Crikey’s Christian Kerr wants to know . . . .
Here’s his guest post calling for input.
Power â with and without glory
Who are the people in politics and the media who will really decide the outcome of this yearâs election?
There are the obvious big names of the Gallery and the frontbenchers, their advisers and their backroom teams â but what about the people with more diffuse or more localised power?
Itâs already seems to be conventional wisdom, for example, that the election will be won or lost for Labor in South Australia and Queensland.
SAâs easy. The marginals there are all in metropolitan Adelaide. But even then, who do people in Kingston, Makin and Adelaide listen to on the radio? And Queensland? The population spread and the location of the key seats is very different. Where does the media clout there really lie? With Madonna King or syndicated broadcasts of John Laws?
Crikey is attempting to compile the ultimate election year power list and we want your help.
We want to know who you think the obvious media and political names that should be on it are â journos, producers, pollies, advisers, spinners, pollsters and strategists â but they we want more.
Is there someone in Burnie, for example, whose influence could make Braddon swing back to Labor at the poll â or in any of the other 30 odd marginal seats and electorates with retiring MPs that will be crucial to who forms the next government.
You send your nominations to christian AT crikey DOT com DOT au and post them here and see where the discussion takes us.
“who will really decide the outcome of this year
John Laws must be near the top of the list, no? (btw – Andrew Bolt is only published in Melbourne is that right?)
I reckon the mum-and-dad voters will have a big influence on the outcome this year.
It seems I’m not the only one that thinks this is a silly question. It’s silly because it both completely obvious and also unknowable. Howard and Rudd and the rest of their teams will have the greatest influence, and then in descending order of importance the media, business, unions, other parties, interest groups and some local candidates in the marginal seats. But it is unknowable because none can say which Minister will fail next, or whether Osama will successfull carry out a major terrorist attack against the West, or if a Public Servant decides to leak some dirt.
Surely a better question to ask is what will influence the election? Will interest rates trump education? Will the public care about the recent absurd probity tussle? Will the drought break – alleviating the environmenal problems in the voting public’s back garden? Will the unfolding Bush debacle taint Mr. Howard by association? Will there be a sudden swelling of Iraqi refugees on the Indonesian coast keen to test Mr. Howard’s commitments to the ‘Freedon of the Iraqi people’? Will Israel attack Iran? Will the jittery stockmarket tumble?
Once we know these things and all the others, then maybe we are in a position to say who is going to have the influence.
“Who are the people in politics and the media who will really decide the outcome of this year
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Well there’s a fair bit of pushback on this post both here and elsewhere.
For what it’s worth I posted my own take on this on the Dead Roo’s site.
But I know views differ on this. Also I agree that I’m not that much a fan of the questions Christian is asking. I personally don’t like this hunting round for powerful people and what is inevitably associated with it – lionising them. But that’s what journos go for I guess. As the son of an academic and accordingly having been brought up in what seems now to be a very unworldly way, I’m always surprised at how little attention is given to the quality of what people say and how much is given to how important they are. But there you go. Sic transit gloria mundi and all that.
In Adelaide, you’d have to consider 5AA talkback king Bob Francis. As the 5AA site puts it: “Aggressive, loud, rude, arrogant… and those are his good points.” But some of the smarter SA politicians on both sides go to great lengths to keep on his good side.
*) The advertising outfit for the Coalition who turn Rudd into a backwater fraud, and frighten everyone about life in a nation of Labor Governments.
*) The “middle Australia” men and women of all ages who feature in the ALP’s television advertisements talking directly into the heads of viewers about their insecure causal wages, working nights and weekends for day rates, they haven’t seen their kids and their family is shot, the economic prosperity of the nation being talked about elsewhere doesn’t exist for them, and they are frightened to death about what a proven untrustworthy Howard (and or Costello) will do to them next if he’s elected again.
.. and what about YouTube, with voting people who have only known the Howard Government?