Showing posts with label Dennis Shanahan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dennis Shanahan. Show all posts

Monday, August 26, 2013

Newspoll Reveals Rudd Led Spectacular Comeback In Just Six Days, Murdoch Media Doesn't Notice

Newspoll, you're so damn finicky.








So according to Newspoll, in just six days prime minister Kevin Rudd has gone from being at "record lows" to Labor support being at its "highest level" since the election campaign began.
 
But nobody at The Australian seemed to notice The Rudd Surge, least of all Newspoll wrangler Dennis Shanahan.

Unlike just six days ago, when Rudd was at "record lows" :
Mr Rudd today shrugged off the devastating Newspoll and said he had been written off many times before during his political career.

“I'm a fighter and there are many things worth fighting for in this election campaign,” he told the Seven Network.
I actually admire Shanahan's work explaining to us how the Murdoch co-owned Newspoll is actually nearly always telling us Labor is doomed. Doomed!

Anyone willing to write thousands of words a week on that fucking berzerk poll, year after year after year, deserves some respect. Probably.

Shanahan on Newspoll is like some bizarre public experiment by Rupert Murdoch, for the confusement and amusement of the masses. Well, of course, there's not so many masses at The Australian anymore, but that's another story. For later.

One you won''t read much about in The Australian.

Like The KRudd Comeback story that was right there, if only they'd wanted to find it..

Maybe next week.

Monday, August 19, 2013

The Unique 'Reality' Of Newspoll - Australian Federal Election - Day 18

The Australian gets the headline it wanted.

 
Is Newspoll now conducting its survey within the offices of The Australian?

There is Margin of Error, there is poll disparity, and then there is the unique reality of Newspoll. The Ghost Who Votes with the latest numbers:


 


Friday, September 11, 2009

Once Were (Political) Warriors

Prime minister Kevin Rudd has succeeded, once again, in getting the past and present stars of the Liberal Party to waffle on defending decisions made one, two and three decades ago. Just as he intended.

Dennis Shanahan in The Australian
:
John Howard and Peter Costello have struck back politically and personally at Kevin Rudd's characterisation of their government as indolent and uncaring neo-liberals, declaring the Prime Minister has reached "new heights of political mendacity".

Stirred from his sick bed, Australia's second-longest-serving prime minister has accused his successor of politicising and demeaning 30 years of continuing Australian government reforms, including those of the Hawke-Keating era, for partisan benefit.

On Monday, Mr Rudd, at the launch of The March of Patriots, by The Australian's Paul Kelly, said the Howard government had been "indolent" and the Coalition could not claim to be partners with Labor in Australia's economic reforms of the past 30 years.

"The Liberals' failure to advance a framework for increasing national productivity is not a minor blemish on their economic record," Mr Rudd said.

"It reflects a fundamental failure of long-term economic reform and casts legitimate doubt over the extent to which the Liberal Party can be regarded as partners with Labor in the great project of economic modernisation."

Even social reforms that "endured through long periods of Liberal rule" survived, according to the Prime Minister, only because of political expediency and not because of any genuine support or belief.
Rudd has effectively pulled off this kind of caper, of forcing Liberals to go on the defensive about their most important claims to economic success and major reform, from the very first week of his leadership of the Labor Party. Rudd's strategy of getting the Liberals all hackled up succeeded all the way through the 2007 election campaign. And it's still working now for Rudd.

As John Howard proves, as he desperately seeks to remind Rudd that he used to be someone important :

In one fashion or another we are all political warriors, but we have a superior obligation to the national interest. That obligation obtains in opposition as well as in government.

No side of Australian politics has a monopoly of either virtue or merit. Each according to its own value system has attempted to improve the lot of Australians.

In failing to acknowledge this last Monday, my successor diminished himself, and not the Liberal and National Parties.

This 24 hour wonder must have been worth a few good laughs for Rudd.

.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

It's Only Biased Reporting If You're A Rotten Lefty Blogger

Dennis Shanahan at The Australian reports on the latest poll results :
Kevin Rudd's personal popularity has lifted to a six-month high....
Followed by the standard dose of Shanahan lemon-sucking :
....despite problems with the economic stimulus spending, rising unemployment and fears of interest rate rises.
Every news story hand-crafted to fit the tastes of the majority of The Australian's readers.

But Shanahan doesn't go far enough in listing the problems Rudd still faces. I would have added, "(and fears of interest rates) and soaring pet care costs and the eating of nearby star systems by the Adromeda Galaxy...."

Shanahan's up to his old poll massaging tricks of 2007, yet again.


(click to enlarge)

The federal election will be held in the first quarter of 2010. Perhaps it takes a good six months for Shanahan to get back up to speed?

The only surprising thing is that Shanahan hasn't started talking up a Churchillian return from John Howard.

(via@timdunlop)

November 2007 : On Eve Of Shattering Howard Election Defeat, Shanahan Declares 'Our Polls Must Be Wrong!'



.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Two Major Journalists Required To Cope With Sheer Weight Of Howard's Final Week "I Shit You Not" Fear Mongering Pitch

When I worked as the editor of a city newspaper, many years ago, the newspaper's owner would walk into the office with a local MP's wordy press release in hand, plonk it down on the desk and say "Just run it."

After I'd scanned through the mind-numbing mass, or mess, of information, the conversation would usually go like this :

"I need to check the claims he's making here...some of this is way over the top."

"Just run it."

"I need to give the opposition a chance to react to these claims. They deserve the right of the reply."

"Just run it."

"People are going to laugh at this. They're going to pick up the paper next week and think we're just a local government mouthpiece."

"Just run it."

"Why do you need journalists? You could just get the secretary to type all this shit up..."

"Just run it...Actually, run it on the front page."

The editorship didn't last long.

I flashbacked to those days when I looked at The Australian today and saw this story, where John Howard summons up his most doom-laden verbiage to try one last Big Scare. It's the last minute of the final quarter, the clock is ticking, Australians need to be told they should be trembling as they hover that pencil on Saturday near boxes marked Labor or The Greens.

After weeks of desperate electoral tactical meetings and long lectures from supposed masters of political campaigning and 'damage control', John Howard is finally ready to unveil the New Horror.

The Labor-Green 'Axis'! Lookout! Booga! Beware!

Howard uncorks so much spin, froth and horror-heavy twaddle that The Australian needed two of its biggest hitters - Dennis Shanahan and Paul Kelly - to transcribe it all.

Because that's all this excretible excuse for a news story, from the newspaper that proudly boasts it "keeps the nation informed" really is, in the end. One long Howard rant, with barely a few hundred words from Kelly and Shanahan, but they're only writing what John Howard is saying, instead of just having Howard say it. They typed in a handful of their own words to break up the full stream of direct Howard quotes.

Back at my small city newspaper all those years ago, we only needed one person to transcribe the politician's press release and turn it into a front page story. The Australian needs two senior journalists to do the same thing.

Unless, of course, the editor of The Australiian thinks that having the names of Dennis Shanahan and Paul Kelly in the byline will give this gormless guff some weighty credibility. You know the kind of thing : it must be true what Howard is saying because, look, it's got Kelly and Shanahan bylines on it.

A double team effort! Whoa!

Because Paul Kelly and Dennis Shanahan are merely transcribing what Howard had to say, we're providing a handy translation. The Kelly/Shanahan 'interview' transcript is in italics.
John Howard has warned Australians they risk electing a Labor-Greens alliance that would impose a new national direction and conduct radical experiments with their values and institutions.

In a final-week interview with The Australian, the Prime Minister said the nation faced a "watershed election", where the real issues had been disguised by the me-tooism of Kevin Rudd and in which the workplace reforms of his Government would be lost forever if Labor were elected.

Most Australians clearly want the the workplace reforms to be lost. That's why they're voting Howard out.

Convinced his hopes of a Coalition win at the weekend are not yet extinguished, Mr Howard said: "Part of my mission this week is to drive home the risk. My every waking hour and every available minute will be to drive home the risk of Labor."

Howard is going to rant doom around the clock like a drunk evangelist on a street corner wearing a 'The End Is Nigh' sandwich board.

He said a Labor government would mean higher unemployment, higher inflation and a rollback of industrial reforms that would terminate forever hopes of a freer labour market.

Complete and utter speculation from Howard. This is what he thinks may happen, but he has no proof, and most economists don't back up his claims. Kelly and Shanahan don't bother to even note that Howard could well be proven totally wrong.

Mr Howard warned that a Labor victory would mean a Labor-Greens Senate majority and an era of social re-engineering, with policy changes on drugs, education, social issues and political correctness in conflict with his social conservatism.

"There will be a return of political correctness. There will be a softening in relation to things like drugs. You will get a less socially conservative country at the very least.

Shocking. Rudd may actually wind back some of Howard's welfare for the rich, follow the nation's will and offer a Sorry to Aboriginals, and stop treating 19 year old pot smokers like psychotic hardened criminals.

"I think the country's mood is that people want economic progress but they don't want experiments with our basic values and institutions. Imagine if you are depending on the Greens to get a measure through the Senate on education. Imagine what they would extract."

Imagine if the Greens, who will likely claim 12% or more of the national vote, were actually able to represent the will and desires of their voters instead of having to suffer through the Coalition getting almost 100% of their bills and ammendments passed through the Senate? The horror!

Howard believes his values are what's best for all Australians, not apparently realising the 1950s were five long decades ago.

Asked about the future under the Coalition, Mr Howard said Peter Costello "will be elected unopposed" as his successor. In a warning to leadership aspirants, Mr Howard pledged to the Treasurer, saying this would be "the right thing" for the Liberal Party and for Australia.

Howard is dreaming.

By the time Howard finally hands the Kirribilli House keys back to Australia, if he's actually re-elected as PM, Malcolm Turnbull will have carved a deep trench through the Liberal Party on his way to the top job.

If the Coalition loses government, the old order will torn to shreds in months of bitter infighting about who lost the election, and all those golden Liberal seats. Peter Costello has about as much chance of becoming the next PM, or leader of the Liberals, as Peter Garrett has of taking control of BHP. Costello's poll ratings with the Australian public are absolutely abysmal, he's about as popular as a kick in the nuts with no $500 cheque from Australia's Funniest Home Video to ease the pain.

The Liberals are bitter, yet happy enough, to let Howard spin his little fantasy about Peter Costello taking over, but only until the New Year. Then the real fight inside the Liberal Party begins.

Mr Howard defended his policy of tax breaks to empower choice. He rejected the criticism it was middle-class welfare.
Of course it's middle-class welfare. Why does he think so much of the middle-class voted for him in 2004?
"It's not dependency to give a tax break to people for doing certain things," he said. "I find this blurring of the distinction between expenditure and tax incentives as ridiculous. We encourage people to make choices about their children's education through tax breaks ... We support people who have children by giving them tax breaks. That's authentic Liberal orthodoxy.
What Howard's true masters want, they get. Liberal orthodoxy under Howard is welfare for the middle class and fat tax cuts for the rich. The rest get less money spent on hospitals and education and an extra milkshake and a sandwich as a reward for not trying to storm Parliament House with flaming torches in hand.

It's no mystery why Shanahan would let his name go on such a rag bag of predictions, baseless projections and scare-mongering speculation. But why would Paul Kelly let his name anywhere near such tripe?

Does he no longer care at all? Is he about to retire?

Four more days to go...

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Now Shanahan Tries I-R-O-N-Y : Denying Polls "Defies Logic"

After writing numerous columns this year where he stubbornly ignored that Labor was absolutely, relentlessly, canning the Coalition in poll after poll after poll, notorious pro-Howard propagandist for The Australian newspaper Dennis Shanahan is now claiming the Coalition's desperate position of last defence, that the polls must surely wrong, "defies logic."

Yes, really :

John Howard only has one chance left to retain government: the published polls are wrong.

It's a scenario that takes another beating from today's Newspoll survey, showing swings in the 18 most marginal Coalition seats no better than the general polls, which have shown a consistent Labor lead of 8-10 points on a two-party-preferred basis all year.

Yet party officials on both sides, federal and state, insist the contest remains close and the election will be tight.

This defies logic and the published polls. How could a contest that has been poles apart ever since Rudd became leader of the Labor Party become tight overnight on November 23?


Err, that's pretty much the same question that the bloggers you and your editor had an absolute shitfit about, back in July, have been asking you, Mr Shanahan, all year long. How can you defy the logic of the polls?

There will be so much back-flipping from Australia's conservative media in the next week, as they try to recast themselves as not backers of the losing team, that editorial floors will look more like Olympic gymnastic venues. But full of not nearly so attractive, or limber, gymnasts.