Stilgherrian » christian kerr

I’ve changed my mind about Newstopia

Stilgherrian — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 21:26:47 +0000

I didn’t like the first episode of Newstopia on SBS last year. I thought Shaun Micaleff was trying too hard to sound like he was being satirical. “I. Am. Telling. A. Joke. Now. And. I. Am. Clever.” But last night I changed my mind. I watched the latest episode online: he’s relaxed into the role, and much lolz. Maybe I’m finally over the fact that I found Mr Micaleff to be a painful arsehole back when he was at the Uni of Adelaide with me. (Weren’t we all, though.) Maybe it’s because I was, as Christian Kerr alleges, the first person to play him Supernaut’s I Like It Both Ways.

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A pre-election meditation

Stilgherrian — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 00:23:13 +0000

Most of my Saturday mornings start with a quiet, reflective time. ’Pong has gone to work, the cats are fed and have finally shut the fuck up and gone back to sleep. It’s not yet time to join the Snarky Platypus for our regular gym, lunch, shiraz and sarcasm session. I’ve got a couple of hours to sit, still unshaven and often in my underwear, sort through the newspapers and my notebook, turn them over in my mind, and see what emerges.

What emerges this morning is laughter. About John Howard.

Not a belly-laugh, though, nor that loud, pointing, “Haw haw haw! Hey Charlene, will ya just look at that!”

No, it’s a quiet chuckle. A roll of the eyes and a slow shake of the head which says, “Oh, you bloody idiot.” And this moment of amusement is certainly helping to make up for the anger of the last fortnight.

I may return to the anger later today, but perhaps not. It’s too nice a day to remind ourselves that our own government reckons that racial vilification and the death penalty are vote-winners. Except when there’s a different kind of black person that they want to suck up to.

I did laugh out loud, I must admit, when I saw yesterday’s news that Howard had suddenly discovered Aboriginal reconciliation. I have yet to find a single person who genuinely believes this change of heart — after years of impassioned argument for the exact opposite — is anything other than pre-election panic. And I was amused to read Possums Pollytics’ astute observation that this backflip-dressed-up-as-leadership is as transparent as it will be counter-productive.

On Thursday one client summed it up when he told me that he’s no fan of the unions — and I know his company has previously donated money to the Liberals — but that it’s simply time for a change. Fresh ideas. And I’ve heard those same sentiments from people who’d you normally think of as welded-on Liberal voters.

I’ve mentioned before that Christian Kerr thinks this election will be “It’s Time” versus “economic management”. Increasingly I agree. If that’s the case, then every single last-minute flip by Howard reminds people that he’s had 11 years to think through this stuff. And every TV advert reminds them that their money’s being pissed away.

As usual, Annabel Crabb (bitch) nails it when she asks us to imagine the lumpy federal landscape we’ll have to inhabit if Howard actually wins.

[A]t last count he has: his own personal hospital in Tasmania; several thousand new health administrators on local hospital boards, according to a recently announced proposal whose documentation amounts very precisely to one press release; a large stretch of the Northern Territory to administer; a referendum in 18 months; a handover of power to his Treasurer some time quite soon after that. (Why not just have an election then and there, and let the voters choose Costello if they want him?)

Every week, it seems, there’s a new idea, bearing no critical relevance to its predecessor. It’s a bit like watching a three-year-old building a pizza — “ham AND cheese AND Smarties AND apple AND toothpaste AND olives AND …”

And as usual, you simply must read her entire essay. There. I’ve linked to it again. And again, so you’ve got no excuse.

Annabel Crabb is without doubt the wittiest political essayist we have in print. She isn’t afraid to call a spade a spade. Noting that Howard’s 5-point plan for re-election doesn’t actually mention his Incredible Indigenous Insight, that must’ve been an extremely recent idea.

There are several ways of describing this kind of decision-making. If you were being optimistic, you’d call it front-foot, if you were being polite, you might call it ad hoc, and if you were being brutally honest, you’d call it panic. After all, Wednesday had been a relatively good day for the Government, with historically low rates of unemployment announced; why distract from what should be a reminder of the Government’s successes?

I’ll come back to that 5-point plan later, I think. If that’s Howard’s core strategy, it’s worth a detailed look. Especially as all the signs point to the election being announced this weekend.

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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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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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Christian Kerr in conversation with Anthony Green

Stilgherrian — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 10:51:07 +0000

I’ve already reviewed The Crikey Guide to the 2007 Federal Election, so I’ll keep this brief. Editor Christian Kerr is in Sydney at Gleebooks this Thursday night, conversing with über-analyst Antony Green. There will be maps. There will be a long white pointer stick!

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iYomu: too late to beat Facebook?

Stilgherrian — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 03:19:04 +0000

iYomu, that “social networking for grown ups” site I wrote about, officially launched today — with US$1M in prize money up for grabs. And I’ve just written an article for Crikey explaining why I don’t think it’ll fly. I also reckon Facebook will win out over MySpace.

My argument in the Crikey article is that the key to success on the Internet is massive, uncontrolled growth. That means attracting a lot of users fast — and then selling out to someone like Rupert Murdoch before it all implodes. The problem is, the very nature of iYomu works against that rapid growth.

iYomu is over-18s only. No feral-keen cyberkids, so the social networks will grow more slowly.
iYomu has left out the “confusing” functions that adults don’t “need”. But they’re the sizzle which attracts the geeky early adopters who spread the word. Those geeks are looking for “cool new toys” — they already have the basics like secure online file storage and an email address. They’ll “get” iYomu but they probably won’t stay.
iYomu is concentrating on 1-to-1 communication rather than 1-to-many. But 1-to-many is exactly what social media sites are about. Sure, the target market is more wary of putting their life online for all to see — but what’s to offer that isn’t already there in Google’s Gmail, Google Calendars etc?
And the key one: Facebook is there already, and growing fast. At 30 million users today, that’s 250% growth in just two weeks!

No-one wants to be the first to arrive at a party. Join iYomu today, and it’ll feel like an empty room. Join Facebook today, as I did on the weekend, and you’re bound to find at least one or two old friends straight away — and all the existing groups give you the sense that something’s happening.

(OK, it was creepy when Crikey’s National Affairs Editor, Christian Kerr asked to become a “friend” even though we’ve never met or even exchanged email — especially since he’s worked for Christopher Pyne and his profile photo shows him in a bathtub. But as I’ve mentioned before, “friend” means something different online.)

Now MySpace is currently the biggest kid on the block with more than 200 million users. But its teenage-bedroom aesthetic won’t appeal to “mainstream” adults. As danah boyd writes in Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace:

MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracised at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

Facebook does have the right look, and it’s already well-differentiated from MySpace. Facebook grew out of Harvard and appeals to the “right” people — in Australian political terms, Howard’s aspirational “battlers” with McMansions.

The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other “good” kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we’d call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honours classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

And as boyd points out:

The division is cleanest in communities where the predator panic hit before MySpace became popular. In much of the midwest, teens heard about Facebook and MySpace at the same time. They were told that MySpace was bad while Facebook was key for college students seeking to make friends at college.

The Sydney Morning Herald tells us about the MySpace man-eaters, the MySpace stalker and the MySpace suicide girls. Wow, has MySpace got an image problem!

So, Facebook is already there, growing fast, and has the “right” image to become a permanent social institution. iYomu has a lot of catching up to do — yet has built-in factors which will slow its growth.

Facebook turned down a $1.6 billion offer from Yahoo! At the time I thought that was astoundingly arrogant. Today, I must reluctantly say I think it’s spot on.

[Update 3pm: I've linked to the article in Crikey, but it's subscriber-only content.]

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A Taxonomy of Leaks: how weird will this election get?

Stilgherrian — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 02:33:17 +0000

Back in 1980, Yes Minister explained the use of irregular verbs in politics:

Bernard Woolley: That’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it? I give confidential security briefings. You leak. He has been charged under section 2a of the Official Secrets Act.

This week I was pleased to see PR strategist Ian Kortlang classify leaks to the media in four ways: Accidental, strategic, malicious and pyromania.

Christian Kerr explains:

Accidental included documents left on photocopiers and the like. Strategic meant a leak designed to achieve a positive advantage. Malicious was meant to undermine and disadvantage. And pyromania was “Stuff the consequences, this feels good.”

Korlang reckons this week’s leak of the Crosby/Textor research saying John Howard is perceived as “old” and “sneaky” was pure pyromania.

One aspect of all this I found quite bizarre was John Howard on radio on Monday:

Confronted with scathing polling describing him as old, sneaky, dishonest and out of touch, Howard said: “There’s nothing particularly new in that… I’m not particularly amazed.”

This election (pre-)campaign is getting weirder and weirder. What could be the weirdest thing yet to come?

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Silly Newtown Kiddie-Socialists

Stilgherrian — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 23:35:16 +0000

Yesterday the Snarky Platypus and I passed the usual gaggle of socialists set up outside the Dendy Cinema on King Street, Newtown. “Sign the petition. Release Dr Haneef,” they cried.

Oh dear. Silly, silly people…

Now you must understand that I’m not playing that right-wing commentators’ game of always prefacing “left” or “socialist” with “loony” or “silly”. That’s just name-calling and a very old propaganda technique indeed. That’s why I think Christian Kerr should grow up and stop using it in Crikey — calling his publication’s commentors shrubhuggers and Stalinists really is childish. After all, would we take a left-wing commentator seriously if they always referred to people anywhere to the right of themselves as Nazis or Fascists?

No, I’m calling these people “silly” because collecting signatures on a petition to release Dr Haneef is politically stupid and a waste of time.

What happens to petitions to Parliament? Nothing, really. A functionary announces that a petition on [insert title] has been received with [insert number] of signatures. And then it’s filed away. In nearly every case, that’s the end of the story.
The next sitting of federal parliament doesn’t even start until 7 August. It’ll be at least 10 days until your petition is tabled. If you really cared about Dr Haneef being in a cell, how about trying something quicker?
The government really doesn’t care what people in Newtown think, because it’s the left-wing heartland. “Good heavens,” John Howard quakes, “folks in Newtown don’t like what we’re doing! We’d better change tack immediately!” Erm, no. Now if you collected signatures in Penrith or Ryde or Parramatta or some other marginal Liberal electorate then maybe they’d care — but I’m guessing that doesn’t have the same appeal as spending a sunny afternoon with your mates on King Street, eh?

But my fourth point is the crunch…

Dr Haneef had already been released the previous night, charges dropped! While the Newtown socialists were collecting signatures calling for his release, Dr Haneef was already at home watching TV with family and friends.

Gawd, people! If you’re going to play politics, at least try to stay in touch. Perhaps even use that Internet thing!

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Review: The Crikey Guide to the 2007 Federal Election

Stilgherrian — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 05:36:32 +0000

Crikey attempts a difficult task — a book about politics for people who don’t know much about politics. But despite a few minor flaws they pull it off well enough to more than justify the $19.95 price tag.

The Crikey Guide to the 2007 Federal Election is a great way to bring yourself up to speed in this vital election year — but not because of the profiles of key marginal electorates.

The profiles cover the same ground as the ABC Elections website and every print media outlet will give us free of charge once the election date is announced. The maps are so small as to be unreadable — they’d have worked better in a B5 or A4 magazine format rather than a standard paperback. I suppose profiling the marginals is compulsory, but it could have been handled better.

The essays are what makes this book truly valuable.

Editor Christian Kerr has managed to suppress the right-wing bias he exhibits daily in Crikey and provides an even-handed overview of the task facing the major parties, their strengths and vulnerabilities. His profiles of 2-dozen-odd power players are a great spotter’s guide to the people behind the scenes. Charles Richardson provides an excellent overview of Australia’s electoral system and the parties — some of the best in-a-nutshell explanations I’ve seen.

But four essays stood out for me as pure gold.

Veteran political journalist Mungo MacCallum’s 14-page history of the Canberra Press Gallery is a must-read.

18 years breeding ducks on the north coast of NSW has not softened Mungo’s tongue. Describing old-school political reporting as “dull as an afternoon with Phillip Ruddock,” his essay is nevertheless a lament for the good old days, when journalists and backbenchers were crammed together in Old Parliament House.

Like the politicians, [the new journalists] are in it for life — terrified of missing a story, but unwilling to take any real risks to obtain one.

Peter Brent of Mumble writes about opinion polls — performing the most valuable service of explaining how to interpret them, given their inherent margin for error.

Reporting political opinion polls must rank as one of the more trivial pursuits for the reporter. If news items were given the emphasis they deserve, political polls would not sit on the front page next to the latest Baghdad bombings, but much further back; say around page eight. They would stand alone in a table with little or no explanation. As an election approached, they would move towards the front, with some words of interpretation.

But opinion polls cost a bomb to produce, so onto page one they must go. Then everyone must pretend that’s where they belong, adding several hundred words of interpretation — turning them over, looking for meaning, interpreting them as good or bad for someone or other, pretending you can identify why the numbers move over a fortnight.

Julian Fitzgerald provides equally insightful profiles of the lobbying industry and of the government’s own factories of spin doctors.

The flaws — apart from those bloody unreadable maps — were that for a newcomer to politics there’s still too much taken for granted. The “WA Inc” episode and the Dollar Sweets industrial case are mentioned but not explained — I’m not too sure about them myself! And if your glossary needs to explain what a “conflict of interest” is, then your reader won’t know that an “informal” vote means an invalid one.

Still, these are minor criticisms. The essays alone make the book worth buying, and this is certainly a handy guide to what’s about to unfold in Canberra and across the nation.

Andrew Denton’s foreword is a reminder that we should be seeing a lot more of this man’s writing:

At first, the signs that a campaign is upon us will be subtle. Overnight, someone will place food in Julia Gillard’s kitchen. Or Bob Katter will purchase an extra-big hat.

But soon the rituals that mark every election will play out across the land. Paul Keating will need to be sedated. Ditto John Hewson. Lubricants of all kinds will be applied to Alan Jones. First-borns offered to Rupert. Piers Ackerman will explode. Robert Manne will implode. Oakes will trump Milne and Ramsey will invoke Hayden. Centrebet will cash in. Gen X will tune out. And people everywhere will struggle to name to leader of the Nats.

Sweet stuff indeed.

One final criticism. In the age of universal word processors, a reference book without an index is inexcusable.

[Disclosures: Crikey paid me to write a story based on one of my blog posts, and will probably publish another on Monday. However I bought this book with my own money and wrote this review of my own free will. I have drunk beer with Antony Green, and survived.]

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Howard’s latest lie: state budget “deficits”

Stilgherrian — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 09:16:40 +0000

Are two posts about John Howard in one day too many? Maybe. But he is Prime Minister and we are in the lead-up to a federal election — and he is “playing the game” for all it’s worth.

And besides, what I’m about to explain is such a classic example of Howard spin — though I must thank Christian Kerr at Crikey for this one — though it’s subscriber-only content.

Here’s the deal. It’s likely that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will raise interest rates on 8 August, and John Howard reckons the state governments are to blame.

“These are Labor government deficits, they’re not Liberal Government deficits,” Mr Howard told Sky News. “The Federal Government is not out there borrowing money… and putting upward pressure on interest rates, but state governments are.”

Alas, the RBA’s own graphs (shown right) tell a different story.

As Christian Kerr explains, “[the graphs] show that state governments have been increasing their surpluses for seven straight years [and] the surpluses have been increasing in recent times, rather than deteriorating.”

Using further graphs, which I won’t bother with here, he also shows that in every year since 1991-92, the state government sector has had lower debt and then moved to accumulate assets earlier than the Commonwealth government.

But, you know, John Howard and truth… they don’t go well in the same sentence.