CONTACT Richard Farmer PO Box 613 Tanunda SA 5352 Phone: 0422 083 285
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Friday, 29 September 2006
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Doing Kim a Favour by Mistake A conspiracy theory is bound to develop soon around the regularity with which The Australian distorts the reporting of its own Newspolls to put Kim Beazley in the worst possible light. Whenever the news is bad for Labor a Shock-! Horror! page one story by political editor Dennis Shanahan is certain. When the pollster has Labor six points in the lead for the second time in a month, as happened this week, the news is relegated to an inside page with some incidental poll finding given the headline treatment.
This morning The Oz excelled itself. After hiding the normal fortnightly Newspoll release on Tuesday it topped the front with the headline “Beazley leaves voters in marginal seats dissatisfied: poll”. Underneath was the news that in marginal seats “voter dissatisfaction with Kim Beazley's leadership is undermining Labor's election-winning lead.” Some undermining! In the accompanying tables was the news that Labor is leading the Coalition by four percentage points – 52 to 48 on a two party preferred basis.
The initial response of a reader to this treatment of the polls would be that Shanahan and his paper are running some kind of campaign against Beazley. True conspiracy theorists will not fall for that. They will understand that the underdog is the preferred position for a politician and that those devilish Murdoch lackeys are doing their best to save Kimbo from the damage that would come from being seen as a winner.
Strange Friend for a Philistine Picking grand final week to brand Prime Minister John Howard as a philistine was a sure headline winner for Labor's would be Arts Minister Peter Garrett. While some might question the credentials of a former rock musician to pronounce on matters of art and culture, Mr Garrett asked people to remember the last time Mr Howard offered a view on the value of creativity, of encouraging expression, of the importance of telling our own stories before answering his own question with "the idea of a national political leader championing an artist, author or designer in 2006 seems almost absurd. Politicians continually associate themselves with sport and sporting success and yet at the national level are virtually absent from any meaningful discussion or involvement with the arts."
Now true it is, as the rock star himself acknowledged, that the PM is a cricket tragic but a “philistine”? How then to explain his close friendship with Donald Benjamin McDonald AC? It was Mr Howard who personally plucked the chief executive of The Australian Opera for ten years to become chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It is hard to imagine that friendship developing unless their paths had crossed at a cultural event.
Perhaps this is just another example of the political skills which have kept Mr Howard a winner for so long. He is a closet opera lover who keeps his sin hidden behind a macho pretence of loving sport in the knowledge that as an arty crafty he might suffer the same fate as Paul Keating when he came out as a lover of Mahler.
The Two Views of Barry Australian voters have always liked Barry Jones the Labor politician. The school masterly manner and precise, clipped speech earns respect. People might not know what he is talking about exactly but it must be right mustn't it? He won all those quiz shows didn't he? Clever bloke that Barry Jones. Just the man for the rank-and-file to select as Party President.
Talk to those Labor politicians who worked alongside Barry Jones in government and you find a different view. Very few ministerial colleagues have a kind word to say about him as a Minister. He would analyse and dissect issues at considerable length but prove incapable of making decisions and implementing them. Ifs, buts and maybes might make you sound very impressive but they are not much help to a government trying to get things done. His seven years as Science Minister from 1983 to 1990 were years of frustration rather than achievement.
But the people do like his books. Sleepers, Wake! published in 1982, is now in its 26th impression which must give publishers Allen & Unwin confidence about his autobiography, A Thinking Reed, that will be released next week. Previews are starting to appear in the nation's press with Mike Steketee giving a good plug in The Australian today based on comments accusing Kim Beazley of shunning risk, refusing to make major policy reforms and pursuing only popular issues.
Barry Jones, it appears, is still smarting over Beazley's treatment of his Knowledge Nation report. "If Beazley had devoted 30 minutes - possibly even 20 - to defending Knowledge Nation robustly, he could have won the moral and intellectual argument, especially if we had called in some of our respected panel members or outsiders," Mr Jones is quoted as writing.
Ah, yes. Moral and intellectual arguments. Barry has always been good at those. It's just a pity that those voters who so admire him aren't.
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