The Oz has been sipping Abbott’s kool-aid
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With The Australian’s new wizz-bang website, comes problems for my computer. ‘A script is not working on this website’ announces the error message. ‘What would you like to do — ‘continue’ or ‘stop script’?’ But, of course, you can’t stop the script with The Australian. This morning they were out in force to announce the return of the Abbott through the city gates, shouting heahs and hosannas, with Dennis Shanahan back in his happy place.
It took George Megalogenis to put a little water in the Kool-Aid (I sometimes think they keep him on in the office as a reality tester — “should we stick our tongues against the radiator bar? Would that be dangerous?” “how the hell would I know — I have no contact with reality. Let’s ask George”. “Don’t stick your tongues against the radiator bar” “OK thanks George”). While the vote in haute-bourgeois sections of Higgins went for Clive Hamilton in quite staggering ways, in more conventional middle-class areas, the old Labor vote split evenly between the Greens and Libs, with half of it going back to Kelly “Tracey Flick” O’Dwyer. This tells us a bunch of things we already know — that Labor is a coalition of two forces, a socially conservative suburban vote (formerly working class, now middle class, in consumption terms) and a distinctly left formation, and that on key issues these two forces are poles apart. Indeed, part of that split may be the old Catholic DLP rump, or their children — unwilling to support the current DLP because it has been taken over (or revived) by medievally far right, and an influx of the Lyndon LaRouche mob. Whether any Green would tempt them across is worth asking, but we can be pretty sure that a neo-Puritan austerity roundhead like my good friend Clive Hamilton would not do the job. But but but … here’s the big question. How does that 50-50 split match previous Labor Green preference flows? If the Labor-Green leakage was previously significantly smaller than 50%, then this vote is a one-off refusal — I’ll let my prefs flow to whoever you want, but I’m not going to make my first preference someone who is so inimical to my basic cultural and political sense of the world. The Labor vote split prompted the most hysterical reaction of all from Glenn Milne — on the evidence of it, it seems likely his brain is being affected by that cheap hair dye he uses on his reverse mullet. Assailing an irritating and now infamous article about Chadstone shopping centre by my good friend Catherine Deveny — in which consumers rather than consumerism became the target of the criticism — Milne gleefully observed that the Chaddyites were not lemmings, as Deveny had observed. Had they been they would have followed Clive Hamilton all the way over green gulch. Say what now? Deveny’s point was that people at Chadstone were wreathed in consumerism (a point she made in a fairly elitist way, but anyhoo). Hamilton’s argument was that the planet was dying of over-consumption among other things. If anything, the Chadstone vote rather makes Deveny’s point. But any idea that a 0.3% swing towards them is a victory for the Liberals in Higgins is nonsense. To really think about what’s going on, we have to step back and try and imagine that someone such as Hamilton had contested Higgins 20 years ago. Let’s face it, in terms of Nick Minchin’s charge that the greens and climate change are simply anti-industrial new leftists, Hamilton is straight from central casting. He believes that Western society needs to be radically reconstructed, that democracy may need to be suspended to do this, that eco-crisis is simply the outer form of a wider spiritual crisis and that there is a deep ethical metaphysics one can tap into to find “the Truth”. His writings hold more hostages to fortune than Colombia’s FARC, including a long disquisition on the ethics of bestiality. Had he stood without Labour in Higgins a generation ago, Hamilton would have got 5%, and possibly sectioned. The fact that he can get a third of voters to put him first is surely a deep rip in the legitimacy of the Liberal Party as a mainstream outfit. It reminds me of the famous World Cup qualifier where San Marino held England to 1-0 until half-time, causing one commentator to remark that “I have just realised we are losing to a mountain-top”. Whether a more acceptable celeb candidate — a Rob Gell type — would have done the deal for the Greens in Higgins remains to be seen. You work with who sticks their hand up, and Malvern Road would not come to the mountain-top, so the mountain-top came to Malvern Road (I’ll unpack it later, Mark Day). But it says nothing about the wider acceptability of Tony Abbott in a full-bore landslide. The Australian has shown signs of being a real newspaper before the Abbott elevation. This is no time to restart the script. |
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13 Comments
I reckon. Did you read Christopher Pearson’s tripe on the weekend? I forgot how annoying he is. There is a lot of deeply wishful thinking among commentators at The Oz at the moment …
In fact this will guarantee the next election for labour
The libs will drink the kool aid and being cheered on the the aus loose all sense of caution and reality.
Also do the Nats still want to roll back the various land clearing restrictions?
I posted a comment on Shanahan’s article this morning. To the effect:
“You seem to be claiming that the Libs consciously made Abbott their leader. This is totally at variance with the facts.”
They don’t seem to publish comments any more?
Clearly, the whole lot of them are delusional.
I must say I am enjoying listening to Tony though. Rudd’s anodyne new-speak is really beginning to get on my pip - actually it’s gone well beyond that. If Malcolm started his own small ‘l’ party I can promise him one convert.
Is Shanahan a Catholic? Maybe Turnbulls brand was too liberal for our Dennis. Certainly with Shanahan proclaiming the new Liberal messiah, there must be a feeling of togetherness. As a left footer myself I prefer Turnbulls attitude. But to each his own, the Oz makes a big deal of this mornings poll, dont think Rudd is a quivering over his breakfast. Abbott has already opened the big yappa and made a fol of himself and he determines the length of the rope he has. Or perhaps its Minchin?
Abbott is getting a very good run in the press — witness Bob Ellis saying what a great bloke he is the other day. And he might be, too. It’s his propensity to foist his morality on the rest of us, his naked lust for power (a typical Tory) and his plain backward views on climate disruption that are the problem.
The perspicacity of Rundle, in yesterday’s National Times.
“Now, socially speaking, the (Liberal) ”wets” have become a tsunami. Knowledge, culture, education and policy work are at the heart of our economy and society, and its practitioners at the heart of urban Liberal seats. Their attitudes - global, networked, relativist to a degree, ideologically flexible - make them left-liberal to an extent that brings them into fundamental conflict with the current Liberal Party…”
Can’t get much wetter than Higgins and Bradfield.
So Rundle blames Hamilton, “my good friend.” Clive Calvin is now recognised as a “puritan Roundhead”. Now why didn’t you say that before the election, Rundle? The incestuous nature of Tossopolis generates awkward conflicts of interests, right?
You’re paid to be an independent commentator.
And what about Bradfield? The Lib there makes Ruddock look like a pole dancer. And the Green candidate was excellent. Made bugger-all difference.
The “global, networked, relativist…ideologically flexible” Liberal denizens of inner-suburban Tossopolis sound….very like you, Guy.
Stop looking in the mirror. You’ll go blind.
I’m more interested to find out who has replaced GG as the right-wing Deep Throat in Treasury ? You could imagine the Pearsonic hysteria if a left wing mole had been smoked out ! I prefer total suspicion over selective paranoia. You can respect the commitment of the barking mad. Sham indignation reduces any argument to devious and disingenuous sophistry.
33% is a serious chunk of primary vote for any ‘minor’ party. It’s a pity Clive won’t walk the whole electorate in time for the next federal election. He might win it at his second try.
F*ck it’s hot weather out here in the north western regions of Sydney. It’s like moving to Darwin in the so called cool season.
“Can’t get much wetter than Higgins and Bradfield”
Nonsense. Bradfield has never been a particularly “wet” seat in terms of its voting behaviour. The Democrat senate vote - a pretty good measure of wetness in their day, was much lower there than in seats like North Sydney, Warringah, Mackellar or Wentworth.
Higgins is certainly more small l liberal (a more accurate term than wet I think), but other than the south-western corner, its still less so than Kooyong or Goldstein.
Rundle was right both times. A lot of Labor voters didn’t vote Green because, as he says, “Labor is a coalition of two forces, a socially conservative suburban vote (formerly working class, now middle class, in consumption terms) and a distinctly left formation, and that on key issues these two forces are poles apart.” These by-elections provided some sort of measure of those two groups in a certain sort of seat.
OTOH, quite a few Liberals did vote Green in each seat, as we can see from studying the swings in the more Liberal parts of the seat. This was a much smaller group than the ALP voters who abstained by not showing up, but enough to be an interesting confirmation of the gathering trend Rundle was referring in that previous article.
Stephen: “A lot of Labor voters didn’t vote Green because…”
Remarkable percipience, “knowing” why they didn’t vote X or Y. Tea-leaf psephology.
Read Rundle again- he blames Savonarola Hamilton-Knox for alienating liberal Liberals. (Although I asked him repeatedly, he kept his mouth firmly shut until after the election before dumping on his Good Friend).
We’ll have to wait and see if the notion of a Liberal split based on Rundle’s pop sociology has any merit. I can imagine Turnbull storming off and forming a sort of Napoleonic Australian Democrats, but not a 50-50 division between the simian Right and those who look uncannily like Rundle: global, flexible, networked etc etc.
This is cruel, but Guy makes Alain de Botton look like an intellectual.
Thank you Luntz.
Frank, 43 caption entires and all this malarkey, we get it. You’re lonely. We’re here. It’s all right. Now you have to take the pills while I’m here, so I can see you’ve taken them.
Treating Crikey like a primary school playground might piss Beecher off, Guy. Not what you were hired for.
Are you trying to shrink Crikey?
Answer the questions.
I always enjoy Guy’s take on matters, both domestic and international, whether or not I agree with him. Seems like that’s the perfect journo! Prompts some work in the grey matter, but makes you see a new perspective.
I can’t be the only formerly-Liberal voter that finds these right-wing nutters now on the Front Bench to be totally remote from my values. Climate denial, seriously dodgy economics, far too much religious influence (anything more than zero is too much in my book); just can’t see anything there worth voting for.