A place to collect the stupidest media commentary on their long sought-after “leadership spill” they appear to have almost manufactured.
For example:
- THE AUSTRALIAN PM IS LIKE A PRESIDENT Commentary suggesting that the Australian PM is basically like a President and effectively elected by the voters and has special powers beyond simply being the leader of a parliamentary party that can vote for a replacement spokesperson at any time (how weird that the drafters of the Constitution declined to even mention the office);
- ELECTING A NEW LEADER OF A PARLIAMENTARY PARTY IS SOMEHOW SHOCKING Commentary suggesting Rudd was “knifed” by Gillard and then she grabbed control of the ALP against the ALP’s wishes, instead of a majority of her colleagues voting for her as in reality;
- I PREDICT ONE DAY THIS PM WILL NOT BE PM Self-congratulating commentary being smug that the “leadership spill” they’ve spent more than a year saying is days away might now actually happen. What’s that saying about a stopped clock?
- WHY SHOULD VOTERS GET A CHOICE? Commentary from opponents of Labor’s reform agenda suggesting if only the Labor leader would be more like Tony Abbott than Tony Abbott they could “win back” the support of conservatives who’d never vote for them in a blue fit (eg Andrew Bolt’s “if only Rudd would promise to reintroduce WorkChoices, then he’d be a Labor leader I could support”!)
- STOP HITTING YOURSELF Complaints by the media that Labor keeps on making them talk about “leadership tensions” as if pretty much everyone in authority in Labor isn’t desperate to talk about their actual achievements instead. It’s like a child grabbing another child’s arm and forcing them to strike their own heads, saying “stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!”
That’s a powerful collection of dumb – but I doubt we’ve seen the end of it.
Moved On 
Even if she knows she “has the numbers” and is rock solid secure in her job (which makes sense, as most of his colleagues still loathe Rudd), I hope Gillard doesn’t call a spill just to “clear the air” and prove her legitimacy as PM. If she does, it will be the ultimate case of feeding the trolls.
Cheap copy and it suits the proprietor’s political interests.
Even if there weren’t any tensions at all, they’d have to manufacture some.
Remember, Costello was going to challenge Howard every second week from the beginning of Howard’s second term.
Well you can’t have it both ways Lefty.
People complain all the time that Tony Abbott as PM would be a disaster – on comment threads that you moderate – and never once have I seen you point out that he’s “not like a President” and is simply a spokesperson for the Liberal party. When he and Turnbull were battling for Liberal Party leadership, or Turnbull and Nelson before him, or Howard and Costello before that – I didn’t see anyone on the Left complaining that these issues were trivial, that they were a distraction, or that they were no more than a mere changing of “spokespeople”.
The truth is that the Liberals under Turnbull would have been a very different party to the Liberals under Abbott, the Liberals under Costello would have been different to the Liberals under Howard – and Labor under Gillard will be very different to Labor under Rudd.
Leadership matters Lefty. The battle for control of Labor between the factional machine men propping up Gillard and the outsiders slowly lining up behind Rudd matters.
The unions, powerbrokers and special interests in Labor may have dumped Rudd in a calculated political betrayal but we, the people of Australia, didn’t. For better or for worse he’s our Prime Minister – the man who toppled the unbeatable Howard and set Labor on a new path.
And we want him back.
Well . . . I want him back anyway.
‘Labor under Gillard will be very different to Labor under Rudd.’
That’s a stretch.
The problem for the ALP is that if there is a spill and Gillard loses, the deal with the independents is shot — they signed an agreement with Gillard. If Rudd loses, he’ll likely sook and resign, or one of his supporters will, beholdening (shuddup) the ALP to the crossbenchers even more. Either way it makes the ALP’s claim to have the confidence of the House, and thus government, more tenuous. Incidentally, this is also why the caucus hasn’t moved on Thomson to any serious degree.
Remembering the Pobjie rule of “regime change makes the media feel important”, no doubt why the meeja are pushing for a spill out of a desire to see the ALP govt teeter, Jenga-like, and topple to the ground. Then they can argue about who picked it first and a round of Walkleys. Woof!
Well, let me do so here. The problem with Tony Abbott as PM is that it would mean the Liberals were in government and have the numbers to pass their agenda, which would be a massive step backwards.
I don’t know how they’re going to pay for all their promises to the middle class and high income earners, but if they want the budget to be in surplus as they’ve also promised, then the poor had better get ready for a massive slash and burn in public services. And if you’re an employee you’d better get ready for WorkChoices mark 2.
How? In what specific ways?
It’d make a slight difference, but surely nowhere near as much as the difference between the health policies of the big parties, or the economic policies, or the educational policies. Those are the real issues, not which Labor MP may or may be leader and empowered to make some slight alterations in the party’s approach to parliament.
Labor’s policies will remain similar regardless of whether it’s Rudd or Gillard selling them to the media.
It’d make a slight difference, but surely nowhere near as much as the difference between the health policies of the big parties, or the economic policies, or the educational policies.
That’s obviously true, but it doesn’t follow that the differences between Rudd-led Labor and Gillard-led Labor are insignificant.
The most obvious and meaningful difference between them is their level of independence from the Labor Party power structure. Gillard is utterly beholden to the machine men who handed her the job, whereas Rudd is a relative outsider. The policy direction of Labor will obviously be influenced by the choice between these leaders.
The mining tax was one good example – instead of taking the fight to industry as Rudd seemed willing to do Gillard watered it down as soon as she got in. After all – there are a lot of union members in the mining industry.
But more to the point – the specifics of policy diffrerence don’t change the hypocricy of our side of politics “suddenly” losing all interest in leadership issues. Not once did I see you ask your readers to treat the ongoing Howard/Costello battle as irrelevant and instead focus on the policy direction of the Liberals. Yet now that it’s Labor you’re all mad at the press for focusing on irrelevancies such as who our Prime Minister is?
If we’re not consistent in our application of political principles and critiques then how is anyone supposed to take us seriously?!!
My favourite bit of piffle posing as insight so far is Shaun Carney’s opening paragraph in Saturday’s Age. Stand back, this is God-like analysis:
If the fallout from Monday night’s Four Corners report revisiting Julia Gillard’s 2010 seizure of the prime ministership proves anything, it’s this: where conflicting political ambitions are involved, there’s rarely, if ever, going to be a single, convincing narrative.
How on earth do you get paid for writing the bleeding obviouis day after day? Can I do it too please?
Another way of putting it, is that Gillard is actually able to muster support of the Head Office, the Caucus, and the Cabinet, support which endures despite her current massive unpopularity with the electorate. She may be useless at the creation of the five second sound bite, which is needed to hold public attention to your message in the modern era; but in a room of thirty people she can negotiate and forge consensus.
Whereas Rudd, as every virtually every ALP and Canberra insider knows, is a tyrannical egotistical meglomaniac who was dropped by the party the instant his polling turned sour fundamentally because he was loathed on a personal level by nearly every MP who voted on the issue. He can say something cute on Sunrise that the public likes to hear, but his people skills in most other contexts are negligible.
He works 4:30 am to midnight and expects all his staff and cabinet ministers and their staffs to do the same, despite it being an abominably idiotic schedule for humans to try to force themselves to follow. He treats people he views as his inferiors contemptuously – see the incident on the RAAF plane with the fight attendant for just one of the more publicly known examples. He is pompous and foolish in his dealings with important people – see the George W Bush phone call, and the “Chinese ratf*cked us” remark, both to audiences large enough it was almost guaranteed what was said would get out. He is needlessly and counter productively combative – the mining industry was actually lobbying for the replacement of state mining royalties with a resource rent tax before Rudd managed to alienate them so spectacularly on the issue. And so on, and so on, and so forth. Having lost the leadership ballot to Gillard fair and square, he leaked cabinet level discussions in the middle of the election campaign to try to make Gilard lose to Abbott.
And now, as soon as the government showed any sign of some more favourable media coverage and a recovery in the polls, he and his small core of supporters started doing their utmost to destabilise Gillard rather than focussing on winning the next election.
He is unsuitable to be Prime Minister, and I would vote for a Turnbull or Hockey led liberal party over Rudd led Labour if the government were mad enough to reinstall him as PM.
Bold was supposed to end after the first word, “for”, in the previous comment. Curse ye non WYSYWIG editing….
Leaks about Howard/Costello leadership tussles were like Bush raising the terror threat level for no reason every now and then – a way to blow the current political issue that was negative for the government off the front pages and replace it with idle chatter that never went anywhere.
The media was doing Howard’s dirty work back then – that’s not what they are doing now. Now they are replaying the months leading up to the coup so they can get Rudd back in to kick around mercilessly for a year. They’d white-ant him again like in early 2010, and be constantly running anonymous leaks from the faceless men in Gillard’s camp instead of actual news.
Rudd would have to be twenty kinds of stupid to move now. Do it a couple of months before the next scheduled election, immediately call, and then wipe the mat with Abbott (or Turnbull). I don’t think Rudd is that stupid.
How is this not special pleading? Gillard is/would be beholden to the people who put her in power, but Rudd isn’t/wasn’t/wouldn’t be? Why is Rudd less beholden than Gillard? Isn’t the fact that Rudd acted like he wasn’t beholden part of the reason he was toppled in the first place?
If Rudd was beholden to nobody, then he’d still be PM.
This is such a pathetic circus, and precisely the type of politics that comes from a system that encourages careerist politicians – everything is spin and numbers. I wonder if either Gillard or Rudd would have the guts to do what Gorton did when the Fraser gang went after him – vote against himself for the good of the country?
It is pointless blaming the press for reporting on the ALP shenanigans. An impending change in PM is after all, a matter of national interest.
I blame the independents who are propping up this shameful government. Neither Rudd nor Gillard can lie straight in bed. If they truly wanted to keep the bastards honest they would withdraw their support and have the people decide the matter. No doubt they have other matters to consider, like the fact that their day in the sun will immediately end come the next election.
Chris Kenny had it right:
Jordan – the public sees straight through Gillard: all the lies, back-room deals, spin and bullshit required to keep a political party running simply fall flat out of her mouth. She’s transparently playing politics every single time she opens her patronising word-hole, and she will drag Labor down to a historically awful election result if she remains their leader.
The public couldn’t give a shit that the Labor machine likes her better than it likes Rudd; that information is completely and utterly irrelevant. Maybe Rudd is a workaholic who’s hard to deal with but so what – that’s a problem for the Labor exectuive not the people of Australia.
Rudd is a popular leader with boundless energy and big ideas who was enthusiastically voted in by the Australian people: FIND A WAY TO WORK WITH HIM for chrissakes.
No. She’s transparently trying to say politically astute things every time she speaks from scripted remarks, and failing badly. She has (seemingly) a bad speech writer, poor presence when directly facing TV cameras, a hostile media audience driven in large part by the overt right wing misogyniy of Jones, Hadley et al.
All politicians “play politics”. Playing politics is BY DEFINITION the job description of a politician. It is a politician’s job to say things that are pleasing to the electorate even if they are not objectively the best policy, if that is going to yield the best outcomes. It is a politicians job to have values, but also to understand that ideological rigidity is for university students and that all but the most core prinicipals will generally have to be compromised upon at some point, in practice. It is a politician’s job to not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. It is a politician’s job to “sell” ideas by putting a positive spin on them, by arguing for them as best they can and letting the public decide based on those arguments. It is a politician’s job to aspire to reform, but understand Machiavelli’s lesson that true reform is fundamentally one of the most difficult tasks any human can undertake.
The “Labor machine” you are disparaging consists of not just the party executive but also ALL the Federally elected ALP MPs who have, under the Westminster system, the democratically vested authority to represent their electorates and the democratic role of electing by a vote of confidence the Prime Minister and Cabinet. And the idea that Rudd’s abominable people skills are not some sort of impediment to a prime minister is laughable. It affects his ability to negotiate compromises (the core skill of politics!), to receive advice from experts and civil servants, to manage warring special interests, and, of course, to command the confidence of the House of Representatives – confidence he lost, because he had no respect for his Caucus or his Cabinet and treated them like horseshit.
Jeremy has an exaggerated idea of how unimportant the PM is in the system, but you seem to have the opposite approach. Rudd was not the president, and he was not elected by popular vote. If he was too thoroughly disagreeable to last even one term as Prime Minister, that seems pretty likely to be his problem, not the problem of the dozens of people he pissed off badly enough for them to turn against him.
Boundless energy is useless if its not directed properly. Ask anyone suffering a manic episode…..
Rudd was not popular when he lost the job. The electorate is very fickle.
Gillard was voted in by the Australian people, and she would have had a larger majority if Rudd had not undermined the election campaign.
You’re asking an entire caucus to change to accommodate the massive personality flaws of a single person.
And as far as big ideas… Rudd is better than most of the Liberal party and some of the Labor party, but he’s far more bureaucrat than visionary. Can you give a simple description of some of the bold ideas from his reform agenda? I can think of one, maybe two. TBH as a progressive prime minister he’s not fit to tie the shoelaces of Hawke or Keating.
This all assumes there is a leadership confidence issue. The media says there is. The opposition says there is. The former has a vested interest because it sells cheap copy. The latter has a vested interest in saying there is because it undermines the unity of the pary. The ALP MPs who comment generally have their own agendas.
To suggest any of this isn’t just agenda driven, profit mongering is extreme. The leadership speculation is based on speculation of speculation.
The leadership speculation didn’t just appear out of thin air. It is based on the comments of embarrassed ALP politicians who are sick to death of her disingenuous drivel:
PM: Look, I’ve just given the best answer I can to your question.
Fowler: My question was simply whether or not you knew . . .
PM: I heard your question and I’ve answered it.
Fowler: You haven’t answered the question.
PM: Well, I’ve given you the answer I’m going to give you.”
She has no credibility at all. Her party knows it. She probably even knows it herself. But after having had a few days to consider the available alternatives her parliamentary colleagues seem to have decided that those are all worse, or at least that killing off Gillard now is a bad idea.
And how exactly were the questions Fowler was asking relevent to any current ALP policy? We have no policy debate going on in this country because the media is too lazy and opposition has no policy.
“And how exactly were the questions Fowler was asking relevent to any current ALP policy?”
Does that matter at all? Why not expose here lying and scheming? Or is a free press not allowed to do that? No wonder the government wants to muzzle the press! The people of Australia have a right to know whether Gillard lied to them (again) or merely mislead them. Apparently they cannot expect the PM to actually tell them the truth or answer the question in a straightforward way.
Policy issues are discussed but the oxygen is sucked out of the discussion because the ALP is behaving like a disorganised rabble. This is a mess of their own making and a natural consequence of their unprecedented decision to knife a first term PM.
Perhaps Gillard’s parliamentary colleagues have not really understood that by retaining her things will only going to get worse, much worse. Australian’s feel degraded by having a leader whose integrity is shot. Her nasal whine and her fake laugh will grate and every duplicitous utterance will remind them that this someone who can’t even lie straight in bed.
The only reason the coalition are not a disorganised rabble is that they are in opposition, and so can be united (barely) in negativity. Were the coalition to be elected they would find that making their opponents unpopular is not, in fact, enough to stay in favour with the electorate.
Worth a read.
Ironically, the Australians who most strongly feel their PM’s integrity is shot are planning on voting for self-confessed bullshitter, Tony Abbott, and also voted for the lying rodent. So apparently they don’t mind a PM with no integrity, as long as its somebody from the Coalition. Of course, I wouldn’t put you among that crowd, SB.
They did not apparently feel degraded electing “Honest John” for several straight parliamentary terms.
And for someone so convinced Gillard is objectively, you spend a lot of time attacking Gillard over style (nasal whine, fake laugh, the “real Julia” gaffe and other empty shock jock talking points) compared to your criticisms of her actual substance.
The truth is the electorate gets the leaders they deserve. There is no longer room for a visionary or a moderate to lead either major party, and there hasn’t been for many years now. Gillard is the best Prime Minister we’ve had since Keating, and that will do for me until a better candidate steps forward.
With some amazing luck both parties will see entirely new leaders in place before the next election and Gillard and Abbott can go back to their more suited roles as parliamentary attack dogs.
Jordan: “The only reason the coalition are not a disorganised rabble is that they are in opposition, and so can be united (barely) in negativity. Were the coalition to be elected they would find that making their opponents unpopular is not, in fact, enough to stay in favour with the electorate.”
So what? This doesn’t detract one iota from the fact that the ALP are a disgraceful rabble.
I am not even going to bother to give the Global Mail site a hit. It is not as though it is at all difficult to guess the perspective it will take. Graeme Wood and Gina Rinehart seem to be Australia’s George Soros and Koch Brothers respectively.
Leonard Cohen sums it up:
There are no appealing candidates, Buns. The Greens aren’t worth a toss anymore either so I can’t even vote for them as a protest.
I am not even going to bother to give the Global Mail site a hit. It is not as though it is at all difficult to guess the perspective it will take.
Says the man who gets upset when we don’t take his Washington Post links seriously.
Does that matter at all? Why not expose here lying and scheming? Or is a free press not allowed to do that?
Very nice attempt at doing exactly what the media do – divert. Look over there! We don’t have problems that need solutions! We don’t have a huge report into education that we should all be considering – far more important is that we just have evil Juliar!
SB, you know full well I am not at all suggesting gagging the media – but nice try. You also know that I was merely seeking that the media play their role in that lovely idealistic sense as the 4th arm of the democracy and actually give us some policy analysis for a change. But instead, more speculation of speculation of speculation (with a dash of defamation thrown in for good measure).
I am not even going to bother to give the Global Mail site a hit
Does this mean you’re not reading it? Well, if SB refuses to read the Global Mail, I refuse to read his comments.
Hmm, actually that sounds quite appealling …
He works 4:30 am to midnight
No wonder he swears so much.
Narcotic, maybe if the PM did not have so many glaring defects, and maybe if Rudd wasn’t scheming madly against her, and maybe if politicians weren’t either leaking or going on the record for or against her, then the media could scrutinise the recklessly abysmal polices of this dreadful government.
As it is, the identity of the PM and the attempts by coup-plotters to destabilise her are matters of public interest.
Clearly Gillard should not have knifed Rudd. That is the foundation of the current state of affairs. The way Rudd is behaving is a natural consequence of that act, but is unseemly nonetheless. Keating’s famous words surely apply as well to Gillard as to the NSW ALP leader:
“It may be a novel concept for you, let me say that the conscientious business of governance can never be founded in a soul so blackened by opportunism.”
Well he just resigned as Foreign Minister.
Thank GOD at least that’ll shut up the media about the spill for a while.
What is your evidence that Rudd is scheming beyond media and opposition speculation? What are the ‘glaring’ defects of the PM without resorting to physical insults of her? Can you name more than two ALP MPs that have gone on the record against Gillard? Julia Bishop couldn’t when she was put on the spot on Q&A the other night… (note that was 3 questions, I’d prefer an answer to all or none because the ‘easy’ question is all the media ever answer too).
You do realise we don’t elect the PM? We elect the party. That is why that Roy kid got a seat. That is why Baillieu is not contesting Hulls old seat. That being said, I don’t personally like the removal of Rudd, but neither Rudd nor Gillard have said that Rudd is anything but a good foreign minister.
Your quote is a good one, I’ll pay you that – but you can you see its applicability to every word Abbot mentions? He is yet to have even a policy fart – no good policy debate from him, it is all just opportunism.
One wonders if we’ve lost a great foreign minister over all this guff.
At least Rudd, by resigning, is showing some signs of behaving like an adult.
I take your point, Buns and RM. I will read the article. As Jordan recommended it it may have some redeeming features.
Rudd: “the future of the ALP depended on removing the influence of factions within the party.”
And the unions who own it lock, stock and barrel.
Don’t worry Narcotic, Rudd only resigned to find a better angle from which to ratfuck Gillard.
Gillard’s defects:
1. She chose not to keep her promises.
2. She won’t answer difficult questions directly. On Four Corners her evasions cost her any remaining shred of credibility she may have had.
3. She can’t control her own office – they go out and start riots for political advantage and she doesn’t even know when they are writing her acceptance speech.
4. She stabbed Rudd in the back. That is the error that has decimated her party in the polls and effectively ended the careers of many of her backbench.
5. She is completely disingenuous – real Julia, fake Julia, anti-marriage equality Julia, bible in schools Julia. When the media says she is not showing her human side it’s a tear in the eye and a rasp in the voice. Her claim to have been young and naive when she was a partner of a major law firm hasn’t really helped her credibility either.
6. Her thought-bubble decision making is insane. Announcing the Timor Solution without having even an in-principle deal made us a laughing stock. Her early announcement of the Malaysian solution left us in a very bad bargaining position with the Malaysians. Sheer incompetence.
7. Her defence of Craig Thomson and her failure to take action against him is revolting.
8. Her ungracious refusal to mention Rudd in her recent speech about
She is not as bad as Howard, but that isn’t much of a recommendation.
There are only two on the record that I know of, but that is surely enough to make my point. It also lends credence to the off the record comments reported.
“What is your evidence that Rudd is scheming beyond media and opposition speculation?”
His behaviour fits that narrative. I get my information from the media. You may not believe any journalists, especially when it doesn’t suit you. Just like the ALP politicians who didn’t believe that the coup against Rudd was on. Crean certainly thinks Rudd is scheming. Do you think Crean was lying when he said “I know he’s been talking to other people,”? Do you think he was talking through his arse when he said Rudd had “clearly been disloyal internally”? Really?
But hey, you could be right – Rudd could be completely innocent – like when he referred to the Lodge as “Bougainville”. The journos could be lying when they cite unnamed sources and maybe Kim Carr isn’t doing the numbers for Rudd. Time will tell.
More irresponsible media speculation tonight,eh Narcotic.
Funnily enough, I have been listening to that particular Leonard Cohen song a lot, lately….
The Global Mail link is not particularly partisan; there is some left leaning bias but less than what you’d come across in (say) much of the opinion published on ABC or Fairfax. Its very “a pox on both their houses”, decrying the current environment as the fault of both sides. Should really be your style, so I’m glad you’ve reconsidered reading it.
And I agree with most of your eight theses against Gillard, but still think she’s the person most fit to hold the Prime Ministerial office of the available candidates (of course I have a laundry list of pros to counterbalance those cons). Maybe I have a lower view of politicians than you, and I’m just a realist in my acceptance that a politician has to do the job in the end.
Or maybe I in fact admire politicians more for doing the best they can in what is in the end a remarkably shitty and awful job in many ways, unappreciated by most of the public – and so I can consider Gillard’s many flaws to be outweighed by her strengths….
Which are, compared with her predecessors?
I fail to see why the media have to report that gossip shit.
“Recklessly abysmal policies”? Which “recklessly abysmal policies”?
Sure, they’re not the Greens, they haven’t managed to improve public health and education (yet, although the $20bn extra for the public system will be a good start), and they’ve maintained some of the nasty Liberal policies like a private health rebate (although they’ve wound it back from the richest Australians) and discrimination against gay people – but they’ve ended offshore detention, they’ve brought troops home from Iraq, they’ve kept the economy going through the GFC, they’ve legislated a price on carbon, they’re recovering some of the windfall mining gains that are distorting the economy, they removed some of the worst parts of WorkChoices… basically, it’s been a vast, vast improvement on their predecessors, and any move to the chaos of Hockey and Abbott would be a massive, massive step backwards. Dear God, can you imagine what they’re going to have to slash, the damage they’re going to have to do to our country in order to fund their rash promises and still manage a “surplus”?
On the contrary, they’ve shown themselves to be the most principled, reliable party in Australian politics.
Imagine what might have been possible if Rudd, Turnbull and Brown had just gotten together like adults to implement a multi-partisan CPRS.
The Greens would have a locked in policy achievement to build off for the many future years the battle for climate change wil have to hav
The ALP caucus would no doubt have tolerated Rudd for at least another term or so.
And then later on either Gillard or Turnbull would have had his measure at some point and been able to walk into the job without the circumstances being stacked against them…..
A boy can dream.
Jeremy: “Which are, compared with her predecessors?”
See above. Also please note that I compared Gillard favourably with Howard. But this isn’t really about comparisons. Gillard is a dreadful PM and utterly toxic for Labor.
“I fail to see why the media have to report that gossip shit.”
I guess that’s your inner fascist showing there! 🙂 I’m sure the people who agree with you won’t read any of it. The rest of us who have an interest in how government works and the mechanics how our PMs are slaughtered will. I’m grateful for the insights it provides.
“On the contrary, they’ve shown themselves to be the most principled, reliable party in Australian politics.”
ROTFLMFAO. Suffice to say I disagree with most of the policy “achievements” of this government. The worst of them was rolling back not only the Howard, but also the Hawke, labour reforms. Unleashing the unions will fuck our country up more than the carbon tax (which will soon be laughed into the dustbin of history). The ALP can’t represent all Australians while it is a Unionland satrapy.
The Greens have lost their innocence. They are now just an agit-prop shop for discredited old commos and their running dogs. Bob Brown has lost it completely, wanting to silence his media critics with government intimidation. His only function now is to serve as a case in point for the euthanasia laws he champions.
Jordan, the great climate scare is over. The people are wise to it and will vote massively against it at the next election. It’s over now, just a historical footnote about the dangers of politics corrupting science..
OK, guess I was wrong. Rudd is stupid enough to try now rather than wait the media out. Or simply resign from parliament on Monday and leave Labor to tear itself apart.
Labor is tearing itself apart! Just ask Wayne.
Uh, I don’t think the climate is as impressed by polls as the Australian media.
What are you talking about? Fair Work only undid part of the Howard changes. It’s still pretty much impossible to strike in this country – so much for a “labor” party. Labor didn’t go far enough in completely rescinding WorkChoices – remnants still survive.
Are you calling them “old commos” because of Lee Rhiannon? It can’t be because of their actual policies, unless you think anything involving public services and general left policies is “communism”. And “government intimidation”! FFS.
I suppose there might be people out there naive enough not to realise that MPs always gossip to journalists about their ambitions, about their colleagues’ flaws, about perceived slights etc. It’s the reality of any big party – maybe even the small parties.
It’s not news. It’s gossip. The problem has been the media letting it drown out real news for 18 months.
This time the “gossip” was on the money, wasn’t it? Reporting it wasn’t “speculation”. And it is a matter of public interest. Half the office is in the common room waiting for Gillard to speak.
The old fascist attitude of “nothing to see here, we’ll let you know when you have a new PM, but for now we are at war with Eastasia” won’t wash. People are actually interested in the mechanics of a Prime Ministerial coup.
No. Obviously not, or we’d have seen a leadership challenge when they started banging on about it 18 months ago.
But we did see a powerful demonstration of how the media can make something insubstantial real.
No, it was speculation, which is why they were wrong for so long. And yeah, it’s “interesting” to the public, in the same way as any titillating gossip is “interesting”.
Doesn’t make it news. Doesn’t make it informative. Doesn’t help our democracy.
“Obviously not, or we’d have seen a leadership challenge when they started banging on about it 18 months ago.”
You better inform Gillard that she was wrong to refer to a “long-term campaign of destabilisation” then. Or maybe she was just lying again – which is it?
Why not just try to objective about this?
On the other hand Gillard looked pretty good this morning. Maybe this episode will be the making of her.
Jordan, the great climate scare is over. The people are wise to it and will vote massively against it at the next election. It’s over now, just a historical footnote about the dangers of politics corrupting science..
Assuming you’re not trolling, how do you explain the ongoing consensus about the science of climate change that exists among virtually all climate scientists worldwide, as well as all western governments and major scientific organisations? Conspiracy? Genuinely interested in how you rationalise this to yourself.
Leaving aside that a majority of Australians are able to acknowledge the science of climate change, making your claim that “the people are wise to it” bullshit, science isn’t determined by a show of hands. Very few of “the people” are qualified climate scientists, so there’s no reason why their opinions should matter so much to you.
Buns: “how do you explain the ongoing consensus about the science of climate change that exists among virtually all climate scientists worldwide”
Buns answers his own question: “science isn’t determined by a show of hands”
So SB, you’re more qualified to understand the state of the art in climate science research than all of the actual scientists?
Judith Curry is close to the only serious climate scientist still holding even a “lukewarmer” position. She’s right, and the rest are wrong, and you can tell, because…. oh, because the environmentalists support what the scientists say. Proof by “there are some idiots who disagree with me.”
Any credit for the climate science community now that it is beginning to canvass geo-engineering, as you have so long demanded?
You’re right about the leadership coup, though – the media’s speculation has been self interested gossip, but Rudd has been feeding it, right from the leak to Laurie Oaks of cabinet level discussions in the middle of the last election campaign.
So you can’t explain that massive consensus then. I see. Just pretend it doesn’t exist. That’s what most climate change deniers do. Then have the conceit to claim to know more about a subject than peer-review published experts.
I think virtually to a man among the denialist camp, it’s basically about feeling obligated to be against whatever the leftards are for. Start with the conclusion that you oppose whatever the leftards are for and then work back from there. It has nothing to do with science.
Or as SB puts it:
just a historical footnote about the dangers of politics corrupting science
Jordan: “So SB, you’re more qualified to understand the state of the art in climate science research than all of the actual scientists?”
As Buns said, science isn’t determined by a show of hands.
It doesn’t take much in the way of qualifications to asses whether or not what we are dealing with is science at all. My view is that if the “scientists” will not share the data and methods then we should not spend trillions of dollars on their prognostications.
The fact is that the hockey stick graph, which was the single most compelling reason to believe the AGW thesis, was based on an incompetent and flawed methodology. Doesn’t that cause you any concern at all? Or maybe the fact that in order to check it the data and method had to be subpoenaed out of the “scientist” concerned might cause you some concern.
Doesn’t it worry you just a tad that the head of the UEA Climate Research Unit said he would rather destroy data than hand it over under FOI and that he said definitely wouldn’t give his data to someone when all they wanted to do was to prove him wrong?
These are not isolated incidents. Step back. Do some reading. Have a good think about it.
Look at the way the hysterics have treated fraudster Gleick as a hero. That just demonstrates the stupidly politicised nature of the alarmist position. At least a few of the saner ones are criticising him. And the American Geophysical Union ditched him. Hilariously he was chair of their Task Force on Scientific Ethics.
My view is that we need to know a lot more about this issue before jumping into absolutely futile measures like the carbon tax.
So to summarise, it really a leftard conspiracy.
97% of climate experts and all major scientific organisations worldwide are wrong about climate change, and the proof of this is the confected Climategate “scandal”.
Step back. Do some reading. Have a good think about it.
Spend a bit of time at wikipedia and some agenda-driven science-hating websites, have a good think about it, then presume to know as much as published experts who have devoted decades to the scientific study of climate change. There’s no reason why anyone’s opinion should be better than anyone else’s. After all, you got a C+ in year 10 science and read some stuff on the intarwebs.
But we did see a powerful demonstration of how the media can make something insubstantial real.
You don’t really believe that Rudd’s ambitions to regain the top job are the result of media speculation do you?
Surely you would accept that Rudd has been quietly building support for another tilt at the leadership, and that while the media’s predictions of when he would move have been consistently wrong, the substance of their reporting has been correct?
It looks like you’re saying that this leadership issue has arisen solely as a result of media interference.
Buns your summary is wrong, you haven’t made a rational argument at all other than “I can’t be bothered thinking, I’ll just go with the flow”. I guess that is why you are lefty in the first place.
Also, unlike the hockey stick graph, the Climategate emails were not confected. However, the Fakegate non-scandal did rely on a confected document, not to mention the fraud perpetrated by warmist scientist Peter Gleick.
SB, where you have gone wrong is to presume that spending a bit of time on the internet reading about something and having a “good think” about it is the equivalent of decades of study and actual expertise in the subject. That is typical of the conceit of denialists. You must wonder why anybody studies science at university when they could just sit at home googling and having a good think. Newsflash: your opinion of the science concerning climate change is utterly worthless – not just to me, but to everyone. Mine is also, for the exact same reason. If I wanted a second opinion on my architect’s assessment of the structural integrity of my house, I would not ring my plumber regardless of how long he had been giving architecture a good think and reading about it on wikipedia.
the hockey stick graph … was based on an incompetent and flawed methodology
Sorry?! According to whom? Soon and Baliunas?
I was under the impression that the graph was proven to be correct by subsequent SCIENTIFIC research
97% of climate experts and all major scientific organisations worldwide are wrong about climate change
Buns – for the record – the “consensus” around AGW is:
1. that the world is warming;
2. that humans are causing the warming through our emissions; and
3. that the warming will have an impact on our future climate.
It doesn’t go much further than that mate. There is not much consensus around what the consequences of the warming will be – as the dud predictions of Flannery, Gore and much of the IPCC have already proved.
A sceptical approach to future predictions emanating from the AGW industry is not only increasingly widespread throughout the community, it is arguably the only intellectually defensible position to take given the evidence now unfolding before our eyes.
Thanks for the Climate Change 101 lesson, mondo. Much appreciated. But I didn’t say the consensus went further than that or assert that Flannery and Gore haven’t made some dud predictions or that we should uncritically accept all predictions concerning climate change.
I was responding to the assertion that “the great climate scare is over”. I’ll stand corrected by the man himself but I think you may find SB doesn’t concede the correctness of your 3 numbered points and/or that there is consensus on those points. That’s what I infer from the comment “the great climate scare is over”.
Buns you must wonder why the good lord endowed you with a brain if you limit its use to kowtowing to experts. In fact you appear unable even to question “scientists” who wont have their work subject to critical examination. They should be excluded from consideration in this debate.
I have been on both sides of this issue. I did believe the experts and was convinced by the hockey stick graph that the better view was that recent increases in temperature were due to man-made emissions of GHGs. But then I listened to other experts who exposed the statistical errors in the HS graph.
Fool me once but next time I will be more sceptical.
If your architect makes basic mathematical errors You should not rely on him again.
RM: “Sorry?! According to whom? Soon and Baliunas?”
According to the Wegman Report, silly. Mann behaved like a man with something to hide and the committee had to subpoena him to get the data. Obviously Mann is not to be trusted again. The Wegman report also has a good section on groupthink.
But no need to worry about reading the Wegman reoprt and stuff like that because Buns will just write it off as sitting at home googling.
“I was under the impression that the graph was proven to be correct by subsequent SCIENTIFIC research”
The attempt to kill of the MWP has failed. The sons of Hockey Stick were infected by the hide the decline trick and the highly questionable Yamal proxies. Until the MWP is eliminated there is no real basis for believing that climate change is not a natural variation. That was the magic of the Hockey Stick and that is why I was taken in by it first time around.
Also, if the attempted crucifiction of Soon and Baliunas doesn’t concern you then just give the game away. If you think someone has published junk, then publish a rebuttal, but don’t scheme with your fellow climate criminals to have them and the editor who published them taken down. That whole episode is typical of the anti-rational anti-scientific approach of the Hockey Team.
What is it with all the violent imagery over a vote?
Obviously everyone that refers to Gillard knifing Rudd or resorting to florid baconian references ala Pyne and his lady macbeth schtick are a pack of bloodthirsty psychos who shouldn’t be allowed into their parents kitchen let alone a public place without police supervision.
What is it with these people and violence?
How is it possible to refer to a ballot as a violent murder?
Obviously they play too many violent video games and watch too much judas priest.
Plus why is it that gillard knifed Rudd, but that Abbott defeated Turnbull? Search the terms and compare the numbers.
Is it only a knifing if a woman wins a vote for leadership, what with them all being femme fatales or madonnas or whores or something?
+ riots on invasion day. LOL
Until the MWP is eliminated there is no real basis for believing that climate change is not a natural variation.
You’re on your own with that one SB . . . . .
Oh and you guys are right. AGW isn’t happening and if it means warmer winters and growing mangoes in melbourne all the better and it should be allowed to happen.
My point, Buns, was that consensus is not a means of establishing scientific fact.
The scare is over in the sense that the bumrush failed, the people are disillusioned by a carbon tax implemented against their will and contrary to a specific promise made to them by the PM and which will have zero (correct to four decimal places) effect on climate. Flaws in the alarmist approach have been exposed and the Hockey Team itself has been shown to be a bunch of comically inept carpet-baggers.
Look, if they come back with more and better evidence, people might take them seriously, but they oversold their product and now their ethicist-in-chief Gleick has admitted to fraud.
Mondo: “You’re on your own with that one SB . . . . .”
Fine. But why would you downplay the possibility of natural variation when there had been historically higher temperatures than now? It is not as though the climate system is well enough understood to take account of all variables. We are just at the beginning of this field of study.
Until the MWP is eliminated there is no real basis for believing that climate change is not a natural variation.
About 97% of climate change scientists and all major scientific organisations worldwide are wrong then. Yeah, that’s likely.
Is that all you’ve got, Buns? It is a bullshit stat anyway.
That’s quite a lot – 100% is the maximum. And “all” means without exception.
I am only a dropout of an advanced mathematics degree, and my PhD friends aren’t here. So I’ll have to make do.
As far as I can tell, there are still legitimate questions about the statistical robustness of techniques behind the hockey stick, and there are ongoing debates about it amongst the most technically inclined members of the relevant academic communities.
And some of the scientists in the AGW camp have done stupid and in one or two cases outright unethical things (Gleick, *by his own admission*, being one.)
And it doesn’t fucking matter because there are many, many independent lines of evidence that are not dependent on the Hockey Stick nor Gleick nor any other one individual person or graph or academic paper, and they all fucking confirm that AGW, is at a minimum, real and serious, which is why even the most skeptical genuine climate scientists such as Judith Curry can only be characterised as “lukewarmers” not deniers, and why the semi-honest and competent critics of the consensus like Lomborg have changed their stance from “this isn’t real” to “this is real, but there are more important problems.”
I’m sorry SB, but reality doesn’t care about the fact that Mann had you convinced by his graph and then turned out to be a bit of a dick who overstated his case. Whatever your personal history with the issue, the weight of evidence still stands.
You cannot explain the consensus of climate scientists on this issue except via conspiracy. They can’t all be a bit biased by the generic influence of the Left; the weight of published papers doesn’t allow for it They would all have to be actively falsifying their work. Not just the hockey stick, but every thing that’s gone into IPCC 4 and more besides.
Jordan: “And it doesn’t fucking matter because there are many, many independent lines of evidence that are not dependent on the Hockey Stick nor Gleick nor any other one individual person or graph or academic paper, and they all fucking confirm that AGW, is at a minimum, real and serious”
Have you even thought about what it would take to confirm AGW? Much less “fucking” confirm it? (That must be a special secret form of confirmation that only you and your PhD friends know about.)
Anyway if you are so hot and bothered about it why not share some of the “many many” confirmations with us.
Can we get over the flat earth bullshit?
SB If you have a better theory as to why the world is warming put it forward.
I wish my PhD friends would organise some confirmation orgies already.
And I’m not hot and bothered at all. You’re not the only one of us who can use colourful language for rhetorical flourish, my friend. Indeed I don’t really care about climate change as an issue, not because I don’t think its real, but because its such an uphill battle to keep repeating the same shit over and over again; in twenty years the evidence will be so strong and the technology to fix the problem so much cheaper that it will be child’s play to win the argument. Of course humanity will pay a few hundred billion dollars extra, maybe, in addressing the problem late, but that’s how we learn.
FWIW, per Popper (and his later Bayesian elaborators), we never have “confirmation” of any scientific theory. Not even gravity, as Einstein showed of Newton and someone else will no doubt show of General Relativity. But we have evidence, and the evidence is strong enough to show that anthropogenic climate change is real with very high probability. We KNOW that C02 causes heating and we have are ALMOST CERTAIN natural forcings can’t explain recent trends, because there are only a limited number of plausible candidates to provide the forcings (solar variability, non-anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, non-anthropogenic biosphere carbon cycle disruptions, etc) and we have strong evidence that the other candidates cannot account for the trend. The evidence is CERTAINLY strong enough that the possibility of climate change is a real and serious risk that requires action. Even if only a two degree rise as a result of carbon emissions had only 10% a probability of being correct, it would still be utterly wreckless to not make any changes to what we are doing in terms of our footprint; the expected loss of human welfare from a 10% chance of a two degree rise is, still, massively large.
If you truly are open minded and seek to be convinced of the actual truth, read the literature for yourself. Not the blogosphere, which is a useful antidote to problems in the peer review process but does not yet have the quality control or the technical acumen to really probe scientifically contentious issues. The only place to go is the actual scientific literature. Wikipedia and/or the IPCC interim reports can give you good leads into some of the more relevant papers, and the citations in the key papers themselves will take you the rest of the way to what’s worth reading. I can’t be bothered summarising the entire case for you (further than I already have in this comment and countless other times at this blog) when other people have done it better than I have.
Jordan – confirmations shared = 0.
Jules, what about good old natural variation.
The IPCC graph from 1990 doesn’t show anything disturbing at all. Just natural variation. That is precisely why Overpeck said the MWP had to be got rid of and why the Hockey Stick was concocted.
1. Measured melting ice, including trends in Arctic sea ice minimal extent
2. Measured rising sea levels
3. Measured rise in C02, CH4 etc concentrations combined with long-understood physics that this provides a warming effect
4. Measured upward trend in ocean temperatures (a much better indicator than the surface temperatures most people fuss over….)
5. etc
There. That’s a few more than zero to get you started.
SB, you know as well as I do that nature isn’t just like some 3 year old that can’t make up its mind about ice cream flavours. You can’t just say “natural variation” as if it were an explanation; its about as scientifically valid as saying “Demeter changed the temperature because she was pining for Aphrodite.”
Climate scientists, funnily enough, are acutely conscious of the possibility of non-anthropogenic forcings. The climate can only “vary naturally” in the presence of such a forcing, for instance, variability in solar radiation. The plausible candidate causes of natural variation have been considered by scientists , and it turns out they do NOT explain the observed trends. If you want to claim the climate is changing of it own accord, you need to give more details on how this is possible, because our best science says your explanation is extremely unlikely.
Yay – leadership speculation over (?!) = policy discussion right away.
Too bad it is re-runs…
Annabel Crabb gets it right: “Believe whomever you choose; the only conclusion that can emerge from all this is that Labor is a party that will tell the truth only when it has exhausted any other option.”
But why would you downplay the possibility of natural variation when there had been historically higher temperatures than now?
I’m not downplaying anything SB – I only take issue with your comment that: “there is no real basis for believing that climate change is not a natural variation” is irrational.
There is a very real basis for believing that climate change is human caused: because it’s the overwhelming consensus view of almost every climate scientist in the world. As Jordan has already stated above, “Whatever your personal history with the issue, the weight of evidence still stands.”
It really does SB. Read some Lomborg for the perspective of a reasonable and rational sceptic.
I’m sorry to say it, but your determination to dismiss worldwide scientific consensus as a Lefty conspiracy seems irrational to me.
SB following on from Jordan’s comment re natural variation, it may be a natural variation however its highly unlikely. The things jordan mentioned are suggestive of a trend, not a natural range of events. As of yet the trend hasn’t reversed, and its been going for several decades.
Admittedly its possible but thats why the IPCC has always spoken in probabilities wrt AGW (they claimed it was 90% probability that warming was human inducedin 2007. Of course the people in denial conveniently ignore this cos it doesn’t suit their arguments.
People don’t really want to hear the truth when its not of the obvious and pleasant variety. “The leader you voted for and adore actually turned out to be unfit for the office of Prime Minister, and we’re sorry we ever put him to you as a candidate for the office; for the sake of the nation we can’t let him back in, even if it would help our chances of holding on to power.” Its perfectly honest, but its not going to win anyone in the ALP any credit.
The electorate fundamentally gets the leadership it deserves in a democracy, which at this stage looks like Tony Abbott (whose negativity and deception they dislike and yet are determined to reward in poll after poll). Well, so be it.
Jordan, apart from anything else, those 5 points don’t add up to a compelling argument that humans are responsible, even discounting the fact that temperatures have stabilised notwithstanding increases in GHG emissions.
On the ‘confirmation’ point, there is some interesting reading to be had on Francis Bacon as an early falsificationist and precursor to Popper. The issue is touched on here.
Mondo, we are not even close to understanding how the climate system works. The closest the Hockey Team have come is their defective attempt to flatline the MWP and the little ice age, rather than to explain those variations.
In the end you have reduced this to a numbers game which is the least scientific method of all. I am simply not going to trust a bunch of politicised schemers who won’t even produce the data to enable their work to be scrutinised.
Jules, natural variation is obviously shorthand for the known unknowns and unknown unknowns in climate science. When we get to a situation where we actually do understand in detail how the climate system works we will have a much better idea of what causes natural variation.
So, SB, your view is unless we understand absolutely everything about a particualr issue we should not act to prevent any advserse situation. Goodbye medicine.
No Narcotic, that is not my view.