
Quality journalism all the way.
Let’s look at what passes for news these days:
- journalists talking to other journalists about their opinions (ABC RN Breakfast every day now for ever),
- journalists talking to everyday people about their opinions,
- journalists talking about polling data, as though it has an opinion.
Where is the actual news?
The whole thing reeks of unreality…the mindless and baseless shrieking about Gillard has been running for so long and been so incredibly intense that I honestly don’t know how any sane person (this automatically excludes the MSM and all welded on Coalition voters) could look at the facts (the gov has been doing a fine job, especially in a global context) and feel anything other than the ALP’s ONLY failure has been to respond to the shrieking instead of setting their own agenda.
Hard to say whether this is simply because the msm has become almost exclusively beholden to right wing and corporate interests (we DID get duped out of mining profits and have been duped out of an appropriated response to carbon pollution) or a simple lack of ability to sell their achievements.
Their rhetorical question:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/has-gillard-created-a-total-mess/story-e6frf7jo-1226279000967
To which the answer, from their own journalists seems to be: Not really.
I remember every day for about a year the PG whined endlessly about ‘evil people smugglers” and one of them told me I was a people smuggler “supporter who loved ripping off people” when I sent him the information from the courts and the law that show there are no people smugglers.
Their obsession with the non-story has seen children as young as 13 locked up in adult prisons without charge for over two years, Indonesia women and kids starving to death while their “disappeared” husband and father is jailed here without consular access or legal rights, retrospective illegal laws, the Malaysia “deal” that they still prattle about as if it’s real and not dead and buried but all they do is tell me to fuck off.
Their obsession with reporting “ANOTHER BOAT” as if there are no other boats on the water anywhere in the world and never have been has seen children jailed for years again without legal rights and even babies called a threat to national security as Gillard and her gang of racists make worse and worse laws.
Gillard has been in the foreground of stabbing Crean for Beazley, Beazley for Latham, Latham for Rudd and then Rudd for herself.
She is just an operative without goals or vision and as Doug Cameron and Tony Windsor have both pointed out today the platform of Rudd is the NBN, the mining tax, the carbon tax and others that he wants bedded down.
And the notion that the leader who wanted pokie reform before Gillard said pokie would be back grounding the thugs in Clubs Australia is just another Channel 7 sick joke.
As is Rudd talking to Whittaker at the Daily Terror.
Honestly, Conroy has the best job in the parliament courtesy of Kevin Rudd’s vision for the NBN but still he whines.
And of course it all started when he refused to play ball and convince Malaysia and New Guinea to brutalise refugees for us.
I am reliably told though that one small girl who asked for our help is now a permanent resident.
I am detecting a certain amount of dishonesty from the conservative commentators in the Labor leadership debate. The question is “Who would do a better job? Rudd or Gillard?” All they have to do is pick one, and no Tony Abbott is not up for the Labor leadership. All the conservative commentators (like Alan Jones) who have been telling us what a bad job Julia Gillard is doing cannot admit Kevin Rudd would do a better job.
Ah my namesake, the battler’s (ie idiots) hero!, of course that can’t admit it, they want Rudd back so they can continue doing exactly what they did the first time, then intensely during Gillard and then back again..all this feeds nicely into the phony outrage that the minority government is not working (when of course it IS)…
They’ll only be happy when they have Tones IN and anyone else OUT.
I agree, Jeremy, this conspiracy by ‘the media’ to manufacture a leadership spill that would otherwise have not occured is beyond belief. I mean, it’s even fooled senior government ministers into believing that Kevin and his supporters have been working towards such an eventually for the past year. The dupes!
Defense Minister Smith just gave a presser in which he said he believed this day had been coming for a long time, an inevitability. Oh, Smithy et al! If only you had all availed yourself with the arm-chair wisdom of the blogosphere, you would know that there was no leadership plotting and you’ve all been conned and coreced into irreparably damaging your party’s future prospects by the media hive-mind.
Try reading the post again, Howard.
Ah, I think I understand how Jeremy convinces himself that it was a beatup.
Well – step one appears to be to block his ears, close his eyes and pretend not to notice that half the government is telling us what a little turd Kevin was from day one !
Hmm, let me think here…the mainstream media howled for leadership change all through Rudd and then again through Gillard, shrieking fo insanely about legitimacy and lies (neither of which have any basis) then perception becomes reality..
Right Howie?
Also reminds me of a little incident in the Coaltion not so long ago..
Yes liliwyt – sigh
By the way did anyone else catch Ulhman’s utter lack of irony and self reflection as he laghed quietly after the dawe/clarke skit on this very topic.
sigh
Come now, Jeremy, we appear to be on the same page!
You said ‘the media’ was ‘campaigning’ for the spill, I said they were ‘conspiring to manufacture’ said spill.
You said the ALP has been ‘blackmailed’ by ‘the media’ into this damaging spectacle, I said the ALP had been ‘coerced’ into said damaging spectacle; suggesting we both know that if not for the malicious machinations of that machiavellian monolith ‘the media’ (I wonder where this ‘the media’ meet to plot all this?), there would never have been a spill! You and I know Teh Truth, Jeremy!1!!1
P.S. I am a bit disappointed with your apparent concession that the signs of leadership tension ‘the media’ have been mentioning were, in fact, symptoms of something actual. I thought we both understood the ALP had been ‘blackmailed’ into this leadership spill.
P.P.S Although, if you must begin conceding the obvious, Jeremy, don’t let the last two days’ unprecedented public displays of the acrimony and animosity, distrust and dysfunction infecting the highest levels of our Government fool you. Clearly this is nothing more another harmless case of an ‘ambitious’ politician not being reported in the correct ‘context’.
As soon as the media spotlight falls on Abbott he will be a goner….
I doubt very much that it’s “unprecedented”.
The delusional nature of those pretending that the relentless media campaign over 18 months in turning every off-the-record bitch into a headline story (and the blinkered determination to pretend that it doesn’t matter that for 18 months the media’s predictions have been completely wrong) had nothing to do with creating this week’s events, both amuses and saddens me.
Maybe. Given I was born in the mid-late ’80s, my personal political awareness began in the glorious Howard years, so perhaps you are correct. Maybe some of the more venerable regulars can remember a day in which senior ministers lined up to tell the world how terrible the man they once chose to present to the Australian people as PM really is, whilst a supporter thereof (Kim Carr) talked of ‘threats’ and ‘intimidation’.
I’d suggest the idea that ‘the media’ are the primary precipitators of this spill, rather than, oh, you know, maybe, the actual politicians who have been working to such an end for the last year or so, is what is sad and delusional.
Perhaps, Jeremy, this is all just a matter of philosophy. What came first: the
chickenleadership ruction or theeggmedia reports thereof?I believe I addressed your question in the post.
In particular:
And if you think these sorts of tensions don’t exist in the Liberals, you’re dreaming.
Howie I had no idea you were so young, no wonder you’re so clueless…
You did seem to grasp there IS a chicken and an egg in this case, which as close as you’ll get i guess…its more like cart and horse.
Oh the irony, and this silly twerp has been attempting (limply i admit) to lecture everyone else about ‘projection’
Of course, Jeremy, but as I pointed out, with tongue in cheek @ 22, I don’t think this can be seen as just another relatively orderly reshuffle of competing ambitions within a political party, especially given the history: the sheer level of personal venom and under-handedness on display in the drawn-out Gillard-Rudd saga suggests this is, perhaps, something else.
The Liberal’s last change of leadership was, ostensibly at least, about policy. This on the other hand, appears to be about competing egos and little more. It would only seem right that the media should be reporting on such a poisonous state of affairs within the highest echelons of executive government.
I do so enjoy these fleeting warmer moments between us, Jonesy.
I know Howie, the young and inexperienced need lots of guidance..
That’s also a sign of immaturity.
Love like the term Paul Keating used to describe prematurely-old wingnuts: Young Fogeys. Lol
Random thought, listening to last night’s PM …
In the US, they have presidential primaries, and they try to do it well before poll because it’s fairly damaging to all of the candidates to see them being pilloried by sections of their own party.
In the australia, our candidates have decided to hold one of these while IN government.
To julez – it may well turn out that the original coup was a big mistake. Just among people I know, even labor supporters, that was seen very poorly. I can’t quite put myself in their heads to understand why, but that did indeed seem to put people very offside.
To kev – you’re right, gillard probably CAN’T win the next election, but that’s overwhelmingly due to somebody’s well-timed and damaging leaks to the press, and the endless speculation of leadership challenges.
I actually suspect that if both leaders worked together, they potentially COULD win the next election. But that’s not going to happen. I’m astonished to say that it’s possible that abbott might actually be the next PM, primarily because other party might be too busy fighting with itself to turn up.
What we have here is the prisoner’s dilemma in action.
Andy denies he’s part of any media beat-up of the Labor leadership tensions, because for one thing “if I wanted to help Tony Abbott, I’d wouldn’t want the unelectable Julia Gillard dumped.”
Yep, he wants Rudd to regain the Labor leadership because Gillard is “unelectable.” It has nothing to do with being able to say — finally, at long last — that he was right all along about Gillard being finished “
by Septemberby Novemberany day now.”Gillard has never given aid to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe — as did Rudd, according to Andy, among a raft of other horrors during his Prime Ministership. And yet still Andy believes Rudd is the lesser of two evils.
I’m not amused and saddened by those who are exaggerating the role of the media in current events, more frustrated. I wish my side of politics would get a bit smarter, rather than merely trying to be smart on the assumption that everyone else (politician’s and the general public) is stupid.
You are saying it was a beat up and the relentless media campaign is responsible for labor’s bad polling. This is to suggest that the majority of people are too stupid to analyse what they read in the media, and that politicians are too stupid to manage the way they are presented in the media.
It reeks of undergraduate cleverness and conspiracy mongering to see such an enormous role for the media in manufacturing political outcomes (NewsLtd is the mouthpiece of the illuminati!). Anyone would think that the media is a collective of smart, organised people working towards a cause, while politicians and the general public came down in the last shower.
I don’t mean to say there is no truth in what you are saying Jeremy, there is some. Its just that you exaggerate it. Its a truism to argue that the media could and should do better. But you take that truism and turn it into a conspiracy.
We all know what the media is like, and politicians are meant to be adept at managing the media, while the general public is a lot less stupid than you must believe if you are that concerned with the media’s influence.
In short, the media sensationalises, spends a lot of time on the mundane, or adds its own spin to the spin of those giving them the stories. However, this isn’t a media beatup. It is the long-term fallout of the decision to replace Rudd with Gillard, it is a story, and it is the result of the ALP’s mismanagement of themselves, the govt and their relationship with the media, not simply a beat up.
I thought Tim Dunlop’s piece was appropriately measured. He merely suggests how the media is being played by politicians, and how it is actually good to see the media writing about the uncertainties and challenges in trying to report this stuff. He didn’t argue that it is all a beat up.
The next meme out of the gate is that Gillard must win decisively to put leadership speculation behind the Government – yeah, right.
I seem to remember someone winning a leadership ballot by one vote, and someone who might have voted the other way being absent. Can’t . . quite . . remember . . .
@ SteveP:
You are saying it was a beat up and the relentless media campaign is responsible for labor’s bad polling. This is to suggest that the majority of people are too stupid to analyse what they read in the media, and that politicians are too stupid to manage the way they are presented in the media.
On polling you yourself say:
2. the ALP lost the battle in spinning the ‘lied about the carbon tax’ story.
3. the ALP lost the battle in spinning the spending to avoid financial crisis vs. creating debt.
“Lost the battle to spin” strongly suggests to me press involvement. Murdoch’s attitudes to Labor – and particularly the Gillard govt cooperation with independents and Greens – is well known. The editors at his outlets reinforce his views. Something like 70% of the media outlets in this country are News Ltd. You do the sums.
To me it does not directly follow that people are “too stupid”, it’s simply that if most of the daily headlines in all the major media outlets are all about Rudd v Gillard, for day after week after month, most people turn off politics altogether.
It reeks of undergraduate cleverness and conspiracy mongering to see such an enormous role for the media in manufacturing political outcomes (NewsLtd is the mouthpiece of the illuminati!). Anyone would think that the media is a collective of smart, organised people working towards a cause, while politicians and the general public came down in the last shower.
Again, your conclusions do not directly follow from the premise. I don’t speak for Jeremy, but I do agree with the thrust of his piece. It’s illuminating to see that the only people to mention “conspiracy” are you and Howard B. I don’t see any conspiracy and I doubt there was one. Nonetheless and as Dunlop points out, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind “that political reporting is hostage to a process that actively encourages journalists into potentially misleading their audience” and that the leadership “crisis” “only exists because of the way the media reported the issue in the first place”. That, combined with restricted media ownership and the willingness of some editors to act as mouthpieces for their employers, and the collaboration of journalists with each other (see Mr. Denmore) and some politicians’ incredibly fragile egos, means the mass media flogged what was originally a non-issue so persistently and loudly there was only one likely outcome. And of course they’ll now say “See, told ya”.
@fractious:
When I talk of spinning a story, I’m referring to the govt’s messaging vs the opposition’s, not the govt vs the media. The spinners are the politicians and their staffers, not simply the media. (although i would again point out the shades of grey here. I do accept that their is media influence on what happens, its just the level of influence that I dispute).
My problem with Jeremy’s view is that I think the influence of the media on debate and what happens is known and is bounded and obvious, and is not more significant than the actions/attitudes of the politicians themselves. Politician’s know how the media works (one would hope), as do much of the general public, and if the media is concentrating on particular political issues, then in one respect this is because the politicians have driven this, either intently (e.g. by leaking to the media) or by haplessness (e.g. by the govt has a whole not managing itself well). I think that much of the general public is astute enough to interpret the media they consume. I agree with Tim Dunlop that its nice for journo’s to give us the view ‘behind the curtain’ so we can see a bit how leaks/rumours are dealt with, and get an idea of the uncertainty and challenges. But that is a lot different to seeing current events as a ‘media beat up’, driven solely or even mostly by the media’s alleged focus on a ‘non-issue’ (i really struggle to see how the relationship between a prime minister and one of her key ministers is a non-issue, esp when that minister is a past and future candidate for PM, and when the current govt is polling poorly).
Jeremy has also written that the media should be focusing on policy, rather than this ‘non-issue’. I suggested that the ability of a govt for implementation is very important (as important as actual policy). Therefore, the choice of leader and relationships among important people in the govt is very important news, speaking directly to the capacity of the govt to implement good policy, and is therefore not a non-issue.
We might have to agree to disagree on just how significant the media has been, because I obviously think that the rudd vs gillard stories have become more frequent DUE TO the bad polling of the gillard govt combined with recent political history re rudd, whereas jeremy seems to suggest the opposite cause and effect – that it is the ‘media beat up’ that is causing the bad polls for the poor hapless ALP.
Cuppa – young fogeys was a term coined by Private Eye in the late 60s/early70s to describe the slighted faded/tawdry ‘bright young things’ just up from Oxbridge, like “Christopher Robin” & “Kingsley Amiss”.
Hear Ye, Hear Ye
Kevin Rudd again now a GREAT GUY. Yes that GREAT guy the mainstream media harassed out of office before..we want him BACK, because we believe the PUBLIC must only choose EL PRESIDENTE, not the party who actually DO THE GOVERNING.
Now we get to shoot him down again and pretend that was legitimate as well.
Brown Bob swallows it all, pretending its THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE
I think you might have confused me with Bob Brown pal
Nup there’s only one person on here stupid enough to use the ‘Juliar’
Nothing you say has the slightest shred of credibility when you talk like a gibbering talk back radio zombie troll.