Crikey

“Where’s Donkey?”

Employment Minister Joe ‘Shrek’ Hockey copped heaps during Question Time yesterday, which is pretty much what you can expect when you let Kerri-Anne Kennerley make an ogre of you on daytime TV. But the jovial frontbencher may get the last laugh.

Some recent poll findings (the standard by which these matters are judged in this strange pre-electoral phase), reported in The Oz:

The June 2007 Sensis Consumer Report, released today, found just 28% of Australians believe WorkChoices would have a negative impact on them, down from 36% in the previous quarter.

The survey, which interviewed 1500 people between April 30 and May 28, also found fewer than one in five people believe they have a thorough understanding of the new workplace laws … “unchanged in the past quarter”, the report said.

People don’t understand WorkChoices, but slowly they are coming to the view that things will probably be OK. Vindication, surely, of the Prime Minister’s decision to put the avuncular Hockey in charge, replacing the sterner sell of former workplace relations minister Kevin Andrews. 

A sign perhaps that while the public might not be listening to the conservative message, they are still in touch with deeper senses, like apprehension, fear, reassurance and calm. The medium is the message.