Canberra Report: Monday July 26
27 days, 14 and a half hours… but who’s counting?
This week we’ll continue the water torture election, leaders will fly around the country, announcing announceables and kissing children for photo ops limping toward Aug 21.
Dripping into Brisbane this week the Opposition’s campaign heads north, while Gillard’s will head to Launceston as they criss-cross the country.

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Article by James Chessell published in the Australian  July 21st 2010

IT seems Work Choices is the political equivalent of a cockroach.

When all other issues lie dead under a pile of post-apocalyptic rubble, Work Choices will still be scurrying around, nibbling on the corpses of conservative politicians. It is impossible to kill.

Tony Abbott’s failure to make industrial relations a non-issue has a broader context. Like the cockroach, Work Choices is the result of years of evolution. The policy finished off John Howard but its ancestors have been damaging Coalition campaigns for the best part of 20 years.

Its antecedents can be traced back to Jeff Kennett’s decision to abolish penalty rates and leave loadings for Victorian public servants after his 1992 victory. Kennett promised to keep these conditions during the campaign and reneged a week after the opposition leader John Hewson and then industrial relations spokesman Howard launched Jobsback during the federal campaign.

Hewson’s failure to sell the GST is widely credited for his drop in popularity in November 1992. But he argues it was industrial relations panic that brought him undone. “Kennett’s unilateral decision immediately called into question the credibility of our commitment of ‘what you’ve got you’ll keep’,” he wrote in 1998.

The former Victorian Liberal premier’s influence goes further. During his final term, consultancy Essential Media Communications came up with a campaign for the Australian Education Union to combat his plans to close schools. The campaign was a success and in 2005 EMC crafted Your Rights at Work.

The only other Coalition leader to genuinely embrace industrial relations reform during the 1990s was West Australian premier Richard Court, who lost the 2001 election after reinvigorating the WA union movement. Read more »

The election media landscape has changed forever, the revolution will not be televised.

Gone are the days of one-way election communications, the traditional print and television campaigns of the major parties may have become larger, slicker and more targeted, but they are still functions of the throw it at the wall and see what sticks mentality.

Survivor, Masterchef, Australian Idol started the participation craving, the web and social media gave it a voice. We all want to be heard, to judge and to vote someone off this island. We want to sit on our couches watching news channels or political commentary shows, not talking to our (un)loved ones, but tweeting out live commentary to our new family, the masses. #justsayin

The next day watercooler conversation is dead, colleagues, friends and networks have already torn every issue apart, judge, jury and executioner. And shouldn’t it have always been this way? Read more »

First published on The Punch 20/7/2010

With the major parties flexing their muscles on border protection, the Australian public has sent Canberra a message that it is the protection of Australian jobs that is the real security issue for them.

In what looms as the sleeper issue for the 2010 election campaign, a quarter of all voters placed “Australian jobs and the protection of local industries” as key election issue, behind only economic management and health.

As the latest Essential Report shows that economic protectionism towers over headline-grabbing issues like climate change, asylum seekers, housing affordability, industrial laws and population growth as a priority election issue.

Q. Which are the three most important issues in deciding how you would vote at a Federal election?

Essential Report

What is striking about the high rating for protecting Australian industries is that it comes at a time of relatively low unemployment and a period where there has been little or no media attention on Australian jobs being sent offshore.

Instead the issue is emerging from the grass roots, the thousands of Australians in manufacturing industries – and a growing number of workers in white-collar industries like the banking sector – who see their jobs under threat from lower wage economies.

And while our leaders can crow about “turning back the boats”, 25 years of economic deregulation makes it very hard to turn back the corporate people smugglers.

It is an issue where the Liberal Party, with its knee jerk support for big business, pledges to cut government spending and reductions to the size of the public sector is struggling to gain any traction.  While it leads on issues like managing the economy and asylum seekers, when it comes to Australian jobs, people trust the ALP to the tune of 42 per cent to 28 per cent. Read more »

Canberra Report: We have a contest

Like people turned around in a leaky boat, with the engine and all the passports cut, the Government seems a bit out of its depth on the issue of people fleeing asylum from war.

Although ‘6 months in a leaky boat’ may as well be lyrics to a crowded house song, a week on the policy was enough to almost sink her.

Gillard’s got a gun, and it’s on a boat, but the finger on the trigger seems a little shaky as she sets the sights for an election. Talk is she could go by Thurs before the Bill Shorten’s mother-in-law goes o/s for some d/t.

What is clear is that the ALP is framing this election as a choice.

A choice between someone who understands that asylum seekers are no big deal, and a choice between someone who wants to get the navy to shoot them in the face.

A choice between someone prepared to do something about climate change and someone who is going to listen to the communities concerns that the whole thing is a beat up.

A choice between someone who is going to slug the miners so we can invest in everyone, or someone who can do a respect and appease the miners.

A choice between Julia Gillard and Julia Gillard.

And no one is being racist.

Except Tony Abbott. He does like races, but he’s definitely racist. He hates women too. And holidays. And baby animals.

Climate change action will be on the agenda this week with Bob Brown’s at Press Club and it being the outstanding item on the government’s to do list.

The rub in the media is announcements on climate change and an election on the weekend with Aug 21 or 28.

Stand firm people, Paul Howes is no Paul the Octopus and Abbott’s still a chance in this election.

Pig’s arse, I mean John Elliott, Chris Evans Minister for Immigration and the lovable poodle Christopher Pyne are on Qanda.

As we continue to lose the troops in Afghanistan, at least we are starting to win at sport again.

Mark Webber who according to some can’t turn left, won in Silverstone GP, and Cadel Evans, the biggest whinger in sport is winning the tour.

And Spain, who are broke, won the World Cup.

While few of these things actually happened in Canberra, would you rather hear about the Raiders next weekend?

First published on The Punch 6/7/2010

There is a wildcard hanging over the upcoming election, a factor outside the control of the any politician – it resembles an angry fish, and it is looking for someone to bite.

Question: Over the next 12 months do you think economic conditions in Australia will get better, get worse or stay much the same? Source: Essential Report

It is the long-term trend line on people’s economic confidence, and it shows that after we sounded a collective sigh of relief last year, we are beginning to fear the worst again, a sense of economy insecurity that can affect our work, our home lives – and the way we look at politics.

The story of the fish charts the highs and lows of first term Labor, it also offers some tantalising clues about what happens next. Why a fish? As the graph above shows, the competing stories of confidence and despondency have taken a wild journey over the past two years.  With fear surging as the GFC hit, curtailing as stimulus stabilised the economy, but now rising again.

Kevin Rudd inherited a nation fearing the worst – the US sub-prime was not just a theory – big banks collapsed, homes were lost, mass lay-offs. As the word ‘contagion’ was bandied around – it emerged that many Australian local councils had unwittingly invested in the toxic loans to bad security risks. Economists warned us of our unsustainable levels of household debt. The notion of economic carnage in Australia was real.

Read more »

When we set up facebook ads for the WA Prison Officers Union campaign we didn’t expect the interested audience to reflect such a polarized gender divide.

Contrary to our assumptions; that risks faced by Prison Officers would be interesting to men, the overwhelming response to our facebook ads were from women.

In the first few days, the hit rate was to 331 women : 2 men.

And this was from a pool of 260,260 possible impressions.

We’ve since lowered the budget for targeting men and upped the budget for ads targeting women with our Respect the Risk facebook ads.

One week down the track and the results continue to shine with the estrogen-domination that our political leadership change has reflected! Read more »

Election speculation. Election speculation. Election speculation.

How can Sepp Blatter go on?

Will Howard hang on when there seems no hope of winning, especially when the people voting for him don’t want him?

Can Kristina Keneally really get elected just cos she’s hot?

Right now the media in Canberra is focused on one thing: the timing of the election.

But despite all the speculation, finding the answer seems obvious – ask an Octopus.

Yeah that’s right, Octopi may well be the new way in research, given that Paul, the genius psychic Octopus in Germany, is a tipping freak having nailed five out of five German games in the World Cup.

This hot tipping streak could be useful in Canberra this week as freezing cold temps and uncertainty about an election debate pervade the landscape.

The mining tax now buried off the front pages, the Government has to work out what to do with the ad spots it can’t cancel.

Having declared that she has ‘anxiety’ about boat people, expect Gillard to throw the issue of asylum seekers overboard this week in preparation for an August election. Thursday marks the end of the three month period in which Sri Lankan and Afghanistan asylum seekers were refused acknowledgement so expect something before then.

Just a thought: Perhaps we’d be more welcoming if people trying to come ashore claimed to be attempting to circumnavigate the globe, rather than simply seeking asylum.

Funnily enough, Gillard came in a boat – as did many of our forebears – and therefore we may want to think about some of the ‘anxieties’ we’ve caused those before us – given that it is NAIDOC week.

And speaking of undue levels of anxiety, Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry is in the Press Club on Wednesday. So much anxiety. Whatever happened to our relaxed and comfortable country?

Tony Burke, George Brandis, the Crabb, and Graham Morris are on QANDA tonight, with former Democrat’s leader and Gareth Evan’s confidant Cheryl Kernot – who will no doubt remind you that if you get in trouble, change sides.

If you want answers, ask the right questions. If you want the right answers – ask an Octopus.

Paul, the psychic German Octopus