Former PM Bob Hawke slams 'terrible bias' of News Corp election coverage

 

Former prime minister Bob Hawke has slammed the "absolutely terrible bias of the Murdoch press" during the election campaign, saying it is "unique" in his long experience in politics.

Photo: Bob Hawke, pictured campaigning earlier in the election, says the "absolutely terrible bias of the Murdoch press" is "unique" in his experience

Related Story: Rudd questions Murdoch's motivation for criticism

Related Story: Your say: Rudd vs News Corp

At a Labor fundraiser in Sydney last night, Mr Hawke said he had a lot of respect for coverage of Indigenous affairs by the News Corp-owned The Australian.

But he condemned the "absolutely terrible bias of the Murdoch press" in its election coverage.

"I do want to register in the strongest terms my regret at the absolutely loaded prejudice with which they have approached this election," Mr Hawke said.

"It does no justice to them and it does no justice to the democratic process."

Senior Labor frontbenchers have this week blamed negative coverage in News Corp Australia papers for the Government's slide in the polls.

Education Minister Bill Shorten said on Monday that The Courier-Mail and Daily Telegraph had been editorialising against Labor on their front pages since the start of the campaign, marking a shift in political coverage in Australia.

"We're seeing the Americanisation and indeed the Englisisation (sic) of our newspapers, where you're seeing a very strong political editorial flavour taken from day one," he said.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr blamed in part what he called the "media bias" from News Corp for Labor's position in the polls.

Senator Carr said he thought Labor's polling could recover, but News Corp is not giving the Government a "fair go".

"The corrosive effect of having derisory front page treatment of the Government every second day and flattering treatment of the Opposition every other day is very real," he told Lateline on Monday.

Former PM Bob Hawke slams 'terrible bias' of News Corp election coverage - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

We're no closer to seeing the Coalition's sums

By Greg Jericho

Photo: The Coalition has promised a surplus despite more spending and less revenue. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

The treasurers debate at the National Press Club today might be a good place for Joe Hockey to reveal whether his economic pillars are built on more than just sand, writes Greg Jericho.

Two weeks ago when I examined the Liberal Party's five pillars, there wasn't much to be found. So what is the state of play now, given that we have only a week to go till the advertising blackout, and on Sunday Tony Abbott launched the Coalition's election campaign?

Well, sad to say, Abbott in his campaign launch didn't refer to the five pillars at all. This in itself doesn't mean much because while the actual pillars were not mentioned, many of the components were. This is because the campaign launch speech, like all such speeches, was a political speech, not a policy one.

But in the past two weeks, while we have moved closer to the election, we are not all that much closer to seeing many details to the five pillars.

Take the first of the five pillars - manufacturing. When Tony Abbott released the LNP's manufacturing policy last week, he announced four new measures, the first of which was appoint a Minister for Trade and Investment whose central responsibility will be to attract trade and increase inwards investment into Australia.

Changing the name from Minister for Trade to Minister for Trade and Investment I guess is what has been missing all these years. It is heartening to know however he does plan to appoint a Minister for Trade, but given we have had one every year since Federation, I'm not sure if this is a game changer.

The next announcement was to build our manufacturing export base by progressively restoring funding to Export Market Development Grants starting with an initial $50 million boost.

This scheme is largely bipartisan and provides funding to assist businesses developing plans for export. In the 2012 Mid-year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, released in October last year, we saw the scheme cut by $100m over four years to notionally "retarget" towards emerging and frontier markets, with a focus on Asian markets. The Government attempted to paint this as a response to a 2011 review of Austrade (which administers the grants), but that review explicitly stated that the grants scheme would "continue unchanged".

After the MYEFO cuts, the Opposition pledged to review the changes. This promise delivers on that commitment.

The third measure was for another $50m for a "Manufacturing Transition Fund to provide assistance to communities and industries as they transition to new areas of manufacturing growth". This is not so much a manufacturing policy as a policy to deal with the decline of manufacturing.

And finally there was a commitment to "implement industry specific Strategic Growth Action Agendas". This apparently will "bring industry and government together to develop strategic, coordinated and long term plans for growth and viability".

Which sounds like a fair bit of piffle.

While the LNP manufacturing plan quite rightly points out that manufacturing employment has been hit hard since 2007, the reality is the sector has been declining in importance for the past 30 years:

The one policy announcement on Sunday that can be seen as a broad measure designed to cover a number of the five pillars was the announcement of interest free loans of up to $20,000 over four years for apprentices. The loans will only need to be paid back once the person earns more than $51,309 a year.

The loans are capped and weighted according to the year of the apprenticeship - $8,000 during the first year, $6,000 for the second and $4,000 and $2,000 for the third and final years respectively.

This weighting is sensible as it reflects that according to the National Centre for Vocational Education Research, 31 per cent of all trades apprentices/trainees who began their apprenticeship in 2007 dropped out in the first year:

The idea is a good one, and goes nicely with the Gillard Government's introduction last year of HECS/HELP applying to TAFE colleges. But it stops being a good idea if it is used as a reason to cut funding elsewhere. Similarly it's good for apprentices to have access to interest free loans, but should it become the start of a slippery slope whereby the costs of doing an apprenticeship are placed ever increasingly on the apprentice, then that would be a poor outcome.

The cost of the policy came in at $85 million. And of course all the costings have been released, coupled with a detailed explanation of how the policy will be funded.

That last sentence was a joke for you late comers to the election campaign. Of course we don't have details.

The ALP quickly went on the offensive by suggesting the Liberal Party would cut the trades training centres. This forced Christopher Pyne, who thus far had been quite equivocal on the issue, to release a statement announcing they have "no plans to shut down any of the Trade Training Centres that are in operation or cancel any projects that have been approved under the latest funding round".

He is much less clear about whether the Liberal Party will continue the program, which has another has another five years to run.

The main takeaway from the Mr Abbott's campaign launch speech however is that the Liberal Party, now comfortably in front in the polls, has thus far decided to keep it vague when it comes to cuts to programs and services. But cuts there must be.

In his speech he also announced that within a decade, the budget surplus will be 1 per cent of GDP, defence spending will be 2 per cent of GDP, the private health insurance rebate will be fully restored, and each year, government will be a smaller percentage of our economy.

That's a surplus despite more spending and less revenue. Something does not add up.

Between now and Saturday week, there might be some more nice policy announcements, but without explaining how it all will be paid, the pillars are built on sand. Today Joe Hockey is appearing at the treasurers debate at the National Press Club. It would be a good time to start shoring up those foundations.

Greg Jericho writes weekly for The Drum. His blog can be found here. View his full profile here.

We're no closer to seeing the Coalition's sums - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The truth is yet to bite them, and us

 

Peter Hartcher August 27, 2013

Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor

Illustration: John Shakespeare

At his campaign launch, Tony Abbott promised the world a ''no surprises'' government. Unfortunately, the world can't make the same promise to Tony Abbott.

While we've been immersed in a domestic election campaign, one event has emerged to threaten an incoming government with a pretty nasty surprise.

A major new wave of global financial turmoil has struck. It's hit the so-called emerging markets hardest. ''Emerging markets'' is the fashionable term for the most successful among what used to be called ''developing countries''.

Last week, India and Indonesia were the most obvious victims as their markets crunched and their governments hastily announced stabilisation packages.

But it's also damaged the markets of Brazil, Turkey and South Africa, and many smaller countries. ''There has been a great sucking of funds from emerging markets,'' as The Economist put it.

The value of listed shares in the emerging countries has fallen by $US1 trillion ($1.1 trillion) overall since May, according to Bloomberg. That's wealth investors thought they owned, but has now vanished.

In trying to manage the turmoil, their central banks have lost $US81 billion in reserves, calculates Morgan Stanley.

A Harvard expert on financial crises, Carmen Reinhart, says that ''it could get very ugly'' in these countries because they face rising risks of full-blown currency crises and banking crises.

One problem here is that these are the very countries that have been booming recently and are supposed to be supplying much of the world's economic growth for the years ahead.

Have you heard the trendy acronym for the big emerging countries that were supposed to buoy the globe - the BRICs? It stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China and it has been a byword for investor optimism and global growth for the past few years. It's been the theme of a thousand conferences.

It made famous the man who dreamt it up, a former Goldman Sachs executive named Jim O'Neill. Today, he says he's disappointed with all the BRICs, with an exception: ''If I were to change it, I would just leave the 'C.' But then, I don't think it would be much of an acronym,'' he told Dow Jones.

It's true that China remains reasonably robust. And with its capital controls and its vast foreign exchange reserves of $US3.5 trillion, it's largely impregnable to a crisis of capital flight.

But even mighty China is not immune to world events. ''If the current upheaval in key emerging markets were to threaten [the] global recovery, we would need to revise down our growth outlook for China,'' says an economist at the RBS, Louis Kuijs.

And the woman who runs the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, said at the weekend the evolving crisis could indeed harm the entire globe:

''Even with the best of efforts,'' she told a major gathering of global economic officials in the US, ''the dam might leak. So we need further lines of defence.''

Surely one of the clearest lessons of recent years is that no country is immune from financial crisis in another.

What's caused this sudden turmoil? Lagarde's dam metaphor is useful because it's all about liquidity. ''The emerging markets have been driven up in recent years by a huge tidal wave of liquidity flowing in,'' says the prominent international economist Ken Courtis.

''Now it's starting to move the other way, and you can't do that without breaking a lot of China.''

That money tsunami has come mainly from the printing presses of the US, but also from those of the EU and Japan. Together, their central banks have issued a staggering $US7 trillion of new money since the global crisis of 2008. They pumped this cash out as an emergency measure to try to aid recovery in their depressed economies.

It goes by the fancy name of quantitative easing, but it's just plain old money printing, creating dollars, euros and yen out of thin air, unconstrained, in unprecedented quantities. Investors put much of this new money, available at zero interest rates, into the emerging markets in hope of big returns.

Such monetary recklessness always has unintended consequences. One is the emerging crisis in the emerging countries. The Wall Street Journal on the weekend called it an example of ''the topsy-turvy world the Federal Reserve has created''.

One of the troubling aspects of this story so far is that the Fed and the other central banks have not even started to slow their frenetic money-printing. The movement so far is mere anticipation.

''I think everyone - Australia and everyone else - should understand that the crisis that started in 2008 with the bursting of George Bush's bubble is still continuing,'' says Courtis.

''The only prudent course is to be cautious, responsible, alert and prepared to respond quickly. Complacency in this environment is a recipe for creating lots of trouble for yourself.''

In Australia, Labor is guilty of complacency. Boasting of Australia's AAA credit rating, it has continuously been putting its planned return to surplus on the never-never. When it first made the promise, net federal debt was set to peak at 7 per cent of GDP. Now it's expected to peak at 13.

And the Coalition has made great play out of exaggerating Labor's debt and deficits, but is looking suspiciously like it will give us similar complacency. It made a hash of its budget plans at the 2010 election and has yet to show us its plans for this election.

All this is bad enough. But both parties have been carefully preserving a studied ignorance of the warning by the former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry that the national revenue base is permanently impaired and an incoming government will be stuck in a ''permanent process'' of cutting spending.

Put an international crisis on top of this and you can see the potential for some very unpleasant surprises.

Peter Hartcher is the international editor.

The truth is yet to bite them, and us

Coalition launch steps up attack in the trust wars

By Paula Matthewson Mon 26 Aug 2013

Photo: Trust me: Opposition Leader Tony Abbott speaks during the Coalition's election campaign launch. (AAP: Dan Peled)

From John Howards low-key entrance, to the heartfelt endorsement by Tony Abbott's daughters, the theme of the Coalition's campaign launch was clear: trust Tony, writes Paula Matthewson.

Trust me. That was the basis of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's pitch to Australian voters at the Coalition's election campaign launch on Sunday.

The man who has run the longest and most negative campaign in modern Australian politics flicked the switch to positive with a polished and assured rendition of his claim to the top job in comparison with Kevin Rudd's tarnished record.

With the strongest signal yet that most Australians vote on gut instinct at least as much as policy, the entire campaign launch focused on pushing the buttons of visceral voters, urging them to give Abbott the benefit of the doubt and put their trust in him on polling day.

The button-pushing started early with the relatively low-key entrance of Liberal eminence grise, former prime minister John Howard. Howard was seated prominently before the stage, providing the best camera angles for the mentor to be seen smiling approvingly upon his protégé, thereby conveying the not-so-subtle sub-text that Abbott's election would bring a return of the Howard 'golden' years.

Howard's presence said: "You can trust Abbott because he was part of my successful government and I believe in him."

The opening address by Queensland Liberal Premier Campbell Newman, was to dispel any bad juju left hanging over the federal campaign from his austerity drive after being elected in that state. At least one media commentator noted (a fact no doubt supplied by the Coalition's campaign team) that Newman still commanded a healthy lead in the polls, and by implication was a positive and not a negative for Abbott's election prospects.

Newman's speech said: "I am not a reason for you to distrust Abbott."

Deputy Liberal Leader Julie Bishop not only provided the light relief but also shouldered the responsibility for taking the personal attack to Kevin Rudd. In an amusing display which might have made the Chaser Boys regret helping Bishop find her inner comic during the 2010 election, the Liberals' most senior woman chanted the word 'remember' while reciting the recycled Prime Minister's flaws.

She also delivered two pivotal lines that must be playing well in the Liberals' focus groups; so well in fact that Abbott repeated them in his own address. "If [Rudd's] own party don't believe in Kevin Rudd and they've sacked him once why should the Australian people ever trust him in the top job again?" queried Bishop, leading up to the clincher: "Kevin Rudd assumes that this election is all about him. Tony Abbott and our team know, believe, that it is all about you the Australian people and we stand ready to serve."

Bishop's speech said: "You can't trust Rudd but you can trust Abbott."

Nationals Leader Warren Truss took to the podium next, partly to ensure that rural and regional Australia did not feel left out, but also to transition the mood of the event from negativity about Rudd to positivity about Abbott. Truss had the privilege of announcing the first policy commitment of the launch, one that heralded a number of other infrastructure promises. This suggests the Coalition is taking a punt that more votes can be won from new and improved roads and bridges than will be lost from their budget version of the NBN.

Truss built on the presence of Howard in the room, noting he and 15 former colleagues from the Howard era stood ready to serve in an Abbott ministry. "Proven competence versus proven incompetence" was how he described the choice facing voters between the Coalition and Labor.

Invoking Howard's "Who do you trust?" mantra from 2004, Truss's speech said: "You can trust Abbott and we won't let you down."

Then Frances and Bridget, two of Abbott's three daughters injected some homespun glamour into the launch, eschewing the autocue to read from notes about the man who had "helped us become the women we are today". Conferring this role on Abbott's daughters instead of his equally telegenic and articulate wife Margie suggests the younger women have been assessed by the campaign team to have broader appeal and may have a better chance of convincing younger men and women to vote for Abbott than Margie would have with women of her own age.

Frances and Bridget's speeches said: "You can trust Tony Abbott as we have done all our lives."

Finally, the Tony Abbott who took to the stage was the best we've seen of him yet: Abbott gave his supporters and potential supporters a glimpse of the prime minister he could be. Undoubtedly rehearsed to within an inch of his life, this Tony Abbott was a long way from the staccato Mr Negative we've seen since 2009.

In the tradition of opposition leaders before him, Abbott's speech remained light on costing details despite demands from the media and his opponents to provide them. He gave purpose and momentum to his 'positive plan' by detailing what would be done on the first day, within the first 100 days and by the end of his first term.

Abbott made a few strategic commitments including more support for seniors, encouraging more young people into trades, and recognising Indigenous Australians in the Australian Constitution.

But most significantly, Abbott committed to restoring trust in government. This is audacious considering Abbott's relentless negative campaigning is responsible for at least some of the community's loss of confidence in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Government. Equally, Abbott's pitch to restore 'trust in people' and vow never to seek to divide one person from another sits uncomfortably with some of the Coalition's most divisive policies such as that on asylum seekers.

Trust may well be a risky characteristic upon which to build the remainder of the Coalition campaign. As Labor Opposition Leader Mark Latham learned in 2004, this ephemeral quality has many interpretations and can swiftly be transformed from a positive to a negative depending upon who is more skilled at framing the debate.

On recent past performances, the Coalition is more adept at such campaign tactics, although Labor is more than competitive when not distracted by internal ructions.

But in the end it will likely come down to the two main contenders. It will be he who wins the 'trust wars' who will prevail on polling day.

Paula Matthewson is a freelance communications adviser and corporate writer. She has worked in communications, political and advocacy roles for the past 25 years. View her full profile here.

Coalition launch steps up attack in the trust wars - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Safety first: the mantra for the modern campaigner

By Mungo MacCallum Mon 26 Aug 2013

Photo: These days the campaign launch is just another painfully staged event on the way to the polls. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

There was little of substance to be found in Tony Abbott feel-good election campaign launch, but in this era of risk aversion, that was rather the point, writes Mungo MacCallum.

Campaign launches aren't what they used to be.

In the old days, the leaders launched their campaigns, as the word suggests, at the beginning, and they held big public meetings open to one and all in which interjections were welcomed, even encouraged. If there wasn't a lot of movement, colour and noise and even the occasional punch-up, the occasion was adjudged a failure.

And the launches were about something: the politicians were expected - nay, compelled - to reveal a detailed policy covering all the important points they would take to the election. Such policies were often hard to cost accurately, and in any case, in the times before deficits became anathema and surpluses sacrosanct, precise numbers were not considered vital: in all his years as prime minister Sir Robert Menzies never delivered a surplus and you don't hear Tony Abbott excoriating the founder of his party for this appalling dereliction.

Nowadays, of course, all the important policies were declared long ago, and, in Abbott's case at least, the costings have been fudged or concealed and are likely to stay that way.

The major launches used to take place within a day or so of each other, giving the voters and the commentators a chance to dissect and compare them before the real argy-bargy of the campaign got underway. And they were big news: all the radio and later the television stations covered them as a matter of course. But how the times have changed.

These days the campaign launch is just another painfully staged event on the way to the polls - something of an inconvenience, actually, as it keeps the leaders away from more telegenic venues and they are not allowed wear funny hats or molest babies for the hour or two that it takes.

Any form of spontaneity is of course a no-no - the whole thing takes place in a hermetically sealed bubble, under the kind of security you would expect at a high-tech weapons laboratory. The exact time and place of Tony Abbott's launch last Sunday was a closely guarded secret until the end: I could find no reference to it on television, or even Google, until Saturday night, and even then all we were told was that it would be somewhere in Brisbane.

Presumably the stringently vetted invited guests, the ones to be patted down by a goon squad after passing through the metal detectors, were given a little more notice, but alas, my own invitation must have got lost in the mail; so I sat down in front of the TV to make what I could out of this pseudo-happening. Frankly, I would have rather been at the beach, or even at the dentist; but political journalism can be a cruel game.

And it turned out to be all a bit déjà vu - much like Abbott's launch in 2010. First we had Campbell Newman to tell us how wonderful he is and how Tony Abbott isn't bad either; then Julie Bishop, who was actually quite funny about Rudd (she even told a mildly blue joke) before waxing lyrical about Abbott; then Warren Truss, proving once again why Barnaby Joyce reckons he will have no trouble taking over the leadership of the National Party.

And then a surprise, albeit one stolen from a previous campaign: just as Mark Latham's wholesome wife Janine was trotted out in 2004 to assure us that her man was really nice and kind after all, Abbott's wholesome daughters Bridget and Frances wafted on stage to go all mawkish about their dad. Well, it was a relief after Warren Truss.

And then, finally, the main event: the royal couple, Tony and Margie, smooched their way through the cheering crowds to deposit the dear leader on stage, where he spent just over half an hour telling us very little about anything.

There is a story that the veteran radio commentator Eric Baume once concluded one of his diatribes by asking his producer what he thought. Well, replied the candid functionary, it was all bullshit. "Ah, yes," replied Baume, no whit abashed, "but it was good bullshit." And the same could be said for Abbott's feel-good harangue, up to a point.

That point was reached when, after the usual condemnation of debt, deficit, budget crisis and reckless spending, he still did not have a word to say about his own gaping accounting hole, despite having added a lazy half billion or so to it in the course of his speech. At the time this did not matter much; he was among friends. The Channel Seven worm also showed general adulation, as did the station's vox pops, which gave him seven out of ten. But on reflection, they would want to: surely no one except supporters and masochists would have been watching.

Even at this late stage, Abbott was still asking the voters to take him purely on trust - to give him a go, to try something different, to change for the sake of change. The only real reason he was giving for the election of a Coalition government was that it couldn't be worse than the last lot.

And the polls show that while this will almost certainly be enough, there are still lingering doubts; the next day's Newspoll showed a slight but perceptible swing back to Labor. An aberration, probably. But on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's great "I have a dream" speech, surely we were entitled to more than just another wafflethon.

Kevin Rudd, we are told (well, actually, I happened to overhear it), is not planning his own launch until next weekend - with just a week to polling and, if history is anything to go by, the election well and truly won and lost. It is likely to be more like a wake than a call to battle.

But perhaps that's how politics is in 2013: lamentations for what might have been are to be preferred to the risks involved in vision and spontaneity. One of Abbott's own themes was not to expect miracles. We don't and we won't. Like I say, it's not like the old days.

Mungo Wentworth MacCallum will be writing weekly for The Drum throughout the campaign. He is a political journalist and commentator. View his full profile here.

Safety first: the mantra for the modern campaigner - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The market for votes in Batemans Bay

By ABC's Michael Rowland Fri 23 Aug 2013

Photo: Stallholders and visitors at the markets in Batemans Bay are more than happy to talk politics. (Michael Rowland)

In an electorate which is essentially a microcosm of Australia, voters tell Michael Rowland why they think Labor should get more credit on the economy and why they think Tony Abbott is misunderstood.

Batemans Bay retiree Peter Bashford has been proudly making intricate wooden clocks for 10 years. They are quite amazing works of art, and he sells them at a stall at the local high school markets on Sundays.

"This keeps me out of the kitchen," he says with a smile as he deals with customers. "I would be lost without it."

With time counting down to election day, Peter has yet to make up his mind whom to vote for in the bellwether seat of Eden-Monaro, but he reckons the Labor government has got a bad rap on its management of the economy.

"I think they have been very unlucky with the world circumstances they have had to deal with. You have just got to do the best you can," he says.

Although he says he's not impressed with the way things have played out in Canberra over the past few years, he's not sold on Tony Abbott.

"I would not trust the other people to guarantee what they talk about. He's negative. Far too negative. He's been like that all the time and he doesn't come up with any real solutions," he says.

Discussing politics on the idyllic Batemans Bay foreshore on a gloriously sunny day seems almost wrong, but stallholders and visitors are more than happy to weigh in. This is, after all, the electorate that has accurately reflected the national result for 40 years.

Former army officer Mike Kelly won the seat in the 2007 Ruddslide and managed to increase his margin, to 4.2 per cent, in 2010. Ex-Liberal staffer and business lobbyist Peter Hendy hopes the pendulum swings the other way on September 7.

Just across the way from Peter's tables of clocks is leather goods retailer Heidi Pohlsen. She has lived in Batemans Bay for 51 years and believes it's time for a change.

"I find a lot of the local businesses are struggling and a bit insecure about what the future is going to be. We need the Libs here in Batemans Bay," she says.

Chris Ruszala takes a break from the sausage sizzle to express his concerns about the local economy.

"There seems to be a lot of small businesses missing out here. We have seen a lot of businesses come and go. Restaurants change hands every year," he says.

He's leaning towards the Liberal Party and talks about a past connection with its leader.

"I know Tony Abbott from years ago when I first came to Australia and played Rugby at Manly (in Sydney). He played a bit of Union with Manly too," he says.

Photo: Discussing politics on the idyllic Batemans Bay foreshore on a gloriously sunny day seems almost wrong. (Michael Rowland)

Unprompted, Chris offers a free character assessment.

"I think he can be seen to be a bit tough around the edges and maybe not as diplomatic as he ought to be," he says.

"I think sometimes he can be a bit abrasive and that can give people the wrong impression, sometimes with the females as you know. But I think underneath all of that he is an honourable and decent family man."

There are other candidates of course in this critical contest and that is heartening news for Sunshine Bay plumber Geoff Frazer. He's voting for the Palmer United Party.

"I think we are going nowhere. It is more a protest vote I guess. Nothing ever changes," he says.

Geoff says he's sick of the broken promises and of politicians giving themselves big pay rises. Geoff believes Clive Palmer's policies resemble those of Pauline Hanson's in the 1990s.

"I was always a supporter of hers. It is unfair to call her a racist," he says.

The diversity of views is no surprise in an electorate that's essentially a microcosm of Australia. Stretching from the majestic south coast to the snowfields near Cooma with farmland in between, it is a lot of country for the candidates to canvass.

And that is why the result in Eden-Monaro will be one of the most eagerly anticipated on election night.

You can set your watch to it.

Michael Rowland has presented ABC News Breakfast since the launch of ABC News 24 in July 2010. View his full profile here.

The market for votes in Batemans Bay - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

When nobody agrees with what everyone's thinking

By Clementine Ford Fri 23 Aug 2013

Photo: To suggest that everybody and nobody might be helpful measurements merely asserts your own dominant ideology. (Getty Creative Images)

Everybody and nobody are one and the same. Both are useless forms of social measurement and yet this collective view seems to be directing political dialogue in this country, writes Clementine Ford.

"Is it only me," Lyle Cook of Shearwater, Tasmania asks the Herald Sun, "or is everyone sick of hearing the PM, the Finance Minister and the Treasurer constantly saying what Mr Abbott will do when he is PM?"

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that it must be left to someone to discuss what it is Mr Abbott plans to do when he's PM given that he refuses to do so himself, no Lyle Cook of Shearwater, Tasmania, 'everyone' is not sick of this. There may be others, but an army you do not make.

As (mostly) thinking creatures, it's natural for us to seek support for our own views by assuming they are confirmed by other rational creatures - rational of course because we believe our own philosophies to be naturally based on reason, and consider those who disagree to be tinkering with a less than full toolbox. This is how we come to hear ludicrously offered truisms asserting things like 'everyone' knows asylum seekers who come by boat are illegal bloody queue jumpers and as such 'nobody' wants them here.

Everybody and nobody are one and the same, and both are useless forms of social measurement.

Photo: Daily Telegraph front page from August 5, 2013 (Agency: Photographer)

Regardless, it's a philosophy that's been cynically employed by Rupert Murdoch's Limited News in the lead up to the election. It's no secret that Old Rupe wants to deliver Abbott into the prime ministership, whether or not for the much touted (although probably incorrect) theory that he wants to protect his Foxtel foothold from Labor's NBN or the much more likely explanation that he's just a deeply conservative old man who strongly supports similar (despite occasionally contradicting himself on even that).

Whatever the reason, the News Ltd press has been relying heavily on the idea that 'everybody' in Australia is sick of the Labor Government and their apparent mishandling of the economy, and 'nobody' will be voting for them this September.

The result is that, in a supposedly democratic country, we have an election campaign being conducted not by a political party but by the tabloid news company invested in their instalment. Worse, that tabloid news arrogantly disregards the proportion of the population who hold contrary views, deciding that such citizens are invisible and therefore undeserving of representation in a supposedly unbiased news force. Regardless of your political leanings, this is a monstrous abuse of journalistic power that should be recognised as such.

I understand passion. As an op-ed writer, it's my job to express opinions that are inflammatory to a proportion of people. I can't say there haven't been times where I've relished knowing how a particular turn of phrase might inspire fury in those with whom I disagree.

But there's a difference between assuming a binary of moral codes that one can argue for and against, and simply erasing opposition altogether. To suggest that everybody and nobody might be helpful measurements merely asserts your own dominant ideology without actually prosecuting your argument. As a silencing tool, it's both enormously effective and damaging.

To give a non political example for context, this practice of ascribing absolutes is still frustratingly employed to reinforce gender roles. Outside of satire, there's really no place for seriously argued theories that begin with the words, 'Everybody knows women/men are [insert whatever stereotype or prejudice the speaker holds]'.

The worrying compulsion to refer to this 'Every Australia' is driving a political dialogue in this country that's increasingly concerned with appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Similarly, it is intellectually baseless and often insulting to assume that desires stereotypically ascribed to one group are the only desires that count - as if those who sit outside this sample are so meaningless and irrelevant to the moral question at stake that they cease to even exist.

When Melbourne nightspot Red Bennies found themselves in a copyright tussle over a 'schnitz and tits' night, organiser Jeff Yates justified his support for the antique concept by saying, "Everyone loves a pub meal and a schnitzel and everyone obviously loves the second part of the product." In this case, 'everyone' was clearly meant to refer to not only a rigid ideal of masculinity but to reinforce the idea that these are the only opinions that count.

So back to the election and the general political atmosphere in Australia right now. The worrying compulsion to refer to this 'Every Australia' while ignoring voices of dissent is driving a political dialogue in this country that's increasingly concerned with appealing to the lowest common denominator. Technology has enabled a news cycle that recycles itself so often most people are informed by soundbites rather than reports, and it seems fewer and fewer people are prepared to look beyond the slogans being conveniently fed to them from all sides of politics.

Everybody knows the ALP can't be trusted to handle the economy. Nobody wants a Liberal government. Everybody cares about securing our borders. Nobody supports the carbon tax. Despite none of these things being explicitly true, they are repeated ad nauseam and accepted if not quite as facts, then at least as opinions that deserve to be respected despite their baselessness.

What we are left with are political opponents catering to such facile absolutes, delivering populism over policy to members of an electorate comforted by the reassurance that they are the norm, but who largely don't even care enough to investigate these issues beyond having a barely informed feeling about them.

And while it might be true that not everybody in Australia is guilty of such intellectually bereft political engagement, it's also true that this sample size is not nobody. If there are to be any exceptions to the rule, it is perhaps this - when absolutes, slogans and assumptions are repeated as facts (particularly where politics are concerned) everybody should be very worried because nobody wins.

Clementine Ford is a freelance writer, broadcaster and public speaker based in Melbourne. View her full profile here.

When nobody agrees with what everyone's thinking - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Zombie issues: Labor's baggage that just won't die

By Peter Chen

Photo: There are various explanations for Rudd's failure to thrive. (AAP: Lukas Coch)

While the Liberal campaign hasn't been without its problems, it's been the Labor strategists that are finding they can't get any traction. The wisdom of a last-minute leadership change is looking less smart by the day, writes Peter Chen.

For the ALP, the election is clearly not going as planned. With polling delivering bad news and Kevin Rudd at risk of losing his seat, his return to office looks to have delivered only the most transient of bounces.

Should their polling continue to decline at the current rate, the party will be close to the level that generated the final spill by election day.

While the Liberal campaign hasn't been without its problems, it's been the Labor strategists that are finding they can't get any traction. The wisdom of a last-minute leadership change - with this enduring damage to Labor's national brand as being infected by the "NSW disease" - is looking less smart by the day. "Better to have ploughed ahead and shown commitment to a team that had led a difficult minority government and delivered some hard policy decisions than look panicked and corralled by the Opposition" will probably be the refrain from us armchair generals on September 8.

There are various explanations for Rudd's failure to thrive. These include the tactical problem of recycling a leader with serious negatives that three years of only semi-abeyance has suppressed in the public mind, but not eradicated. It has only taken a short time and some reminders of Rudd's private temperament and policy leadership style to refresh memories of why Labor started dipping into the thirties in 2010.

But history shows that comebacks are achievable. Even though they both have heads you can draw with a compass, Rudd is very different to his first predecessor. Howard's two terms away from the Liberal leadership gave him a chance to disown his negatives very effectively. Remember his stance opposing Asian migration and the ironic moniker of "honest John": The treasurer who failed to deliver his promised fistful of dollars? Me neither. Howard used the time to reposition himself as an older, wiser leadership figure for 1997 election. Given the way Abbott has been channelling the Howard government as an exemplar of a golden age, it looks like six years of distance is all that is needed to fire-break the past.

One of the most significant factors plaguing Rudd, however, is the inability of Labor to spike two issues that have dogged it constantly: refugee arrivals and budgetary management. These were policies that Abbott had been running rings around Gillard for most of her term and have clearly been common "spontaneous recall" top-of-mind concerns among Labor's focus group members.

Recognising this, Rudd attempted to shut these issues down from day one of his return. Following the strategy of "neutralising negatives" used in both politics and advertising (a tendency to highlight, rather than hide the weak parts of your product) he blind-sided the left by adopting the new Pacific solution. This allowed him to play to the concerns of once heartland seats, while also foregrounding his mastery of international relations. The latter remains an Abbott question mark that's yet to get much of an airing in the campaign, in stark contrast to Kevin Rudd who is set to deliver a foreign policy speech tomorrow at the Lowy Institute. This also gave Rudd a good position to demonstrate a willingness to listen to the backbench as the new collaborative boss and, most importantly, to spurn the Greens.

The shift on carbon pricing was an even bigger crap sandwich for Christine Milne, a relationship that appears to be all free-kicks for the ALP. Rudd knows that, unlike the Democrats who could cut their preferences either way, there's nowhere else for the Greens to go. This is evidenced most recently at the Green's official campaign launch where Christine Milne has continued the line that a vote for the Greens is "double value" because it elects Greens Senators while reducing the likelihood of a Senate dominated by the Liberal-National Coalition.

In this area the Greens haven't been wedged as much as pile-driven into a crack on the pavement, with all the resultant visibility of surface filler. Milne might have been better served by publicly cornering the Governor-General and arguing Labor had lost confidence of the House to grab some airtime before the election kicked off.

But for all Rudd had managed to dominate the media cycle between his return to office and announcement of the election, these issues haven't stayed down the way he must have wanted. Irrespective of Labor's proud history of the instigator of the mandatory detention regime, Howard's decade in power has allowed the Liberals to "own" punitive asylum seeker policy. Rather than let the new PM swoop in to claim the issue, Abbott pushed back aggressively and hard - even if that has meant occasionally dipping into his own nut jar to pull out stinkers like the "rupiah's for rowboats" buyback scheme.

The budget's been an area where the ALP could have better traction, but for some reason they're unwilling to argue the case. The Bowen-Hockey Q&A debate last week would have been a good place for the Government to turn around the "school halls" sledge by appealing to parents across the nation who've never seen a new building at their school during the time their kids have been there. While carbon pricing and global instability has a slightly ethereal quality to it, some of the bricks-and-mortar initiates could be defended with people looking for practical policy ideas rather than talking about new economic models in an age of fluctuating global capital markets. The former is campaigning to middle Australia, the latter is something best left for your next Monthly article. If Rudd's going to cop the negatives of his term, he should at least attempt to turn around some of the positives: but instead the title of "infrastructure Prime Minister" has been taken by Abbott.

Overall, the Government hasn't got the supercharger of campaigns: momentum. A new leader might have been able to pull it off with a clean slate and some clear air. Gillard might, as with the second half of the 2010 campaign, have built it up. But Rudd's policy negatives just haven't gone away and the momentum is all on the other side. Maybe the man who must be PM will heed Howard's ghost: two terms. Wait two terms.

Peter John Chen is a politics lecturer in at the Department of Government at the University of Sydney. view his full profile here.

Zombie issues: Labor's baggage that just won't die - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Tony Abbott's 'shut up' remark: strategy or impulse?

 

Paula Matthewson theguardian.com, Thursday 22 August 2013

Far from being the pivotal point at which the election swings Rudd's way, it's more likely Abbott's comment was a tactical move that will benefit him

'Does this man ever shut up?' asked Abbott during the debate.

Earlier this week, Guardian Australia’s Lenore Taylor speculated whether opposition leader Tony Abbott’s blokey and non-PC language is a deliberate strategy to appeal to certain voters. She may well be right. I’ve thought the same about some of Abbott’s so-called gaffes.

If there’s one thing the Coalition campaign team knows how to do better than Labor, it’s to tap into how voters think and feel, and to make connections with them in a way that delivers the coveted number one on ballot papers come polling day. This is predominantly due to the work of Coalition pollster Mark Textor, who has perfected values-based communication over the past 250 campaigns on which he’s worked.

That’s why it’s important not to misinterpret last night’s "Kevin’s a windbag" moment – during which Abbott asked "does this man ever shut up?" during his debate with Rudd. Far from being the pivotal point at which the election swings Rudd’s way, it’s more likely to be a tactical move on the part of the opposition that will benefit Abbott.

How? Didn’t Abbott’s exasperated plea demonstrate that Rudd had penetrated Abbott’s steely veneer?

Well, no. It’s more likely Abbott was deliberately reflecting what focus groups are saying about Rudd – that he’s the same old "talk under wet cement" technocrat they remember from his time as prime minister. The spontaneous applause that followed Abbott’s remark reinforces this interpretation.

This is the key to Abbott’s campaign – to ensure voters remember what they don’t like about Rudd. The Coalition campaign is focussed on "helping" voters realise they’d rather take a chance on a guy they feel vaguely uneasy about than the one they know for sure is a nasty, aloof, prolix bureaucrat with a tendency to make ill-considered and politically expedient decisions that can have serious implications. You could call it the reverse “devil you know” effect.

Meanwhile, Rudd is doing the opposite, trying to turn voters’ gazes away from the shambles that was his government and his culpability in the ugly destabilisation of his successor. Initially Rudd tried to do so by delegitimising Abbott’s negative approach, promising to end the "wall to wall negativity", but this vow has begun to ring hollow since Labor’s campaign advertising has taken an increasingly negative tone.

Rudd has also hamstrung own positive pitch for the future by downplaying Labor’s traditional strengths in health and education, because drawing attention to the Labor government’s accomplishments in these areas would likely rekindle voters’ memories of Julia Gillard (and not in a good way for Rudd).

All that is left for Rudd is to shatter voters’ perceptions that an Abbott government would be more economically responsible than a Rudd government.

But even more than that, Rudd’s success on polling day depends on voters buying his story about the future. Abbott’s depends on them repudiating Rudd’s vision on the basis of his tarnished track record. Former Rudd media adviser Lachlan Harris suggested as much on the night of the first leaders’ debate.

The problem for Rudd is that voters may have already stopped listening to him. This is suggested by Abbott’s improving approval rating and his closing the gap on Rudd as preferred prime minister.

Rudd needs a breakthrough moment, undoubtedly, to catch voters’ attention again. But it will take a lot more than a mis-speak from Abbott (particularly when it is really a calculated jibe) to make that happen.

Tony Abbott's 'shut up' remark: strategy or impulse? | Paula Matthewson | Comment is free | theguardian.com

Tony Abbott reveals latest measures to 'stop the boats'

 

Jonathan Swan National political reporter August 23, 2013

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has again used the harsh rhetoric of former prime minister John Howard in announcing yet another plank to the Coalition's asylum seeker policy.

The ''regional deterrence framework'' to stop asylum seekers travelling by boat through the region, which Mr Abbott announced at a press conference in Darwin on Friday, includes ramping up the AFP presence in Indonesia and a boat buyback scheme.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and Coalition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison announce another part of their asylum seeker policy. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

''We run this country and we decide who comes here,'' Mr Abbott said told reporters.

But the government has ridiculed the plan, labelling it ''crazy''.

Under the policy, if elected, the Coalition would:

• Provide $67 million to support joint operations with Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Malaysia to disrupt people smuggling through international deployment of specialist Australian Federal Police officers;

• Implement a $20 million program with the International Organisation for Migration to enlist Indonesian villages to support people smuggling disruption, including a capped boat buy-back scheme that provides an incentive for owners of dangerous vessels to sell them to government officials, not people smugglers;

• Appoint a special envoy for Operation Sovereign Borders to focus on facilitating international cooperation on the Regional Deterrence Framework;

• Seek to establish transit zones within the region to facilitate the transfer of asylum seekers to offshore processing facilities, preventing entry to Australia.

• Invest $27 million to prevent drowning at sea through increased aerial surveillance and offer up to $71 million to boost search and rescue response capability of Indonesian authorities within their search and rescue zone;

• Supplement our border protection fleet with commercially leased vessels to support patrol operations including offshore processing transfer

Opposition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, said the Coalition’s announcement on Friday was ''putting substance to what regional co-operation means''.

Labor's approach was about ''processing people and drawing people through the region'', while the Coalition's was ''focused unashamedly on deterring people'', Mr Morrison said.

Mr Abbott rejected suggestions that his boat buyback scheme could stimulate Indonesia's boat-building industry, saying it was ''much more sensible to spend a few thousand dollars in Indonesia'' than to spend millions processing asylum seekers once they arrive in Australia.

''It's a common sense measure . . . to cut off this evil trade at source,'' Mr Abbott said.

But Immigration Minister Tony Burke has described the Coalition's boat buyback scheme as ''simply crazy policy''.

''We are talking about a buy back scheme in a market of three quarters of a million boats,'' he said.

''Of all the mad ideas I have heard in immigration I think the boat buy back wins.''

Mr Burke also suggested the Indonesia government might not be thrilled about the Coalition making a ''unilateral'' decision to send thousands of federal police officers onto the ground in Indonesia.

He was also scathing that aspects of covert operations were detailed to the media for Friday morning's newspapers.

''Principle one of covert operations is you don't drop them to the media,'' Mr Burke says.

Mr Burke says it's a ''clever media line [that] is sort of a match up to the kindergarten child who runs around saying 'I've got a secret do you want to hear it'.''

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Friday that the Coalition's latest announcement was ''genuinely interesting policy, this one''.

''Mr Abbott's plan to have . . . [a] three-star general sitting at the end of a jetty with a cheque book to buy back fishing boats in Indonesia'', was as irresponsible as the Opposition Leader's $5.5 billion-a-year paid parental leave scheme, Mr Rudd told a press conference in Penrith on Friday morning.

Labor frontbencher Bill Shorten also rubbished the plan.

''This is crazy. The opposition are getting desperate,'' Mr Shorten told reporters in Melbourne on Friday.

''Wait until the news gets out throughout South-East Asia that if you've got a leaky unsafe boat that the Australian taxpayer is going to buy it off you.''

Later on Friday, Mr Morrison defended the buyback measure, saying the aim of the policy was to help with operations, to allow particular boats to be targeted for purchase to disrupt smuggling ventures.

He said the fund would also allow authorities to offer bounties for information and would be directed by intelligence "boat by boat".

Earlier on Friday, Mr Morrison said: ''If we can stop people coming, and transiting through the region, we can stop them coming to Australia.''

''The minute a boat leaves Indonesia or Sri Lanka, every option for Australia gets more expensive and dangerous for all involved. This is about dealing with this challenge up the chain before it presents at sea.''

Most of Australia's covert disruption activities, disrupting the movements of asylum seekers, would be conducted on land, he said. ''Once someone gets in a boat it all gets harder,'' he said. ''It gets more dangerous and harder to stop.''

But Mr Morrison acknowledged he had not had formal talks with his counterparts in Indonesia, Malaysia or Sri Lanka, and said finalising the types of agreements he wanted to establish in the region could only be done from government.

The policy follows Mr Abbott's announcement last month that he would appoint a three-star military commander to oversee as many as a dozen government agencies responsible for border security, and another after that with a punitive policy for those who have already made it to Australia, in a bid to deter others.

with Bianca Hall, Daniel Flitton

Harsh rhetoric used again as Tony Abbott reveals latest measures to 'stop the boats'

Opposition boat buyback 'mad': Labor

 

The federal government has ridiculed Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's plan to use taxpayer's money to buy decrepit boats from their Indonesian owners to stop them falling into the hands of people smugglers.

Labor is so confident the plan is dud it even risked comparing it to the government's own failed "cash for clunkers" scheme.

The boat buyback is part of a new $420 million regional deterrence policy Mr Abbott has added to the coalition's arsenal of options to "cut off" the people smuggling trade if it wins government.

Under the plan announced by Mr Abbott in Darwin on Friday there will be funding of $67 million to increase the presence of Australian Federal Police in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.

Almost another $100 million will be spent to boost the aerial surveillance and search and rescue capacity of Indonesian authorities and $198 million to boost interception and transfer operations.

A so-called $20 million community engagement program will pay and equip Indonesian village "wardens" to provide intelligence about people smugglers and there may also be bounty payments for information leading to a conviction or major disruptions.

Part of $20 million will also be used for the capped boat buyback scheme to encourage Indonesian boat owners to sell their decrepit and unsafe boats to government official rather than smugglers.

Mr Abbott did not say how much would be paid for each boat.

"It's much better and much more sensible to spend a few thousand dollars in Indonesia, than to spend $12 million processing the people who ultimately arrive here," he told reporters.

"It is a commonsense measure that will give our people, working in cooperation with the Indonesian authorities, more to cut off this evil trade at source."

Labor frontbencher Bill Shorten labelled it a "sea-going version of cash-for-clunkers".

Under prime minister Julia Gillard, the government offered car owners up to $4,500 to trade in their old gas guzzlers for fuel-efficient models before scrapping it in the face of severe criticism.

"This is crazy - the opposition are getting desperate," Mr Shorten told reporters in Melbourne.

"Wait until the news gets out throughout South-East Asia that if you've got a leaky unsafe boat that the Australian taxpayer is going to buy it off you."

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the "interesting policy" was economically irresponsible.

"Mr Abbott's plan to have ... a three-star general sitting at the end of a jetty with a chequebook to buy back fishing boats in Indonesia is about as irresponsible as his plan for a paid parental leave scheme which gives $75,000 to millionaires," he told reporters in western Sydney.

Immigration Minister Tony Burke accused the coalition of not consulting with other countries on its plan to deploy more AFP officers offshore.

He also dubbed the boats buyback a "mad" idea.

"Indonesia is an archipelago, Indonesia has one of the largest fishing fleets in the world," he told reporters in Melbourne.

"We are talking about a buyback scheme in a market of three quarters of a million boats.

"If you were to do it, I have no doubt at all it would be great for the ship building industry of Indonesia."

Opposition boat buyback 'mad': Labor

Tony Abbott unveils Indonesian boat buy-back scheme

Lenore Taylor, political editor

theguardian.com, Friday 23 August 2013

$440m regional plan to combat people-smuggling includes Indonesian village wardens and $20m to buy fishing boats

Tony Abbott and the shadow minister for immigration, Scott Morrison, at a press conference in Darwin. Photograph: Mike Bowers/Global Mail

Australia will spend up to $20m on buying fishing boats from Indonesians who might otherwise offer them to people smugglers and on “bounties” for villages providing information about people-smuggling activities under a $440m “regional deterrence” policy announced by the Coalition.

The “village watch” program would be undertaken with the International Organisation for Migration and would pay a “stipend” to “wardens” in villages along the Indonesian coast who act as an intelligence “eyes and ears on the ground”, a “capped” amount for fishing boat buy-backs and “in exceptional circumstances” bounty payments for specific information that leads to people-smuggler arrests.

The policy also says a Coalition government would “seek” to deploy Australian federal police to Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka to work with local intelligence officers against people smuggling and allocates $67m for this part of the policy.

“It’s much better to spend a few thousand dollars in Indonesia than spend a few million dollars processing the people who arrive here,” Abbott said, announcing the policy in Darwin.

But Kevin Rudd ridiculed “Mr Abbott's plan to have … [a] three-star general sitting at the end of a jetty with a cheque book to buy back fishing boats in Indonesia”.

And the immigration minister, Tony Burke, said boat buy-back was “simply crazy policy” because there were at least a quarter of a million fishing boats in Indonesia.

“Of all the mad ideas I have heard in immigration, I think boat buy-back wins,” he said.

Abbott said the Indonesian embassy had been “informed” about the plan and there was “no reason to think the Indonesians won’t be prepared to work co-operatively with us” because “it is Indonesia’s interest to stop the boats”.

But Burke said informing an embassy after a policy had already been leaked to the media was no way to treat a regional neighbour.

“They talk about deploying Australian federal police – just think if another country said they were sending their police force to our country to conduct their operations,” Burke said.

Abbott said the policy would also include:

• Giving $27m to Indonesia for its aerial surveillance and up to $71m for its search and rescue capacity to boost Indonesia’s ability to rescue asylum seekers within their search and rescue zone.

• Seeking to establish “transit zones” to which asylum seekers could be directly transferred before being taken to offshore processing centres so that they never arrived in Australia.

• Appointing a special envoy to work on deterring people smuggling with regional governments.

• Leasing commercial vessels to help border patrols and to help transfer asylum seekers to the “transit centres”.

The shadow immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, told commercial radio on Friday that “it costs Australia around about just under $13m every time a boat turns up in Australia. Taking the preventative action and giving the federal police, the Indonesian national police or as well as over in other countries, this option to be able to go and get that boat and go and take it out and scuttle it and take it out of the hands of people smugglers is just another way.”

Tony Abbott unveils Indonesian boat buy-back scheme | World news | theguardian.com

More Irish migrants coming to Australia

By Gillian Bennett

Related Story: Means-testing for school fees of 457 visa holders

As Ireland's economy struggles to recover from the global financial crisis, more Irish than ever before are coming to Australia.

According to figures from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 40,000 Irish people made Australia their home in 2011 and 2012 with 5,000 people settling here permanently.

Irish heritage minister Jimmy Deenihan says Australia's visa system makes it a popular target for young Irish professionals looking to establish their careers.

"There's a very friendly visa system that encourages young Irish qualified people and also skilled people to come to Australia," he said.

"People with PhDs, people who are highly skilled ... so it's a big gain for Australia but it's obviously a drain on the resources from Ireland.

"There’s huge connections here (in Australia) in the political world, in the education world, in the medical world and in industry.

"Irish people feel very comfortable coming to Australia because they know there’s a very positive welcome for them here.

Mr Deenihan says the Irish government is now looking to lure migrants back home."

"Now we are on a recovery trajectory, and hopefully some of these young people that are here in Australia, many on a temporary visa, will have the opportunity to return to Ireland, he said.

"That's the present government's ambition."

Around 50,000 holiday makers and backpackers from Ireland visit every year.

New wave of migration echoes colonial past

This new wave of Irish migration is an echo of Australia's colonial past.

Tens of thousands of Irish left the country for Australia in the decade after the great famine of the 1840s.

Author Tom Keneally says these migrants were ostracised.

"Towards the end of the great famine there was a build up of orphan girls so they were sent to Australia," he said.

"A hysteria developed ... they were the boatpeople of the 1840s and 50s, the lowest of the low, orphan kids who had seen terrible diseases ... and they had a huge impact on Australia because they now have hundreds of thousands of descendants.

"The famine cast a long shadow."

These migrants shaped Australia's political and cultural life.

By federation, up to a third of Australia's population were Irish migrants or their families.

"The Irish brought with them a profound sense of politics and they knew what social justice was," Mr Keneally said.

"They also brought a certain raucousness that people mistook for lowness of soul."

Economic woes driving Irish exodus

Ireland has in recent years returned to one of the top ten source countries for permanent migrants.

The Irish are now the seventh largest group choosing to settle in Australia, after India, China, the UK, the Philippines, South Africa and Vietnam.

This time around it is professionals who are leaving.

Four times the number of temporary skilled visas were granted to Irish citizens in 2012 compared to 2008.

Ireland's economic woes are driving this trend.

After a decade and a half of strong growth and investment that saw Ireland nicknamed "the Celtic tiger", the global financial crisis hit hard.

Ireland went into recession in 2008 and one year later the economy shrank by seven per cent.

Thousands of workers lost their jobs as the unemployment rate jumped from under five per cent to over 14 per cent.

Irish expats happy for work but struggle to build life in Australia

Construction worker Dot O'Gorman is one of those who came to Australia looking for work.

After a working holiday in Australia he returned home to Ireland in 2008.

Unable to find any work, two years later he decided to settle in Australia.

"In Ireland I could only get bits of work here and there," he said.

"Every day my girlfriend would go to work, and I would sit at home and watch TV with no work.

"You just get fed up. You're not getting anywhere in life."

He says if the economy does improve he will return home, but there is no sign of that yet.

Some Irish migrants struggle to build a life in Australia.

Counsellor Orlaith Sheill first came here for a backpacking holiday, and decided to stay.

She says some migrants feel grief and even anger at their homeland, for not being able to support them.

"Psychologically, the impact of migration is huge, the feeling that you don't have a choice versus gratitude that you can have a fresh start," she said.

"We cannot underestimate the guilt at saying goodbye, both for those who leave and for those who stay."

She says in a small country like Ireland, community ties are strong between families and neighbours.

"We're a very loyal people and to leave is disloyal and that is a hard burden to carry," she said

More Irish coming to Australia than ever before, according to Immigration figures - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Top women break ranks on Abbott

Joanna Mather and Mark Ludlow PUBLISHED: 20 Aug 2013

Carol Schwartz, a key adviser to the federal government on gender issues, wants to see more money go towards making childcare affordable. Photo: Craig Abraham

Some of Australia’s most prominent women voices support Tony Abbott’s controversial paid parental leave scheme but they warn it will not have the desired productivity uplift unless childcare is made less expensive.

Melbourne University Publishing chief executive Louise Adler said Mr Abbott, labelled a misogynist in Parliament by former prime minister Julia Gillard, was to be congratulated for his new attitude to paid parental leave. “I’m in favour of anything that assists families to be with their children,” she said.

Carol Schwartz, a key adviser to the Labor federal government on gender issues, was less concerned about the cost of the scheme than ensuring more money goes to accessible and affordable childcare at the same time.

And leading academic Eva Cox rounded on fellow feminists to declare their “shrill” criticism of Mr Abbott’s policy was the product of their personal dislike for the would-be prime minister.

Mr Abbott is under attack from within his own party and among his traditional business supporter base after revealing the Coalition’s parental leave scheme will cost $10 billion in the first two years and then $5.5 billion annually once fully operational.

The price tag, which will be paid for via a levy on big business to be offset by a cut in the company tax rate, has detractors questioning his promise of prudent economic management and a return to surplus as soon as possible.

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief economist Greg Evans said the scheme would no doubt benefit small businesses, which could offer staff more generous leave without being hit by the levy.

“We would have preferred, especially in the current circumstances, perhaps a more modest scheme.” he said.

Adler published Abbott’s book in 2009

“We understand the policy intent is to create greater workforce participation, allow more women to get back into the workforce and the like. We certainly agree with that but . . . a more modest scheme could have also done the job.”

Ms Adler published Mr Abbott’s 2009 book, Battlelines, in which he revealed he had – much to the consternation of other Conservative politicians – come around to the idea of paid parental leave. “I was very impressed when he committed to that,” she said.

“If we want the skills, productivity and intelligence women bring to bear, then we have to have family-friendly workplaces.”

However, she is not convinced that women earning top dollar need as much support as lower to middle-income earners.

“I’m not sure that women earning $150,000 a year need the same level of financial support that people who are on $50,000 need,” Ms Adler said.

“Those of us who are earning well can manage our lives with greater ease than those who are not earning enough. I would suggest maybe it’s tapered off, but the principal of paid parental leave seems to be extremely important and I congratulate both parties for their commitment to it, but particularly for Tony Abbott who has taken a personal interest.”

Professor Cox remains fully supportive of the Abbott scheme amid the criticism of recent days. She said the Coalition’s scheme was good policy, but many in feminist and Left circles were against it simply because it was being proposed by the opposition leader.

“It’s not even political, it’s personal,” she said. “There’s a lot feminist groups that are so anti-Abbott that they are objecting to this because it’s come from him. “

Childcare policies failing

Ms Schwartz is the foundation chairwoman of the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia and was in January appointed to lead consultations with business and other interest groups on the reporting requirements for the federal government’s workplace gender equality reforms.

She said childcare policies had failed under both of the major parties, and called on governments to support in-home care by nannies as an alternative to traditional child care places.

“The cookie-cutter approach that this government and previous governments have taken to childcare is really inappropriate,” she said.

“That is where we miss out on GDP growth by having more women participate in the workforce.

Brisbane mother-of-two Danielle Kalpakidis said she supported paid parental leave but believed the Coalition’s scheme, which could pay up to $75,000 for six months off, was too generous and favoured working mothers.

Ms Kalpakidis, a former teacher who is a full-time carer for her two children (aged two-years-old and nine months), said the parental leave policy would not sway her vote. “I absolutely support paid parental leave but I think the $150,000 [limit in the Coalition policy which allows a $75,000 payment plus superannuation] is a bit ridiculous because it could be better spent elsewhere in more useful policies,” she told The Australian Financial Review.

“Because I’m a stay at home mum I’ll only receive $3000 bonus and the difference between $3000 and $75,000 is quite huge. It is skewed towards working women.

Policy considered ‘middle class welfare’

“If I was working I could see the benefit but it’s not enough to encourage me to go back to work because I would like to stay home and look after my children.”

Ms Kalpakidis said she considered the Coalition’s policy as “middle class welfare” and did not encourage her to have any more children.

The former teacher, who is currently on unpaid leave, received the federal government’s 18 weeks’ maternity policy on top of the standard 12-week public servant maternity policy after the birth of her first child.

“It was very helpful to our family. But I won’t be benefiting from any new policy being a stay at home mum,” she said.

She said she would prefer the extra money going to stay at home carer.

READ NEXT:

• Coalition unrest over parental leave
• Jennifer Hewett | Expect the tone to get lower
• Editorial | Abbott’s parent pay unaffordable

The Australian Financial Review

BY Joanna Mather

Joanna covers national affairs from our Canberra bureau.

 

Top women break ranks on Abbott

Kevin Rudd commits political gaffe as he is pictured in front of Hitler

By Jonathan Pearlman, Sydney 23 Aug 2013

Kevin Rudd, Australia's prime minister, has made the basic campaign gaffe of appearing against a backdrop of pictures of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini at a school in Sydney.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd spoke to students at Bede Polding College with posters of Hitler, Mussolini, Rommel and Einsenhower on the wall in Bligh Park in Sydney Photo: ANDREW MEARES/SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

The posters of dictators and other Second World War leaders were part of the school's project on war history but were evidently not spotted in time by Mr Rudd's advance campaign team.

"Don't mention ze poster," declared the headline at news.com.au, while the Sydney Morning Herald said: "It was the sort of disastrous photo opportunity that political advance parties are supposed to do everything to avoid".

The somewhat ominous backdrop came at an unfortunate time for Mr Rudd, who has long faced concerns about his own dictatorial leadership style and fiery temper. He was ousted by Julia Gillard during his first term as prime minister in 2010 and openly accused by senior ministers of being a traitor to Labor values and "a psychopath with a giant ego".

Earlier in the day, he was labelled "Mr Rude" on the front-page of Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper after being accused of acting poorly towards the woman who did his make-up before a televised debate this week.

Mr Rudd is trailing the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, in the polls and faces a seemingly impossible battle to win the Australian election on September 7. A Fairfax poll, to be published tomorrow, shows Mr Abbott's Liberal-National coalition has stretched its lead to 53 to 47 per cent against Mr Rudd's Labor party.

But the prime minister has not given up the fight.

"We entered this election campaign as underdogs," he told Channel Nine. "We have just under two-and-a-half weeks to go in this campaign ... and I intend to take the argument up."

Mr Abbott, a London-born former boxer and volunteer surf lifesaver, spent the morning doing a session of basic training with elite soldiers in the Northern Territory.

"If I'm bent over double for the next few days of the campaign, you'll know why," he said.

The soldiers were reportedly impressed, though Fairfax Media noted that "the Vladimir Putin-type vigour clearly took it out of the 55-year-old".

Mr Abbott has been ridiculed for plans to spend £12 million buying ramshackle fishing boats in Indonesian villages to ensure they are not used to bring boat people to Australia.

Labor described the plan as “a maritime version of cash for clunkers”, saying Mr Abbott would need to buy more than 726,000 vessels for the plan to have an impact in thwarting people smugglers.

“Indonesia is an archipelago,” said Tony Burke, the immigration minister. “Indonesia has one of the biggest fishing fleets in the world.”

Mr Burke said the money would merely boost the shipbuilding industry in Indonesia.

But Mr Abbott said it was a “common sense” plan and that spending a few thousand dollars in Indonesia would save millions of dollars in processing the asylum seekers’ applications in Australia.

Kevin Rudd commits political gaffe as he is pictured in front of Hitler - Telegraph

Kevin Rudd trails in his own seat in shock poll finding for Labor

Lenore Taylor, political editor

theguardian.com, Thursday 22 August 2013

Exclusive: Guardian poll finds Rudd struggling to hold previously safe Queensland seat of Griffith

Kevin Rudd: cancelled local debate appearance. Photograph: Getty Images

Kevin Rudd is trailing Liberal rival Bill Glasson in his apparently safe Brisbane seat of Griffith, in alarming news for Labor from the latest Guardian Lonergan poll.

Glasson, who is running an intensive local grassroots campaign, leads Rudd on a two-party preferred basis by 52% to 48%. The poll's margin of error is 4%, but its findings raise the possibility that without a big effort on his home turf, Rudd could become the third prime minister in Australian history to lose his seat, behind John Howard in 2007 and Stanley Bruce in 1929.

It raises a dilemma for Labor strategists who need to salvage Labor's national campaign but also give Rudd time to campaign in his seat. Rudd was criticised for pulling out of a local candidates' debate in Brisbane on Thursday night because he was campaigning interstate.

"This shows Mr Rudd needs to be very conscious of what is happening in his own electorate. He needs to focus on the battle as well as the war," Lonergan research managing director Chris Lonergan said.

The poll of 958 Griffith voters, taken on Wednesday night as Rudd and Coalition leader Tony Abbott debated at the Broncos leagues club in Brisbane, found Rudd had 38% of the primary vote, down from the 44% he achieved in 2010, with Glasson on 47%. The Greens candidate was on 11%.
The poll asked voters how they had voted in 2010 and found that nearly a quarter (23%) who voted for Rudd in 2010 intended to vote for Glasson on 7 September. Of those who voted for the Liberal National party in 2010, 84% intended to do so again this time.

Swing in voting intention in the seat of Griffith Illustration: Lonergan

It found the return of the local candidate to the prime ministership had made little difference to how his own constituents intended to vote.

Among the respondents 29% said Rudd's return had made them more likely to vote Labor, 24% said it had made them less likely and 47% said it had made no difference.

The poll found the economy was by far the most important issue for voters in the electorate, nominated by 47%, with 56% saying they thought the Coalition was best to handle the economic decision-making, and only 39% preferring Labor.

Responses to the question: "Which one of the following will have the most impact on how you will vote in this Federal Election? Illustration: Lonergan

Of those polled, 27% said leadership was the most important issue, with 48% saying Abbott had positive campaign messages compared with 35% who said the same of Rudd.

There were 10% who said asylum was the most important issue, with 58% saying the Coalition was best to handle it and 32% preferring Labor.

Of those questioned 9% said education was the most important issue. Labor led on this issue, with 49% saying the ALP had a better policy and 44% preferring the Coalition.

Responses on various issues

Labor

Greens

LNP

Which party do you think would be the most effective at stopping asylum seekers from arriving in Australia by boat?
32%
11%
58%

Which party do you think would treat asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat in the most humane manner?
25%
40%
35%

Which party do you trust the most to manage Australia’s Economy?
39%
5%
56%

Which party do you think has the best education policy?
49%
8%
44%

Abbott has campaigned in Griffith, which Rudd holds with a margin of 8.5%, and made a point of bringing Glasson, an ophthalmologist and former head of the Australian Medical Association, to Wednesday night's debate. He referred to Glasson's outstanding qualities when asked about the standard of political candidates.

Rudd had been scheduled to debate Glasson at the Brisbane Powerhouse on Thursday night, but cancelled and was instead scheduled to appear on Channel 10's The Project. Labor senator Claire Moore will appear in his place.

Behind in the national polls, Labor has rebooted its campaign this week, launching negative ads about Abbott's yet-to-be-released policy costings and alleging the Coalition's spending cuts will fall on essential services such as health and education. Rudd was more aggressive and confident in Wednesday's debate, again concentrating on Abbott's "cuts".

Glasson, who was pre-selected in September last year, has an enthusiastic band of local supporters, who dub themselves the "Glasson Gladiators". Rudd has held the seat since 1998.

Kevin Rudd trails in his own seat in shock poll finding for Labor | World news | theguardian.com