First Published on The Punch 17/08/2010

The last week of elections is white line fever time. It’s the moment when history is written and the stakes are amplified and everything counts from the fliers, to the bunting, to the final ads, to the body language.

Just over 14 million Australians are registered to vote this Saturday – and if you believe the figure that 10 per cent don’t make up their mind until election day that means that the 1.4 million people who will decide this election are still in play.

But rather than glamorous game-changing plays, history is littered with the lessons from campaigns past, where the parties have pushed it that bit too hard to steer it home, and ended up wiping electoral excrement from their face. So here, as a community service to the campaigns at this stressful time, we present the Punch’s Seven Cautionary Tales for People Who Really Want to Win

Lesson One: All that Glitters Isn’t Gold – It was 1996 and Labor were gone for all money but yet, on election eve then Treasurer Ralph Willis thought he had stumbled on some political gold when he mysteriously received a fax purporting to come from Victorian premier Jeff Kennett. The fax detailed concerns that a Howard Government would cut grants to the states in direct breach of election commitments. For a few mad hours, Willis thought he had caught the Liberals red-handed. He released the letter to the media only to see it come back and smash him when it was confirmed a fake. No one has ever claimed responsibility for the dirty leak, although suspicions remains it came from Peter Costello’s office. Read more »

So, the last week of the election begins. For the pundits, exhaustion sets in and it’s only the crazy brave and the well organised who dare to rest.

The remaining time is counted not in sleeps, but in news cycles.

From last night, it would appear the ALP would go into their launch today without the ghosts of their past causing further instability. Latham’s a lunatic, and even if he’s right, so what. And Kevin came off as a self-serving Kim Hughes Bob Hawke- style loser who you think we should be glad is gone.

This is grand final week in politics. The parties are going for the bogan vote and the ‘don’t knows’ are coming in from the cold.

Strangely, in politics, it’s the bogans who come in at the last minute. While in football, the people who know who they’re voting for often don’t pick a team until the final week.

After the eliminations and recriminations, this is the week of the parade, the special breakfasts, a cross dressing footy show and when everyone goes hell for leather on election day.

There’s so many election ads on the TV. They’re cheap, they’re misleading and you often wonder who they benefit. The ALP has focused entirely on the message of the economy, which today’s newspoll has them at only 38 per cent in the ‘best party to lead’ category.

The Libs’ ‘stand up for re-action’ jingle is garbage and has people’s dogs walking out the front door into traffic.

Forget truth in advertising. Surely these ads should be made to comply with some sort of minimum standards.

They’re not very funny. But what is funny is that the ALP are launching their campaign today – I’d hate to know what we’ve endured for the past four weeks.

Abbott’s dropped his four point pledge to just one, ‘Stop the boats’. And just wait, he’ll be declaring ‘stop the toasts’ after the election, and ‘stop the roast’ the next day at a BBQ, and people will shout ‘stop the host’ when he gives speeches or cures pathogenic diseases and ‘stop the tote’ in Collingwood.

No seriously, we have an election where one side is contesting the ground where they’ll shoot people for trying to come and live in Australia. And today we learn that Abbott’s going to be turning around the boats himself.

While Gillard’s message is simpler, stop the Ab-boat.

The Essential Report has been drawing a bit of comment in recent days, notably for failing to chart a perceived collapse in Labor support in week two of the campaign.

We were in the firing line on the Insiders on Saturday, where George Megalogenis noted that ,as an online poll, we have a different methodology to the major poll, so should not be treated with the same level of credence.

It is true that the Essential Poll uses a different model to the established pollsters – unlike phone-polling, we draw on a community panel of about 100,00 votes established by Your Source.

So why are the Essential numbers different to the phone pollsters? Read more »

First Published on The Punch 10/8/2010

Goldfish have a neat survival mechanism to prevent them ever getting bored – by the time they have swum around the bowl they have forgotten the previous lap. It makes them a lot like voters at election time.

This is why we are grateful when our failed candidates enter the fray to remind us of why we voted against them. And while Mark Latham has rightly been drawing attention, like onlookers to a car crash, another leader took centre stage over the weekend to take us back to meaner and trickier times.

As he moved in to give Tony Abbott a man-hug at the Liberal launch, John Howard reminded us of many of Australia’s most forgettable moments. Given that Abbott is running on a “re-elect the Howard Government” ticket it is worth dwelling on our former Prime Minister’s Ten Most Notable Contributions to the Nation.

Downward Envy – John Howard trained Australians to look down the chain when we were feeling low – welfare cheats, single mums, dole bludgers, these were the people making life hard for decent Australians. As profit levels soared and CEO wages sky-rocketed, we tut-tutted the Paxtons. Read more »

Originally published on The Punch 3/08/2010

Our Prime Minister has joined the bandwagon complaining that this is a focus group- driven election – but isn¹t this the way of the Wiki? After all, books have been written about how the wisdom of the masses provide a more compelling truth than the voice of authority.

Read more »

Canberra Report: Monday July 26
27 days, 14 and a half hours… but who’s counting?
This week we’ll continue the water torture election, leaders will fly around the country, announcing announceables and kissing children for photo ops limping toward Aug 21.
Dripping into Brisbane this week the Opposition’s campaign heads north, while Gillard’s will head to Launceston as they criss-cross the country.
Expect water to turn up this week as a campaign issue, but not a big issue, as this election is one where the Government thinks it is the Opposition and the Opposition can’t work out how to talk to women.
But really, I’m bored with it all. While declaring this election a ‘Seinfeld Election’ is a bigger cliché than calling someone a Nazi, the Government’s small targets and the Opposition’s declaration about what it promises not to do are making for an uninspiring campaign.
Last night’s debate was simply a long series of interviews. There were more zingers at a KFC afterparty.

The most potentially exciting thing was that Abbott mentioned Gillard’s gender. Annabel Crabb mentioned her surprise that the leaders actually managed to disagree.
Because as much as it is boring the election is about what’s not there. No Kevin Rudd or Turnbull. No Cosby or Textor and no Tim Gartrell. No policy. No issues. Little interest. Fewer differences.
Just give us some gaffes!
It’s as though the one thing the Government has learned from the last term is that it tried too much. It made Kevin too tired. And too easy to cut down.
Last time we were going to make everyone’s internet better and make every kid have a new computer and change the weather and give everyone new health and takeover hospitals and have a revolution on education.
Now, we’re going to a Citizens Assembly?
For me, the best headline of the weekend goes to The Chaser: “Assembly of Citizens Rejects Citizen’s Assembly”.
But no. let’s spend 90% of the debate on 1% of our immigration, of which 5% are found to not be genuine.
Graham Richardson, Penny Wong, Christine Milne, Turnbull and Tom Switzer are on Qanda.
MasterChef might by over, but I am sure that if George Calombaris was running for the seat of Melbourne on a policy of putting his money where Matt Preston’s gob is – there’d be no contest.
Verdict: Another boring week of the most boring election campaign in recent memory.
All I’m left with is wondering what the songs will be for the launches…?
Maybe “I ran (for parliament)” by Flock of Seagulls?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First published on The Punch 20/7/2010

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

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

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

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

Essential Report

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

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

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

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