The pressure mounts on John Howard
Posted by Christopher Sheil on Monday, March 19, 2007
Newspoll has the ALP ahead 61/39 on the two party preferred vote. This a 4 point rise on the record-breaking lead set by Rudd Labor in the Newspoll a fortnight ago, which was taken after the opposition leader’s honeymoon was universally declared over. It is an unbelievable 22 point Labor lead, which is consistent with last week’s AC Nielsen poll. Even more extraordinary, the ALP’s primary vote is 52 per cent, a phenomenal 18 points ahead of the LNP, and a massive 23 points ahead of the Liberal Party. Steve Lewis reports that this is the ALP’s highest primary vote in 20 years, since just before the July 1987 election.
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Satisfaction with Kevin Rudd personally has risen 4 points to 66 (with his dissatisfaction score falling 2 points to 16). John Howard’s satisfaction rating has fallen a point (to 41 - 25 points lower), but the bigger news is that his dissatisfaction rating is now a perilous 50 per cent. Mr Rudd’s lead on the preferred prime minister rating has widened from 7 points to 13, to sit at 49/36. Matt Price compares this with Kim Beazley’s results, calling it a “brutal and astonishing turnaround”.
The results do not mean that the ALP will win the election, or even that Labor can necessarily be regarded as the favourite to win. But the Newspoll does confirm that the Howard government’s extraordinary attempts to shift the political pressure onto the ALP over the past month have not only failed abysmally, they have backfired spectacularly. The ALP has all the political momentum at present, and there is massive and mounting pressure on the LNP - the most political pressure the government has faced since it won office in 1996.
The results also mean that the most salient question in Australian politics is the identity, or identities, behind the government’s appalling political strategy and management. Who has been calling the shots? John Howard? Tony Nutt? Peter Costello? Tony Abbott? Alexander Downer? Mark Textor? Andrew Robb? All of them? Who’s the political genius who authored these results? It’s about time our senior journalists began pinning tails on the LNP’s political donkeys.
P.S. In breaking news in an imaginary nation circa 2008, Lorissa Stevens is awarded the Order of Australia in the Rudd government’s first honours list.
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This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 10:34 PM and filed under Politics - national.
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I read speculation somewhere that it might be partially due to Arthur Sinodinos leaving… who can say?
Posted on 19-Mar-07 at 10:53 pm | PermalinkGoing by comments in todays The Australian, it seems that Tony Abbott is going off half cocked in regards to Rudd childhood piece. Many are pissed off with him and it seems that it wasn’t sanctioned by the strategy team. It is showing a party that is not communicating with each other.
I think that these are probably the peak polls for Labor. But 61% to 39% is a big gap and they have some lee way. These polls are just snap shots for voters today, but there is an air about, that Labor is being listen to and after the last month is applauded for the way they handled themselves.
With Howard set to make Iraq a centre piece, will only make more people look again at Iraq. I’m sure that we will hear more about Rudd agreeing with Howard at the time about WMD’s. But many people were fooled by the fool.
It has been 6 months since LNP have won a poll. That is a very big indication that Howard is doing something wrong. Labor have only lost 3 last year and were only behind for one poll.
Posted on 19-Mar-07 at 11:16 pm | PermalinkMay the Liberals spend many terms in Opposition to give them enough time to contemplate all their many wrongs.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 12:25 am | PermalinkLove the graphic. What it doesn’t show, of course, is the nylon airline bag. Remember those? Printed with an airline, economy of style, zipper and handles. Seen around Eddy Avenue mostly.
I thought Howard was wanting to reach through the lens and ask ABC’s Kerry O’Brien for a hug he looked so lonely and friendless. But you have to hand it to the guy: probably overtired and jet lagged and stepped up to the everloaded plate yet again with defiance and mustered-up energy and ne’er say die.
And a part of me says he loves it. All of it, including the pizzling in the polls and the party in peril. It’s the new challenges, the feeling of belonging and being needed - which he bestows upon himself - because he can. So long as there is something to do, anything, he’s politically alive. He’ll tear your heart out and grind it through a year-long mincer with slow monotonous daily callous grip, send you to your knees in despair for what could have been and what he did instead, and then he’ll put your heart back in and pat it all together and ask you for a bit of a go because he’s doing it tough. A rare monster indeed.
Really, what is best for him, personally, is that it gets so bad, the blows keep on coming, that he puts up a hand and says “Righto, righto. I get the message. I’ve had enough”, where he can walk off with closure and start the rest of his life afresh, but somehow we’ll deny him that. It’ll descend into half-baked misery for all of us, hiding the hellish truth for some of us while we turn away in disgust and dismay yet again. And over the airwaves comes the monotone drongling telling us what Australia is and who you ought to be.
How much did you get? Five hundred bucks? When do you get that? July? Gee, that’s worth it.
He wants to do us slowly, of course. We’re disgusting, despicable little creatures, or whatever it is. Lazarus become Icarus, with all our wings plucked.
What is for certain right now, if he wins or loses, either way it’ll be a fucking Barbecue Stopper.
Now, given a whole country in your hands, that’s an achievement.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 3:17 am | PermalinkHoward on the 7.30 Report last night gave me some permission to think we might actually be on to something …
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 5:12 am | PermalinkVery colourful turn of phrase, Robert, (ouch, and don’t I know how that feels). I think you overestimate the monster within, I don’t think he’s of a mind to put your heart back in.
I don’t think the LNP figured on a change in Opposition leadership or that such a change would yield these sorts of results. They were happy knowing they could annihilate Beazley easily and fell into a complacency over that. I think they have neither plan nor strategy to deal effectively with these sorts of polling figures and so are going off half-cocked without any apparent cohesion.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 6:26 am | Permalinkaj you are right that Rudd is on the record as saying that Saddam was an evil man and did have weapons of mass destruction. Howard will make much of that.
But the Howard argument for invasion came with three other premises. First, that the WMD’s were supported by chemical and bilogical weapons. Second that these weapons posed an imminent danger and needed an immediate unilateral response without allowing the UN to finish its job. And thirdly that Saddam had close links to Al Quada (however that is spelt).
I think I am right in saying that the ALP rejected these last three premises and therefore argued (as Crean did in 2003) that Saddam needed to be disarmed but not by invasion.
Please correct me someone if I am wrong.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 8:59 am | PermalinkThere’s no doubt that Rudd screwed up big time being suckered by the WMD lie. Nevertheless Howard will get nowhere with this as he cannot argue that Rudd made a mistake as that means Howard owning up to making a mistake too. Which will never happen.
The important difference is that Rudd never supported the invasion of Iraq whatever his personal beliefs about the WMD lie.
Look at the US - most of the bastards in Congrees supported the invasion - but the Dems are still able to run on Iraq being George Bush’s problem. Which it is. His and Howards. (And the Iraqi peoples of course.)
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 11:48 am | PermalinkCS,
You should make the point the much maligned Morgan was the first to pick this as the eggy face of Bryan Palmer will testify too.
I find it interesting Howard will make a major speech on Iraq where all the polling shows the public have simply stopped listening to Howard.
There appears a disconnect between major liberal politicians and what their polling is telling them.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 11:58 am | PermalinkFair enough Homer, but the rejoinder is that Morgan’s poll results have long tended to be more favourable to the ALP than the other two polls. As a consequence, it also has a much better record in predicting all the elections that saw the last generation of LNP leaders thrown out at the state level. That Morgan would lead in predicting the ALP is itself, I suggest, predictable.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 12:10 pm | PermalinkBBCL, I find that interesting as well. And its pretty obvious Howard will not make the speech about Iraq, but about character: the strength of conviction, you know what I stand for, terrorism in our area (maybe a new insight there, of fear sowing?), etc, and rip into Rudd. That will get very good coverage, and for my two bobs will be good for Howard.
The bottom line: do the Libs think Iraq is a vote changer? If so, whose vote? Guessing here that the votes Iraq has firmed would be those already against the Libs.
In that case the rationale would be that Howard loses very little by raising Iraq, and stands to centre the issue within the frame of character, (and possibly fear, but you’d think that’s a bit early). That’s where the Libs want Rudd for the next chapter of this, so it works for them.
The difference on the issue is whether Iraq has subsumed itself into a larger picture speaking of a government whose direction and policies are no longer wanted. In that case Howard will do himself no service at all, but couldn’t anyway.
Rudd has the difficulty of not aligning himself too strongly with Iraq because, as BBCL says, people will switch off. So the supposition there is he has to redirect that issue into the campaign strengths they regard, and that will give us all a bit of an insight into where Labor is at with regard its latest strategic decisions.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 12:15 pm | PermalinkI might note My old mate Peter Martin is tipping a rate rise in April.
I wouldn’t bet against that and that will prove troublesome as well.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 12:19 pm | PermalinkAnd I am buying every banana I see to make sure your old mate is on the money, Homer.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 12:22 pm | Permalinkwbb,
have a very good think about why an economic journalist may make such a statement.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 12:31 pm | PermalinkIt ain’t a guess in other words.
Glen is merely following Super Mac’s strategy!!
I’m not saying it’s a guess.
I’m just saying I’m gonna blow this month’s pay packet exclusively on CPI basket items. To make sure.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 12:48 pm | PermalinkCan I also say that betting markets merely follow polls with a lag.
Quite interesting that the punters who bet for the libs in lieu of Burkegate obviously had little quality polling to go on which is why they got it so wrong.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 1:04 pm | PermalinkI should have added the Foreign ERxcahnge market believes Peter Martin’s tip hence the rise of the $A
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 1:33 pm | PermalinkI think Howard will handle the whole Iraq debate by continually bringing it into the present rather than discussing whether the war was justifiable in the first place. This is where Rudd may get caught out. Even if Rudd is right in saying we should never have gone into Iraq in the first place, it does not necessily follow that we should therefore pull out now. The scenario is has changed from 4 years ago, so Rudd’s argument needs to change.
Also, Howard is already posing the question… Why is it okay to keep troops (or increase troops) fighting terrorism in Afganasthan, while it’s somehow wrong to keep troops fighting terrorism in Iraq?
Rudd will need to find an answer to this question because I’m sure Howard will keep on asking it.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 1:47 pm | PermalinkTim K said:
Howard has nowhere else to go on this issue, of course he will pursue that direction. The trouble is, it’s a dead end. All Rudd has to do is say “your judgment is flawed, as it has been in the past” which neatly reminds everybody of the orginal folly without harping on it.
The issue is dead as a positive for the Liberals - they need to neutralise it as quickly as possible by never bringing it up. My guess is that the big Iraq speech will be repositioning the current involvement as more of a peace-keeping effort. This neatly shifts the language to a more relaxed and comfortable zone and makes it hard to attack (who in their right mind is against peace?). Peace keeping can go on forever without anybody complaining.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 1:55 pm | PermalinkI think that the Government’s bad figures are being driven solely by WorkChoices, with possibly interest rates being important as well.
I therefore think that the thrust of this article - that the Government’s bad poll figures are happening because of some incompetence by their senior strategists - is dead wrong.
IMO, the same people who voted for the Goverment despite the GST, Children Overboard etc, have shifted - because even if they don’t like asylum seekers, they like WorkChoices even less. If that’s true, no spin by the Government could possibly change their minds.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 2:27 pm | PermalinkSure, Mr Rubie, then Howard could say: “Well if my judgement is flawed then so must be yours. After all, you agreed with the assessment that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction”
I also don’t imagine Howard will let Rudd off that lightly on the very selective merits of fighting terrorism in Afgansthan while pulling troops out of the terrorists playground that now is Iraq.
Much as I may disagree with and dislike Howard, I have always been impressed by his ability to turn a negative around to suit his political purposes. He may not push Iraq as a major election issue, but I can’t see him shying away from it either.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 2:38 pm | PermalinkTim K, The judgment to go into Iraq without UN sanction is what is flawed as well the failure to have a policy to deal with the post invasion situation in place before the invasion began. Blind freddy could see looting leading to payback leading to civil war but JWH and GB are not blind freddy obviously.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 3:57 pm | PermalinkI think that the Government’s bad figures are being driven solely by WorkChoices, with possibly interest rates being important as well. I therefore think that the thrust of this article - that the Government’s bad poll figures are happening because of some incompetence by their senior strategists - is dead wrong.
Perhaps. The problem with opinion polls is that no-one knows what really drives them, or what weight to put on them, and rival contentions are impossible to referee.
I would tend to agree that WorkChoices, and perhaps interest rates, will be major factors in deciding the election; but they don’t make sense as explanations for the polls over the past month. The interest rate rises and WorkChoices all happened during Beazley’s leadership period without producing these unprecedented polls. Moreover, neither of these two issues have been focused on by the new opposition leader yet - and we will have to wait until after the ALP national conference before we get a clear picture of the full rival ALP policy prescriptions re both IR and the economy. If WorkChoices and interest rates have driven the polls to the sky over the past month; why, pray tell, all of a sudden?
The more important point, which is reflected in the post, is that, as we don’t and cannot really know what drives polls, beyond making indeterminate rival guesses, and as we also know from history that they are not necessarily any sort of reliable indicators of election results, the argument is pointless.
Given the inherent uncertainty associated with reading polling entrails, the sensible thing to do is to focus, not on their causes, but their effects. In this regard, what we do know for sure, as the post reflects, is that polls distribute the day to day political pressure between the parties, and they become pegs for the nation’s leading opinion makers to formulate their political narratives, which in turn are major factors in determining rival party political strategies.
Thus, all we can know with a reasonable degree of certainty from these poll results is that the pressure is now squarely on the government and that the received wisdom has already concluded that the LNP’s tactics have not only been an abysmal failure, they have backfired spectacularly. The rest is astrology.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 6:15 pm | PermalinkThe editorial in the Australian today shows subtle signs of realigning its readership in case of a Rudd Government. It’s done this certainly on the back of the polls. In fact, The Australian is very nervous all round, today, regarding the Coalition’s fortunes.
It won’t change and will still back Howard until its irrevocable, but the groundwork for keeping its readers on board was there.
There is certainly something wrong systemically with the Coalition. Compare this rabble with the balloon tight outfit bouncing along in recent years, pressure-released by a handful of heartfelt backbenchers which, by their organised dissent, only did it good.
No, this is a rabble.
Maybe, just maybe, the party room isn’t buying Howard’s lines anymore. Not like they were, when they came out at every opportunity to openly sing his praises. Who has come out, in recent times?
The problem for Howard is he’s putting out bushfires now, within the party, and if that sort of thing gets away, his time and energy is spready thinly to address external fires with a sense and appearance of command. Until now, obvious in events unfolding, Howard has been steadily losing command. People are talking about him, readily, as having aged: that’s not about his age, that’s about his loss of command, his diminished stature.
Whether Howard ever really had it to get back is anyone one’s call - for mine, never. This is all about an effective Opposition and Howard being seen in a corrected light.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 6:33 pm | PermalinkBlind freddy at least would have been listening to what people were telling him. This pair of old cronies? Idiots.
Maybe its country life, but it does seem rather quiet out there, electioneering wise, which leads me to wonder that the govt actually have no strategy. They’ve been caught on the backfoot by the Rudds’stars, which seem to be shining more favourably on he than they. And seem to have made no contingency plans for unforseen circumstances, ie, the ALP under Rudd, looking like it really has its shit together.
Things seem to be turning around for turnpike Howard, conditions acting unfavourably. Not like the good old days, not a bloody boat person in sight er. . . well there are actually, but Immigration and Detention (ahem), best not go there and now another interest rates squeeze. Hah!
Joe average Tarazan has woken up from his long slumber to find himself working three days a week for the man, who’s a greedy, self satisfied, alarmingly wealthy, prick. He knows now he has no recourse over nothin, and basically he’s a sort indentured slave and its all been on that little @#$% John Howard’s watch.
Posted on 20-Mar-07 at 9:12 pm | Permalink