Who said this campaign was boring?
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“There is a real danger at present, because of the rolling political controversy about myself, that Mr Abbott is simply able to slide quietly into the office of the prime ministership,” declared Rudd, in his first press conference since his PM ousting. Yes, despite pledging to Phillip Adams on Wednesday night that he didn’t seek to serve as a distraction on the trail, Kevin Rudd blew Tony Abbott’s health announcement out of the water yesterday with a press conference announcing his intention to hit the hustings. There is talk that Gillard and Rudd will be out and about together on Sunday, stealing attention from Abbott’s Liberal party campaign launch that night. But is Rudd the hero stepping in to save Gillard’s campaign or a ghost who’ll continue haunt her? Rudd’s reinventing himself, writes Phillip Coorey in The Sydney Morning Herald: “In this saga so far, Rudd has been the martyr and the villain. Now he wants to be seen as the white knight.” What do we do with three leaders? asks Paul Kelly in The Oz: “…Rudd presents himself as the saviour of Labor’s fortunes — an event of far-reaching and unpredictable consequences. There has never been an election like it. With each day it’s more about Kevin.” The Oz editorial doubts his messiah-like abilities: “Casting Mr Rudd as Labor’s saviour stretches credulity.” Perhaps Gillard should have kept him hidden? “Unfortunately for the prime minister, Rudd’s campaign is likely to be no less destructive than when he was kept in the background,” says Dennis Shanahan in The Oz. Hogging the spotlight won’t impress Gillard, argues Tony Wright in The Age: “Rudd had stolen another day from an election campaign with only a bit more than two weeks to run.” Bringing in Rudd is just proof that Gillard is desperate to get the focus back on Abbott, says Dennis Atikins. “That has been Labor’s core strategic aim — to shape the debate around Abbott — and getting Rudd to join in this effort is the last shot they’ll have at hitting the target,” he writes in The Courier Mail. At least he’s trying. “One figure close to Ms Gillard claims Mr Rudd is, in his way, genuinely trying to make peace. If he thunders around Queensland looking like a prime minister, so be it,” reports Katharine Murphy in The Age. Many in the commentariat thought Rudd’s slick performance underminded Gillard. “Throwing off his white sheet before slipping into his Superman underpants, Rudd appeared to be saying: ‘Stand back, Julia, and watch how this is done,” says Samantha Maiden in The Oz. The Age editorial agreed: ”…Rudd delivered a performance so prime ministerial that anyone who had been in a coma for the past couple of months could be forgiven for thinking he was still in the top job.” Was he proving himself as a better leader than Gillard? “Albeit not in so many words, Rudd was saying, ”Look, Julia isn’t up to this fight.” Which she may not be,” writes Michelle Grattan in The Age. ”The woman who was installed because Labor powerbrokers thought Rudd could not win the election is now struggling to hold things together and cling to power.” It’s not just Gillard who needs to be worried, warns Andrew Probyn in The West Australian: “Kevin Rudd has made the first dent in the duco of Tony Abbott’s election year Hummer.” Rudd wasn’t taking questions yesterday, but The Courier-Mail has five for him, including “Do you want to be prime minister again?” and “Do you trust Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan?” All this focus on “the Prime Minister, the Opposition Leader and the prime narcissist” is taking the spotlight off “the bit players who could hold the balance of power in the lower house: the Greens and the independents,” writes George Megalogenis in The Oz. The polls might not be positive for Gillard but Peter van Onselen offers a historical perspective in The Oz, that “of the 25 federal elections Australia has had since World War II the government of the day has won nine out of the 10 closest results.” Just in case you were wondering how the campaign was playing out in different papers around the nation, The Oz has an interesting article, where it counts how many negative and positive articles about the leaders have appeared in the papers. “The Australian has been more critical of Tony Abbott than The Age. The Herald Sun in Melbourne appears to be treating well the hometown favourite Julia Gillard but all newspapers around the country have been mostly negative of both leaders in this election campaign.” “A strange narrative has developed during this federal election campaign: that it is somehow boring,” notes Leo Shanahan in The Punch, as he offers up 10 reasons why it is not. Who said it was boring? Phillip Coorey nicely sums up the mood of the day: “This election campaign may have been uninspiring but it is a long, long way from boring.” |
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41 Comments
Having Kevin alongside Julia is Julia admitting she is a failure and needs propping up.
The Greens and Climate Change has been drowned out, if not snuffed out of the campaign. Their campaign launch last weekend, was a non event really.
@Astro,
And having Turnbull along side Abbott says ???
@ DSF
I have not seen Turnbull next to Abbott at all? Where have you seen it?
“Underminded”
Aside from that, have others noticed that Gillard is now using Rudd’s method of asking and answering the question herself more often?
Julia Gillard has just conceded she is on training wheels.
She wants us to elect our first amateur hour PM.
If she can’t campaign, she shouldn’t lead.
If Labor wins, Rudd should be PM, and Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan should be sacked.
@John
agree 100%, but that wont happen (Gillard / Swan sacked)
@John,
“She wants us to elect our first amateur hour PM.”
No, if you listen a bit more carefully she is actually campaining AGAINST Abbott.
BER Report not good for Gillard..
5 - 6% inflation on building projects
270% more complaints that Gillard said they would have.
Not enough transparency on cost data.
and this despite the fact they had Labor staffers on the Orgill team.
Here’s a set of clippers; some of you guys here are never gonna fly with those huge
right wings dragging you down.
Never let the facts affect your rants. Both Julia and Kevin and even the content of a baby’s nappy are better than Phoney Tony and his geriatric or loony front bench at the helm.
A good result in this election would be the destruction of the Libs such that all the entrenched old nasties get tossed out and give the Libs a chance to build a new and decent party that supported the punters rather than the rich.
What sort of politics is it to tear down all the reforms and things being built just because the other side built them?
Astro….crap.
@Robertson,
Are you serious? If my own home renovations only overran by only 5% I’d think I was the world’s best project manager.
And a satisfaction rate of over 97%?
Who do you think you are fooling?
You guys can cross the BER off your list of things that might save Abbott’s bacon.
Hmmm, on the labour side we have former Prime Minister Rudd campaigning for the Government and Gillard as PM, on the Liberal side we have former PM Fraser stating that Abbott and the Liberals should not be elected as they are not ready to govern.
Oh and Oscar, you are probably right, I doubt Abbot and Turnbull would actually campaign physically together, they hate each other too much for that. I was sort of assuming they were campaigning for the same side though.
Howard’s late call up to boost the fortunes of the Liberals reminds me of the time our ageing and rather senile dog brought one of her long buried bones into the house. The stench of rotting flesh assailed our nostrils when we got home……and the stains on our new carpet took ages to remove……..actually I can still make them out now……….Lol!!!
One guesses that your home renovations ain’t running into the millions and billions anytime soon. And it would, most importantly, be your money — so spend it as you please. But if you’re spending my money too, I’ll take a close look at what you’re doing.
What do you think they’d say? Keep that filthy money away from me?!
@Oscar
NBN will cost anywhere between $29 and $43 billion dollars and if it overruns its costs by 5% that would be significant amount of money.
What a farce. Julia and Julia show is becoming more tiresome and obviously whatever ‘deal’ is cooked up with KRudd is a cry for help, sink or swim mentality.
I thought this re-election couldn’t get any worse, but is has and more antics to come by both parties…
Jose you talk of deals? What deals? I have not read or heard of any deals except the propaganda and rubbish being dished up by the MSM. To the point, the PM has never moved from her originally stated position that she will offer Mr Rudd a senior Front bench position. Also you fail to mention Mr Rudd signalled his intention to join the campaign as far back as the the 26th June. Said it publically, so this is not a new sudden move. Sounds like you should have been a candidate yourself if you are of a mind you are able to present anything you might consider less tiresome. Your contribution here suggests otherwise.
Have a nice day.
The only reason any journo would call this a boring election is because they lack the talent to analyze and present it properly. They seem to want some kind of reality show drama for 24/7 rolling news. Watching the ABC news last night in Brisbane was particularly instructive. While much was made of Rudd being back, they did not show a single argument he actually made about his achievements and why he wants to protect them from Abbott. This was a shame, because he spoke remarkably well (for him). It was instead treated like a celebrity housemate had entered the big brother house.
@Plane, @Troy C
You people are amazing. Go away and calculate me the average overrun of any defence or transport project - under Liberal or Labor.
Then go away and firgure out how many billions (or would it be trillions) of money that represented.
Then come back and tell me a cost overrun of 5% on any government project is not actually something that most governments would be happy to crow about.
Not to mention a project that helped save us from the worst consequences of the GFC.
I’ll still be here when you get back.
ROBERTSON: “5 - 6% inflation on building projects”
That was no accident, by the way. Contractors were told in advance to factor in 10 per cent inflation of building costs.
Haven’t I said all along that one of the hidden purposes of the BER was to boost the housing bubble by inflating the cost of new houses relative to old houses?
The cost of public-school projects in Victoria blew out to more than twice the cost of equivalent private-school projects, which were not centrally managed by government.
So we can now say that only half of the $16 billion BER was an economic measure to increase employment (i.e. “stimulus”). The other half was part of an entirely political strategy to pork-barrel property owners by inflating their land prices - without creating a single job.
“There is a real danger at present, because of the rolling political controversy about myself, that Mr Abbott is simply able to slide quietly into the office of the prime ministership,” declared Rudd, in his first press conference since his PM ousting.”
I think that slide is the wrong word - it should be “slither”.
The responsible way to boost construction jobs would have been to cancel the FHOG and rebate GST on all construction jobs. Nothing easier.
They knew that, don’t try to tell me they didn’t know that.
All this talk of billions and millions being flung around by both sides. Government money is a different league to money as most of us understand it.
Because there are 22.5 million people in Australia.
A billion is only $44.40 per person. “Cries of a Billion overspent here” is really “government spent $44 per person extra on building a school hall”.
Or screams of “$100 million per day” is really $4.44 a day per person. The government is paying interest on borrowings equivalent to a coffee per day per person. I’m comfortable with that.
Similarly frothing at the mouth cries against the “$44 Billion of the NBN” is really the government investing $1,900 per person ensuring we have cutting edge telecommunications infrastructure that will still be providing us with first world living conditions, evironmental, economic and educational benefits long, long after we have finished paying it off.
Some of the people whipping up a frenzy about massive overexpenditure and costs really need to come to grips with the concept of money not at a person in the street context but at a government wide “billion is not a lot of money” wider picture.
You can justify panic and frenzy when governments are talking about Trillions - like how about looking at our private debt which is even now over half a trillion dollars ($500 Billion) yet no one is mentioning that - are they?
@Oscar <= exactly correct.
The sheer amount of money wasted by defence is insane.
The Libs in power bought heaps of 2nd hand rubbish from the US.
First it was the 2 Landing Craft/Hospital ships that were so full of rust it took 3 years in drydock to make them useful (HMAS Kanimbla & HMAS Manoora)
Robert Hill scrapped in progress assessment for F-111 replacement & bought 2nd hand F/A-18D Super Hornets which weren’t really a replacement of capability – cause they carry a fraction of what the F-111 carries and only makes a fraction of the F-111’s distance before it runs out of fuel.
Then they signed up to Joint Strike Fighter. Massive and continuing waste of money.
The Army helicopters that couldn’t be used in Outback heat
Then new Hercules transport planes where composite propellers couldn’t be used on most northern airstrips cause rocks would shatter the props
Seasprite helicopters which were cancelled.
We’re still waiting for AEW&C Wedgetail aircraft – 4 years & billions over budget.
So much money. Yet a 2% rate of complaints of school building works is such a massive issue.
But here’s the kicker – who cares if some of the jobs were expensive? Because the money that went to the builders was then spent on materials and tools which would have gone to retailers and other businesses and so on.
The money gets recycled and the government gets it all back in GST and income taxes – it’s not like gold bars that were given to evil builders who keep it and add another acre of grounds to their castles – the money gets circulated in the economy – creating economic activity and THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT – cause it was part of a STIMULOUS PROGRAM TO KEEP ECONOMIC ACTIVITY HAPPENING.
The fact that they chose to get added benefits such as having better facilities for educating our children was an added benefit – and the reason they did it the way they did – rather than give it to other groups.
I’m still waiting for the Liberal implosion. They seem to be holding as firm as an All Black scrum for the time being, but even an All Black scrum can collapse under pressure.
Bernard, Malcolm Fraser has come out and spoken against the election of the coalition. I’m not sure what impact the opinions of ex-prime ministers have on the electorate but there are few of them still floating round. Guess that includes Kevin Rudd as well.
Correction: I meant Amber in my previous post. I’m so used to seeing Bernard’s name on many of the articles.
ENGINEERINGREALITY - “The money gets recycled and the government gets it all back in GST and income taxes .”
Come on, you just said the other day you had completed an MEcon. So I await your explanation to the class of what deadweight losses are, why they can be colossal when government spends inefficiently, and where the lost wealth goes - down the drain, never to be recovered.
@POWERISNOTSTRENGTH mmm not really. (I am in last session of MEc – so will have one by Nov this year) – but there is only so much a Wikipedia article can substitute for education. i.e. You aren’t correct in this case.
What you see in the BER & other government spending is the government spending causes a large increase in demand for the services of builders and building materials – thereby the price goes up and new suppliers of services enter the market – maybe some of these were untrained – but the cold science of economics clearly shows that is what will happen when government spending programs enter a market previously only occupied by companies and individuals.
This had the effect of shifting the demand curve up to the right – if you take a look at the supply vs demand graph in your nicely linked Wikipedia article.
Of course this all happened while we were in a housing construction bubble – so putting more money into the building market started off at higher than normal prices anyway.
Deadweight loss has nothing to do with government stimulus spending – you are incorrect in this context – deadweight loss occurs when a restriction on the maximum market price is enacted – eg by a government so that a price ceiling is enacted – as your wonderfully linked Wikipedia article shows in diagram form on a simple supply & demand graph.
If a price ceiling is put in place there is some supply & demand that is not met and so there are some people who would pay more than the price ceiling but can’t get no satisfaction as the suppliers won’t supply anymore than they are because of the price ceiling. This unmet desire to buy is consumer surplus and the unmet desire to supply more is called producer surplus – together they sum to be deadweight loss.
Obviously this isn’t the case because the argument is that the government paid too much money.
ENGINEERINGREALITY - Wrong, wrong, wrong.
“restriction on the maximum market price” - that’s just one type of deadweight loss, of which the most well-known exemplar is rent control. The purpose of the wikipedia link was for other readers in case you didn’t answer, not for you to pick “look over there” distractions from it.
For a non-technical discussion of deadweight losses due to allocative inefficiency, see chapter 3 of this RBA paper on Microeconomic Policies and Structural Change. “Gains in allocative efficiency mean that deadweight losses will be reduced.”
Ross Garnaut also discussed deadweight losses due to fiscal inefficiency in his book “The Great Crash of 2008” although I don’t have my copy with me. I’ve chosen Garnaut and the RBA because readers know who they are and can believe them, unlike you and me.
By the way I strongly suggest anyone planning to vote reads Ross Garnaut’sspeech yesterday or at least this article about it, in which he slamed the economic failure of government on both sides of politics since the turn of the century.
Ross Garnaut is very intelligent - but its ultimately a waste of time when he produces a great, intelligent report (like all reports of experts to governments, eg Henry Tax Review etc etc etc) and it just gets ignored.
Until we get experts voted in as politicians we’re all on the sidelines watching the village idiots mud wrestling themselves and offhandedly also making up societies rules & governing us.
No wonder things are looking down…
ER - This time we are in complete agreement. Profound agreement.
I’ve never seen such navel gazing by the media in an election (present company excluded of course). The quotes from Shanahan ( when is someone going to point out the obvious that pundits like him and Oakes have no emororar’s clothes ?) are so predictable.
Do journis in theri wildest imaginations believe voters wil ‘punsih’ a party because of the perceived knifing of Ruud and perhaps vote against there own best interests ?
It’s uter poppycok. They will vote as they always do-for whatever is best for their wallet and they wouldn’t care if Attila The Hun was in power if it suits them.
Nor is Rudd a fool. He knows he has an image to maintain and an image of a piqued pollie is of no interest. Rudd was always bound to get the onvious disappointment and throw himself back into supporting the party that will ensure his profile remains high.
As for the voter’s hip pocket, Abbott will lose and I predict Labor will pick up an extra 3/4 seats.
Work Choices killed the last Liberal government stone dead and Abbot is inextricably linked with that and the voters remember. Things may be grim but Australia has not been rocked b the worldwide mess and the punters are not going to allow it to be by a radical change in Abbott.
Or at least the 500,000 who swung the last election are not going to.
Nor has this election been boring except t\for the deluded timeserving media hacks who would prefer Peter Andre and Jordon or perhaps Kyle to be involved if it helped log newsprint. The mass general public are disinterested in the hullabaloo and will go and vote as they did last time.
As for the Liberals, whoever convinced them to raise the dead and bring Howard into the fray should be taken be taken out and shot at dawn. Talk about flogging a dead horse.
I was sober when I wrote that but do not have my spectacles with me.
yep @David. I could do no worse. Of course there is a deal, there is always a deal. This election is like the ghosts of PMs past.
If Abbott is elected, would having FOUR PMs in one calendar year be a record - Rudd, Julia #1, Julia #2 and Abbott. Or maybe if Labor scrape in, we would add Rudd#2.
The only way to inject some excitement into this sham would be to put an honest politician into the fray so we could watch him or her get shredded to pieces.
The 2010 campaign might better be known as ‘2010 Dance of the Charlatans’.
I’d just change the channel.
Rudd for deputy?
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ENGINEERINGREALITY - We’re both right, and we’re talking about different aspects of the stimulus.
First of all, the purpose of a Keynesian stimulus is to increase employment. Not to “support competition in the mortgage sector” or to “support asset values” — these phrases are just policy cyphers which mean rewarding bad businesses and investments at the expense of good ones, and in some cases can induce private capital to abandon productive investment or consumption in its flight to unproductive speculation. This is cover for outrageous rentseeking at the expense of future productivity.
The proper purpose of the stimulus is to increase employment, even if that means burying bottles of money for idle firms and workers to dig up and then spend, thus providing the most idle with something to do, and some cash to spend supporting those who are more usefully employed.
To the extent that employment is supported, yes the money does come back. From Ross Garnaut, The Great Crash of 2008, p157:
The first, $10 billion stimulus stimulated employment reasonably well. Some of it was saved instead of on-spent, but it was good enough.
My reference to deadweight losses was based on the inefficiency of the second Australian stimulus of $42 billion, because it was not broad-based; it was politically targetted and politically micro-managed. So a lot of it ended up as windfall for the banks, windfall for building consultants, windfall for housing speculators, inflation of building costs (which further discourages residential building), and distortions of household spending decisions which are one type of deadweight loss.
As RBA director Warwick McKibbon says:
— which means that an efficient stimulus will repay itself as Max Corden says, but an inefficient, overly politicized one will not. Our second stimulus was grossly inefficient, driven partly by environmental and education catch-phrases, and partly by rentseeking on the part of the banks. (The banks were by far the most successful rentseekers during the crisis, while the public were looking the other way at the miners).
The problem of repaying a bad stimulus later will then have to be done by increasing taxation. This will distort microeconomic decisions and make marginal productive activities no longer worthwhile. Deadweight loss, in other words. Quoting Garnaut again, p154:
Bottom line: The first, $10 billion stimulus was Keynesian, it saved jobs and will repay itself. The second, $42 billion stimulus was only partially Keynesian, only partially supported jobs, and introduced very damaging distortions; and the task of repaying it in the years to come will introduce even more distortions. These distortions all come with a cost, which will be long-term reduction of Australian quality of life.
Good to see someone most Crikeyites voted for out on the hustings.That’s right, the intrepid 60 minutes reporter Mark Latham. Potential Pulitzer winner I’d say.Looking forward to his expose piece on “Violence against taxi driver’s in Western Sydney”.
And I see Ruddy has another erudite, contemplative essay coming up in The Monthly -“Megalomania and Bullying in the Workplace - Why sometimes it’s ok”