Stilgherrian » alexander downer

Representative Democracy

Stilgherrian — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 22:55:11 +0000

Here’s a nice antidote to the Coalition TV advert trying to scare us about [gasp!] the Labor party having links to trade unions.

Interestingly, it’s another election-related video that doesn’t have “real” names and addresses at the end saying where it came from. I wonder whether the Australian Electoral Commission will be attempting to prosecute any of these folks for this apparent breach.

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Gentlemen, start your engines!

Stilgherrian — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 01:39:47 +0000

Ah, I love the smell of an election in the morning! Camera crews waiting outside Yarralumla sneak one last ciggie. Candidates of all persuasions reach for The Good Suit and ponder which tie they should wear. Journalists place last-minute bets on The Date and wonder just how many grams of speed they should lay in to last the distance. Media outlets everywhere reach for their plans and everybody says goodbye to their loved ones for a few weeks.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer is on Sunday, live from his Adelaide Hills palace, dutifully repeating The Message. “To change the government is to change the country.” “Trade unionists.” Repeat ad nauseam.

We’ll hear Lord Downer repeating his scary mantra many, many times as the Coalition fights to the death.

“I think they need a miracle, really,” says The Sphere of Influence. “Unless Kevin Rudd falls over in the campaign, the Liberals will find it very difficult… Unless they get their [economic] message to the forefront of the campaign they’ll have no chance.”

So they’re the battle lines, at least so far. Labor will reinforce their message that it’s time for a change. The Coalition will reinforce their message that only they can maintain the economic boom. And everyone else will be scrambling for Senate spots.

And now we’re just waiting for The Announcement…

[Update 1215: The election date is Saturday 24 November. JWH is currently doing a media conference, which will doubtless be analysed to death over the next 24 hours. Have fun, kiddies!]

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The Leadership (Non)-Challenge

Stilgherrian — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:15:08 +0000

When I returned to focus on politics after a busy morning yesterday, I discovered that not only was John Howard still PM, but also that there was never a leadership challenge. Really. How can this be?

I happened to read Crikey first, where Christian Kerr wrote:

Nothing happened in Canberra this morning. Nothing in a Samuel Beckett sort of way. A nothing that means plenty. A nothing that is quite profound.

You’ve right there, Christian! Every newsroom and every politics junkie in the country including myself arced up — prepared, as I said, for the biggest political story in a decade. And then come the time, Howard et al strolled out of the party room meeting as if nothing had happened.

Finally, at 12:45, Tony Abbott appeared. There had been “full and frank discussions”, he said, but there was “absolutely rock solid support for the Prime Minister”.

And then I read Annabel Crabb’s explanation, which helped make sense of it for me:

The past few days of leadership destabilisation in the Liberal Party has exposed an obvious complication: none of the Libs are any good at it.

They are deeply, vastly and irredeemably out of practice, in fact, and it shows.

Every time a tiny public jab is made against the Prime Minister, a great squeal goes up and everybody dashes for cover, and shooshes each other until the next poke of the stick occurs. Honestly, it’s like watching a pack of seven-year-old girls going at a brown snake…

The unprecedented turnout in the press galleries, which Kim Beazley later likened to “three rows of crows, waiting for the sheep to die, yum-yum” was unwarranted; it really was an uneventful hour.

After question time, ministers scurried away lest they be approached for a comment.

All, that is, but Peter Costello who remained for a few words with Malcolm Turnbull, while delighted Labor MPs shrieked at the pair to “take it outside”. If this were the Labor Party, someone’s head would be on a stick by now, and the victors would be on their second round of duck pancakes…

The whole piece is worth a read. And she’s 100% right. Somehow, “insiders” at Alexander Downer and Malcolm Turnbull’s offices convinced Sky New that it’s on. And then the frightened schoolgirls quickly deny it, lest Big Strong Daddy get angry.

John Winston Howard: The Biography makes it clear that Howard is a tactical genius at understanding the numbers game of building political support, and a master of the telephone. That’s why the man who was once a mere 18% in the opinion polls has become the second-longest serving PM in Australia’s history. And the 48 hours before yesterday’s party meeting would have been no exception.

Yesterday Big Strong Daddy convinced everyone that if the ship is in danger of sinking, fast, then the last thing they need is any perception of disunity. And he’s right.

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Game on!

Stilgherrian — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 23:55:02 +0000

So, will Malcolm Turnbull (left) be Prime Minister by tomorrow? Sky News has just reported that foreign minister Alexander Downer and environment minister Malcolm Turnbull no longer believe Prime Minister John Howard should lead the Liberals.

Sky News says both of them have spoken to John Howard about the leadership. I’m listening to ABC News Radio just now, though, and they say Howard’s denying the conversations took place.

Someone here is lying: Turnbull and Downer, Sky News, or John Howard. Now which of those has the best track rcord for being truthful, eh?

It certainly appears like it’s game on for a leadership challenge. If so, coming just a few weeks before a federal election makes this the biggest political event of more than a decade. Every newsroom in the nation has just gone to red alert. Fun fun fun.

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A Night of Politics: grubby, grubby…

Stilgherrian — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 22:54:11 +0000

The entire evening was filled with politics yesterday ~~and the chafing this morning is quite painful~~ and I learned a lot.

Christian Kerr, the national affairs editor for Crikey, was promoting his book “in conversation with” Antony Green, the thinking woman’s crumpet — a combination too good to miss! We went for dinner afterwards.

I didn’t realise I’ve actually met Christian before, until he saw me. “I know you,” he said. “You were the first person to play me I Like It Both Ways with Shaun Micaleff at 5UV.” I have no recollection of this event, Your Honour. However Christian recalled sufficient details for me to be convinced the event probably did happen. Somewhere. He knew certain obscure hand gestures. Stop asking questions.

In a preview of the federal election and subsequent conversation I learned:

Christian thinks that the election won’t be fought over industrial relations, as many pundits are saying, but over the economy. It’ll be about the Howard government’s “sound economic management” (as they describe it) versus the It’s Time factor.
Unless something changes, it will be a Labor victory. For all the talk of “the polls are all over the place,” Antony Green says this is the most consistent series of polls he’s ever seen.
There is a Big Yabby in Alexander Downer’s electorate, at Goolwa, which is symbolic somehow.
Malcolm Turnbull could still win the federal seat of Wentworth thanks to his Fabulousness Factor.
No-one seems to understand why John Howard won’t support gay-related issues. And I’ve just finished reading his biography — nothing there gives a clue either.
Mattresses.
Iguanadons.

Now where’s that moisturiser…?

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Ah, lovely Uranium!

Stilgherrian — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:18:04 +0000

So, we’re going to sell uranium to India, eh? Here’s Clarke and Dawe’s take on this issue from last year.

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Kevin Rudd’s hairy-chested shower with Helen Coonan

Stilgherrian — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 01:49:55 +0000

Shadow foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd’s unimaginative catch-phrases are sending the wrong messages. Calling Foreign Minister Alexander Downer “hairy-chested” won’t work. And all this talk of cold showers is revealing far too much of your personal life. Here’s why…

Ever since Crikey listed Rudd’s repetitive catch-phrases — assertive government foreign policy is “hairy-chested”, opponents “should take a long cold shower”, amongst others — I’ve noticed, yes, he really does use them all the time. Including this morning’s edition of The Insiders (transcript available Monday).

Rudd is presumably trying to follow Goebbels’ Principles of Propaganda number 14 by using memorable labels. (Well, either that or he’s too stupid to remember more than a handful of standard media soundbites.) But he’s forgetting Principle 14a. His labels don’t evoke “responses which the audience previously possesses”.

Downer simply isn’t hairy-chested. Woolly-headed, maybe. An object of ridicule, certainly. But for me, “Alexander Downer” and “hairy-chested” just links to “fishnet stockings” to deliver 70s Glam Rock. I laugh, yes, but we’re already laughing. We all know Downer stays on as Minister for Cocktail Parties because he was a good little boy and resigned the Liberal leadership in January 1995 to make way for John Howard — who was elected PM the following year.

Downer is the only federal Liberal leader never to lead the party into an election. Like the rest of Howard’s cabinet, he’s just a mouthpiece — but Downer’s mouth is solely for canapés going in, dodgey karaoke coming out, and self-satisfied smugness in between.

As for “taking a cold shower”… Ah, Kevin! What does this tell us about your fantasies? And what do we make of communications minister Helen Coonan suggesting that critics of her new media laws take a cold shower together, along with Senator Stephen Conroy?

Kevin? Helen? Stephen? What have you three been getting up to?

Hmmm… Should I have included photos with this post?

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Agreeing with Bolt and Downer, egad!

Stilgherrian — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 10:59:34 +0000

Tonight I find myself defending right-wing columnist Andrew Bolt and Minister for Cocktail Parties Alexander Downer over The Red Cross Ambulance Incident. What are they putting in the water?

In Crikey today, Sophie Vorrath whinges that Bolt relied on anonymous blogger Zombietime to bebunk the “Israel hits ambulances with missile” story as a hoax — just like I did on the weekend.

Apparently it’s OK for Bolt to rely on an unattributed blog called Zombietime to back his sensational claim – the same source, it seems, upon which the Honourable Alexander Downer based his concern about “evidence of dishonesty in the reporting out of Lebanon” during his speech to the National Newspaper Publishers’ Conference on the Gold Coast on Monday.

The website… claims to prove that the 23 July attack, in which two ambulances were fired upon and six people injured, never happened, using photographs of an interior of one ambulance that apparently show there was not enough damage.

Here’s how I’ve replied to Crikey, which I daresay will be published tomorrow:

Stilgherrian writes: Sophie Vorrath is way keen to attack Andrew Bolt — hey the gods know there’s plenty of reasons you’d want to. But Vorrath misrepresents Zombietime as “claiming to prove” the Israel-shoots-ambulance tale a fake “using photographs of an interior of one ambulance”. Zombietime actually presents a detailed forensic argument over 9000 words — starting with the supposed “missile hole” sitting right where other ambulances have a ventilator. Zombietime’s story certainly fits the facts better than any claim of “missile attack”. Why have a go at Bolt (or Alexander Downer) just because we don’t know who the messenger is?