Influencing the Influencers

Six days after the poll, and Australians are still shaking their heads that we have no clear result, other than a hung parliament. Both leaders of the main two parties are busy talking to the long-term three independents and even seriously considering their first log of claims. The fourth independent will be holding his first batch of discussions tomorrow but has already indicated he won’t be joining his three colleagues (disparagingly known in some circles as the ‘hayseed amigoes’), rather will go it alone – or independently. The first and only Green member of the Lower House is in the mix too, though he is backed by a very experienced leader in Bob Brown and his merry band of Greens in the Senate (likely to be nine).

What we can say is that this will be the era of the regions. Australia’s regional centres usually complain that they get forgotten in favour of the cities and suburbs when it comes to infra structure and other goodie spending. Not any more. The three independents are all ‘country’ members. At least one, Bob Katter from Queensland, has said he is in it for ‘whatever it takes’ to improve the lot of his electorate. Besides the expected pork barrelling that comes with bargaining for power, industry analysts and even the Bureau of Statistics are saying that Australia needs to do more to attract skilled workers to its regional centres.

The problem is that we don’t have many workers to go round. We are at risk of deepening the long-standing skills shortage particularly in the remote regions where there is currently a lot of private investment underway developing mines and other resource projects. Even the housing construction sector says it has major shortages in about eight of the 13 housing trades. All this makes a mockery of the major parties’ unedifying scramble to appear more anti-migration than the other during the recent election campaign.  Analysts note that despite the politicians hyperbole, even unskilled migrants usually associated with the group known as ‘humanitarian migrants’ (aka, refugees) are vital in any skills shortage, as this group is historically more likely to work in non-skilled labouring jobs that skilled migrants – and locals – won’t take up.

None of this should be a surprise. The recent mining boom in Western Australia, Queensland and even South Australia gave us plenty of warning of what happens when skilled labour is in short supply. That includes the knock on effect such a demand has on other industries whose workers are lured away by the higher wages miners can offer. So why then did the parties listen to the screeching focus groups and not the industry bodies who have been issuing the warnings?

With about 78% of the votes counted, we can say that for the first time since 1940 Australia will have a minority government. Just what that will look like is unclear due to the count still at knife edge.  What we can say is that unlike the coalition government recently formed in the UK, the new Australian government will not be a unity of two experienced political parties.  The UK saw those parties use their respective experienced political administrations to assist in the makeup of the power sharing, and maintenance of stability.  In Australia the government will most likely be formed with three, possibly four, independents (there is also a Green in the House of Representatives).  Each of the current (three)Independents – save for the final still being determined in Tasmania (fourth) – are experienced parliamentarians with histories in conservative parties, but with reputations as true independents.  That is to say, it is not a foregone conclusion that they will support forming a government with the conservative Liberal National Coalition simply due to heritage. They each have their own policy agenda.  One, for example, is passionate about the influx of foreign bananas.

We won’t know the final count for a week, some say ten days.  In one seat there are at least 20,000 postal and pre poll votes still to be counted, another has a nine vote lead.  In a nation of 14 million voters that is significant.  At the current count the 150 seat House of Representative has no clear majority (76 for the arithmetically challenged).  Various media outlets differ on the current seat numbers, however the Australian Electoral Commission says it looks like Labor (former government lead by Julia Gillard – Australia’s first female Prime Minister) has 72, and the Liberal National Coalition (lead by Tony Abbott) also with 72. There are three, possibly four, independents and one Green.  Complicating this is that the National Party representative who defeated Liberal Wilson Tuckey (thirty years in parliament) in WA is saying he may also sit on the cross benches.  At least two seats are undecided.

Such is the Australian voters’ disenchantment with current politics that they didn’t want either alternative enough to give them a clear majority.  This has shocked the political class.

It is extraordinary that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who won the leadership of the Liberal Party by one vote (we assume his own) about seven months ago, has achieved this result with a great “on message” negative campaign.  At the time of his succession the feeling in his Coalition Party was they would lose about 22 seats if an election were held then.  What a comeback after losing the 2007 election to Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party so badly (Labor ruled with a 17 seat majority).

Without diminishing the formidable Abbott campaign, it can be said that Labor did this to themselves.  Despite installing a popular woman in Julia Gillard as the first ever female Prime Minister, they ran a bad campaign beset by damaging leaks and a shambles of messages (they ignored boasting their superior economic performance until the last two weeks of the campaign) with ideology tossed out in favour of what the focus groups said would work.  That they removed Kevin Rudd as PM only two months ago also damaged them, particularly in his home state of Queensland.  However, commentators from both sides of politics agree that were he to have led the Labor Party at this election, the loss of Labor seats would have been considerably more.  What damaged the Labor government was that it was a poor communicator.  It promised much and was unable to deliver, mostly due to it not controlling the Senate.  But it could never explain that well.  There was a sense of talking too much and doing too little; many committees, summits and reports, and not much of substance to show. Even so, commentators have noted that the good economy, with better than world average growth, low interest rates and unemployment, and earning the prize as the standout economy that survived the GFC better than any developed nation, should have meant Labor was proudly re elected.

This was an election with no clear message for psephologists, other than the Greens prevailed while the conservatives did amazingly well.  The vote bleed from ALP looks to have a number of components.

The first is the rise of the Left vote which has given the Greens double their parliamentary representation, including their first ever House of Representatives seat and control of the Senate. It has turned the once safe NSW seat of Grayndler from a 25% margin to one at risk from the Greens (it is now only 5%).   The Greens will be asking for, amongst other policies, gay marriage, legalised drugs, a carbon trading scheme and a bigger tax on mining companies.  The Mining Tax, poorly explained by then PM Rudd, mobilised the anti government forces in the past three months and was a major factor in Labor’s defeat in the big mining regions.   The others are the Rudd factor (including anger from voters who wanted to be the ones who knifed him, as well as those who didn’t like him being so humiliated.) There was also the palpable fury voters have for two state Labor governments (in Queensland and New South Wales).

The following major policies might be worth watching:

1. Broadband was a leading policy difference with the Labor government rolling out a very expensive ($A 43b) national broadband network, which the Opposition said they would scrap if they won. The national broadband network aims to deliver speeds of up to 100 megabits a second to at least 90 per cent of homes and businesses. Interestingly, at least two of the Independents could not contribute to the televised election coverage due to unreliable mobile phone and broadband services in their regions.  This will be a key king/queen maker. 
2. Health.  Always a top domestic policy priority with voters.  The ALP neatly dovetailed health service delivery to people in remote and rural parts of Australia – where doctors and specialist services are reluctant to live and work – with the national broadband network and its plans for e-health (which the Opposition said it would also scrap).  Global technology companies have been jockeying for positioning to be part of this.
3. Food and Nutrition.  The Greens campaigned for a 1.5 per cent levy on ‘junk’ food and alcohol advertising and clearer labeling including  ”traffic light” labeling so shoppers can select foods based on green labels for healthy, amber for caution and red for unhealthy.

1. Defence.  The Australian government will build or buy 12 new submarines, which will replace the Swedish Kockums designed Collins Class submarines.  It will also buy 100 Joint Strike Fighter planes.  No change here, though the Greens will oppose such spending.

1. Uranium.  Labor said they would stick with the policy of not selling uranium to India.  The Liberal National Party said it would change this. The Greens will block any uranium mining or sales.

1. Immigration.  Tony Abbott campaigned with a ‘stop the boats’ message.  Australia receives less than one per cent (0.6 %) of the world’s asylum seekers, however the issue of illegal boat arrivals was a polarising issue with voters in marginal seats in the outer suburbs strongly against any sign of softening of policies in this area.    The Greens were appalled at both sides’ harsh policies.
2. Mining Tax.  The controversial tax on the super profits of mining companies recommended by an extensive review of Australia’s taxation system dogged Labor (and was a major reason they got rid of Rudd) mostly because of the way it was communicated with little or no consultation.  This tax angered voters in resource rich states (Western Australia, Queensland) and would have been scrapped by the Liberals.  The Greens want a bigger tax and at least one Independent supports the tax.
3. Environment. According to the former PM, Kevin Rudd, this was the ‘single most important moral issue’, but an emissions trading scheme was swiftly abandoned after the Greens and the Liberals joined forces in the Senate to block the proposal.  The Greens wanted a more extensive policy, the Liberals didn’t want a carbon tax.

What is clear is that a minority government is not necessarily bad for business.  Indeed, it could provide greater opportunity for views to be listened to and acted upon.  A clear and precise understanding of parliamentary procedure is key, and fortunately an area Hill & Knowlton’s Public Affairs Team has a proven track record of success.  

Here we are at the end of another week of campaigning, just three more to go until polling day.  That’s twenty-one days for all you predictors out there to get with our program and test your voting hunches with our election predictor;  http://electionpredictor.com.au/.  We know that some candidates and even a few heavies at both campaign headquarters have been playing with it, though they haven’t revealed to us their predictions.  Sadly.

The media has been spending a lot of time with the usual griping about a boring campaign.   (Perhaps they should cool off with the Election Predictor) Candidates are too scripted, they say.  Where is the colour?  And then they got some with targetted leaks about the mutterings of the Labor Cabinet that were supposed to harm Prime Minister Gillard and make her appear hard and calculating, lacking heart.  She fought back.  In doing so we were told, she finally exposed the real Julia; tough, determined, passionate.  It all  looked very much like the old Julia Gillard to me.

Coalition leader, Tony Abbott has been frustrating the same scribes by doing his job equally as well as Ms Gillard is doing hers.  That means always being   ’on message’.  Where is the passionate mad monk of old?, they chorus.  The one who put his foot in it and embarrassed his colleagues with some ill chosen words.  They are recalling his infamous comments that global warming was bunkum (I think he said, ‘crap’) and that he found his then role as Opposition spokesman for Aboriginal Affairs lacked excitement, amongst other gaffs.  He is not saying any of that now, and it is supposed to be a negative. 

It seems very obvious to me why.  Like the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott is a professional politician who has acheived his wildest dream to lead the Liberal Party.  Afterall, he was the most unlikely choice, after two very different leaders and some better-favoured candidates.  He now has his determined heart and mind set on another wild dream; to be Prime Minister  – in the footsteps, bar a couple of skips, of his hero, former Liberal Prime Minister, John Howard.  Why would he leave that to chance and let slip a few ill chosen words?  Besides, my hunch is that Tony was a little bored and directionless when he made those earlier gaffs.  His period after the election loss in 2007 was a very public time of career grief.  It is not surprising he lacked direction and went into a fug, exciting though it was for political junkies.  Not now though.  His eye is on a prize.

So we should not be surprised that Mr Abbott is as determined to follow the script as the equally ambitious, and on message,  Julia Gillard.  He is an Oxford educated scholar.  He trained for the priesthood (enough said about personal discipline). He is a serious athelete who competes in marathons and bike rides that last for days.  He knows what has to be done to win.  So does the Prime Minister.  And to do that they have to get to the swinging voters, not the rusted on, politically connected, voters who read the daily reports covering every aspect of the campaign.   So not surprisingly, both camps are aiming their messages at the ‘non political junkies’.  That is the large army of voters who have busy lives, inhabit the outer suburbs, don’t read opinion pages, don’t watch political debates and do not want anything but  straightforward, ‘on message’ campaigns that they can dip into and out of at their will. 

Political campaigns are not for the initiated.  If you want excitement, wait for question time.  Or watch Australia play New Zealand in the Bledisloe Cup on Saturday night.  Now, that is a contest.

Australian political watchers (which should be us all by the way – voting is compulsory in this country) are apparently dissecting the women’s vote to see if having a female leader of a political party – who is also the prime minister – is a turn off or turn on. While the commentators chew on that one between sips of latte, it seems it’s widely accepted that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is a turn off to women.  His detractors say he is a ‘muscular’, Catholic father of three daughters who has made pronouncements on virginity (all for it) and abortion (against. Umm, he is a Catholic, why the surprise?) which ‘spook’ women.  And he spends too much time in embarrassing lycra bike shorts, or brief bathing trunks in his pursuit of super fitness – which along with his job, keeps him away from his family.   Even women in his own party bag him to me, often. They loathe him for what they consider his ‘anti woman’ stance. So poorTony – who I know and like – is reduced to reminding us that he loves women; he married one, is the father of three and the brother of another trio of women. He has a woman deputy and proclaims he is the ‘love child’ of Bronwyn Bishop – the Opposition spokeswoman on Ageing who was once herself a contender for the title of our first woman PM (many moons ago). He also introduced a very generous paid parenting leave policy. But it doesn’t wash with female voters, it seems.

So with Tony spiked on the women’s vote, journalists are writing columns devoted to gender attitudes to Julia Gillard (that would be women, actually). It reached new lows today when our national broadsheet, ‘The Australian’, devoted space to discussion about the Prime Minister’s ear lobes and why women had not noticed, as the writer had, that they are ‘fleshy’. Perhaps because the notion is irrelevant.

Pitching to the women’s vote has been a concern to the (mostly) male campaign managers who direct the Party leaders as they go about wooing every vote they can squeeze from every man and woman. Women though, are special to the campaign boffins. Apparently we think more about our votes, which is always a tricky component when you are trying to win favour. Here’s a hint then to Liberal Party campaign planners who have not got with the program. It is 2010, not 1910 or even 1990. Despite this being the era of parenting, with ‘families’ sacred and revered, constantly pointing out that Julia Gillard is unmarried and childless is, well, embarrassing. It invites the ‘so what?’ factor. It is a turn off because most of us accept that lifestyles have become more complex than the current labels allow. Families don’t all look alike – even amongst Sydney’s elite haven, and Liberal heartland – the north shore. Most of us believe that just because Julia Gillard and her Liberal Party sister, (Tony’s deputy) Julie Bishop are not married and ‘deliberately barren’ as one Liberal Party Senator once spat, doesn’t mean they are not part of a family or anti children.   His constant ‘dog whistling’ about fecundity may be why some women are upset with Tony. Every time he uses his own marital and parenting status to undermine Julia, he alienates a large chunk of voters who find it offensive and silly.

Perhaps the reason the Polls are showing that women like Julia might be because she is of our time. She is not just a Prime Minister for women, or red heads for that matter (her neat point). She is smart, she is determined, she doesn’t use her gender to underline her points, she doesn’t need a hand bag to do her job or meet the voters, she hasn’t been shrill about glass ceilings and overcoming sexism (which she undoubtably is still doing). Julia has just got on with doing her job well. Just like the rest of us. And another few trivial matters I think also work in her favour, which the earlobe obsessed writers might take note of: She  does not exploit her ‘femaleness’. She is not the sexiest-looking woman in the room, nor the least attractive woman in the room.  She has good hair days and bad hair days. She has some nice outfits, and some real shockers. She has achieved, yet clearly had some personal ups and downs. She doesn’t complain or get bogged down with the trivial. In short, she is like us.

Today is  a quiet day on the Australian election campaign as both leaders attended the funeral of our latest young soldier to lose his life in the Afghanistan conflict.  In deference to the young man, his family and fellow soldiers, a brief truce has been called in the campaign. 

So that left former PM, Kevin Rudd, some space to land a few  punches and settle scores (with his own side) through a ‘will he or won’t he’ media game.  That is, ‘Will he leave politics and take up a job with the UN, or won’t he?’   Apparently he will take up the gig if it is offered.  But he won’t stand down as the local member and ALP candidate for the Queensland seat of Griffith.    Our Kev, can do both it seems.  At the last election (which he won, you will recall) he said he liked playing with his opponent’s mind. That opponent was the former Liberal PM, John Howard.   This time Kevin appears to be playing with his own leader’s very brainy mind.  So take that all you rotters who turned on your former leader!   

Which brings me to another bloke with a mean punch and neat turn of phrase.   Our media has turned its attention to World Title Boxing Champion Danny Green, and his knock out punch only seconds into his fight with a man he called ‘not even a canine’, Paul Briggs.  The fight has mesmorised many and made it to the top section of our news programs with speculation the bout was not all it seemed.  Danny is adamant that he definitely landed the killer hit (he felt the crack of the man’s head, he swears) within seconds of the bell ringing.  What ever forced Mr Briggs to the mat and then an ambulance, the fans went mad and demanded their money back.  Danny appeared to agree, breathlessly shouting into the microphone that Briggs should not be paid for his pathetic performance:  “He dogged it. My chihuahua Rocky has got bigger balls than him.”

Now elections in this country do get brutal, but I am hanging out for our candidates to land some real punches on each other and say Danny Green style just what they think.   And I can’t wait to see more of  Rocky the chihuahua.

Our election predictor http://electionpredictor.com.au/ seems to have captured imaginations in the tweeting world since we launched it yesterday.  And we have a month of campaigning to go.  “A pleasure,” is all I can say.   We Australians can be said to be obsessive about politics, or at least our media is.  Political reporting usually dominates our news, and in the lead up to the calling of an election (about six months), this has been more so.  Every nuance is analysed to determine just when the big day will be called.  So now we have it – August 21 (polling day is always a Saturday in Australia). 

I am a little horrified to see that our Head Girl Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has sanctioned a laxative-like slogan “Moving  Forward” for the ALP’s campaign.    Worse, she peppers her speeches and comments with those ghastly words.  A month of it to go!  I have long banned the phrase- and others that have sadly become the lingua franca of dullards who parrot management guides- from being used by my Public Affairs team (and anyone else I might have influence over).  I refuse to wave the white flag and will continue to loudly groan at every utterance of those filthy little words.

The Coalition has something less hideous, but equally unispiring, as its slogan.  All to do with standing up for Australia, or having a contract with us…..forgettable, but you understand.  “Moving Forward” is memorable because it is so yukky.  It is a symbol of what has become of our language.    Pundits say the idea is to point to the Opposition as ‘moving backward’.  Some of us might call that ‘reversing’.  Which is more to the point, and indeed where there appears to have been traction.  I doubt that has been due to the ALP’s silly slogan.  More, I say, to do with the curious Opposition tactic of starting day one of their campaign with an announcement that the workplace relations policy they had when in government (and killed off by the new Government Julia Gillard now leads) will not be revived (or ‘move forward’).   It was ‘dead, buried and cremated’,  their leader Tony Abbott announced in the first minutes of the election being called.  Sadly for the Liberal leadership, they  could not prove it when it came to the detail.  The Liberal Party’s major weak spot was revealed.    Its been hanging around in the headlines ever since – which is a long time in politics.   In 2007,  Australians  overwhelmingly voted the ‘dead’ workplace policy down when they removed the Liberals at the last election.  Now, thanks to their curious campaign strategy of raising it  as a major platform they won’t do, they will give the voters another chance to do it again.  Very odd way to “progress” a campaign (now isn’t that a better word than ‘move forward’?)

Aussies get to indulge in our favourite past time –  electioneering - until August 21 – when we all go to the polls and then keep the indulgence going with election night parties.  Personally, I stay away from those parties.   Too much chatter for me.  It is my night of nights in front of the television, well two tellies actually, with my phone on buzz and only responding to texts.  Election night coverage is the best drama ever and I get to stay in once every three years for a federal election, and four years for my own state election (due March next year, can’t wait) and watch until the very end. 

This is also an important election (aren’t they all?).  Australians have a woman Prime Minister for the first time (and she’s Welsh born, which goes to show how multi cultural we really are).  When Julia Gillard took the top job from Kevin Rudd a few hectic weeks ago she made it clear that she wanted to be sure she earned the title through the ballot box.  So as well as having the first female PM, Australians also have the First Female PM contender.  (Get used to this, like cricketers election punters love a ‘first’ and a few statistics thrown in).
At H&K Australia we’ve returned to our election predictor used with much fanfare in the Kevin 07 election.  It is also used by our colleagues in Canada and UK.    It is a fun predictor, designed to let the punters predict just what might happen on August 21.   Try it at http://electionpredictor.com.au.
We’d love your comments, so let me know what you think.

Australia’s loyal Opposition has had most of the nation riveted for the past week as we watch, car crash like, the political brawling and treachery that even long-standing observers and players have called ‘unprecedented’.

Part of the lack of precedence has come from the use of new technology.  On air television commentators have been reading text messages and twitter posts from those Party members who leaked in ‘real time’ during internal, and supposedly, confidential meetings.  We were able to get rolling commentary from within, as though we were sitting amongst it all and watching the brawling and name calling in close up.  This has made it all the more compelling in a period when we have moaned that not much separates Australia’s two leading political parties who at times appear to have echoed each other in love calls to the conservative heartlands of this wide brown land.  Our PM, Kevin Rudd has even given some of Labor’s so-called enemy – Liberal Party stalwarts – very swish jobs including a diplomatic posting to a former Liberal leader.  So while we might think not much separates Labor and Liberal, this week has shown us that a lot separates the Liberal Party.  Within its own ranks, that is.

The final vote for the Liberal Party leadership was right down the middle with conservative Tony Abbott winning by one vote; presumably his own.  It is hardly convincing, but it is a win and he’s running with it.  It means of course further unrest as the losing side questions the legitimacy of the win and the Party’s future policy shift to the right. 

My moment of excitement in the victory press conference was not from Tony Abbott (though he is very exciting),  but from his loyal deputy, Julie Bishop (who is usually not so).  Ms Bishop, as one journalist observed, has now been deputy to three leaders.  So, how does she do it? he asked.  Tony put his arms around her shoulders and said something borderline patronising about her being a good girl.  Julie pursed her lips, and in her best Adelaide accent (I am from Adelaide and have been working on losing mine for the past decade) that unlike previous deputies, she saw her role as being loyal and supportive to whoever lead the party.  It was not to pursue personal ambition as others have, she added.  We presume she meant Peter Costello, who was deputy to former Liberal Prime Minister, John Howard.  Mr Costello spent years trying to convince his party to abandon Mr Howard and bestow the leadership on himself.  When they didn’t, he took his bat and ball and went back to Melbourne, leaving the Party leaderless. Or so they thought.  They’ve had three in two years, so perhaps he didn’t.

Only in Australia  can an acting Prime Minister give a speech to praise a state Premier and calmly say he has ‘worked his guts out’ for the people he governs. 

At an extraordinary Labor Party conference in Sydney this weekend, Australia’s darling and favourite acting Prime Minister ever,  the Welsh-born Julia Gillard, said it all when she supported and praised the NSW Premier, (a former garbage collector and greenkeeper with a degree in Literature) in her speech to the conference yesterday.   On Saturday, Premier Nathan Rees – who has endured 14 months of ridicule as a bit of a lame-duck with a knack for the vernacular - took the powerful conference delegates by their collective throat and demanded extraordinary powers to choose his own ministry (rather than have factional leaders tell him who he has to have).   He got what he wanted and created Labor history.  It was followed with stunned applause inside and outside the conference hall.

Within hours two ministers once considered unassailable were mere back benchers.   I’d watched them both that morning in the Business Observers centre displaying their cocksure bonhomie.  The normally tuned in duo clearly had no clue what was about to unfold.   The rest of us were glued to the action that followed the Premier’s speech, as ministers clearly stunned by the audacity of their youthful leader wandered about in a daze and checked their Blackberries to ensure they still had a job.

The Premier did it all with great style – testament to the mastery of his chief of staff, Graeme Wedderburn (who does work his guts out).   The speech began as the typical leader’s speech to the political wing of his government – the rank and file members of the ALP.   About two paragraphs in, after laudable announcements regarding Indigineous literacy,  employment, and transport links, he dropped the first big change; banning donations from developers to the Party funds.  That sent a loud murmur of incredulity amongst my fellow business observers.  Then a little later came the biggest announcement – all neatly and elegantly woven around the terms, ‘trust’, ‘integrity’ and adding the ghastly term ‘cleansed’.  ‘Cleansed’ is a word I loathe when it is used to describe filthy acts of murder in places like Kosovo and Sudan.  Now the Premier was demanding the right to ‘clean’ his ministry.  That said it all for me.  I quite liked it.

And so the afternoon of long knives set in.

We took up ours, literally.  At lunch with the Premier immediately after his speech there was  a palpably different  tone to the many I have sat through recently.  At those luncheons it was clear the business community wanted to be polite and afford the likeable young man from Sydney’s western suburbs some respect.  Quietly they’d mutter over their bread rolls that he hasn’t a chance and can’t rule some of the powerful factional leaders who exert real influence over the government.  This time there was no muttering.  Just applause and nodding.  This guy has guts, we said.  I told him that personally (yes, I used the ‘g’ word).  He nodded and said, ‘It had to be done.’

The next day the conference was anything but lethargic.  Word had got around, that this was the best show in town.  The Business Observer Centre was buzzing.  The PM, who had not been shy about distancing himself from Mr Rees, sent a video statement from Singapore (APEC meeting), praising the Premier for his bold decision and offering support.  Then Julia arrived and added to the applause.  The message is now clear, the very popular Federal government likes the new look NSW government now it has chopped off some heads – one from the left and one from the right.

This afternoon some new minister’s were announced to replace those who had been cleansed  – the first lot of ministers to be installed without the meddling of factional leaders.  Guess what?  One comes from the left, and one from the right.  All on merit, of course.

Australia is in a twitter over the revelation that Britney Spears doesn’t actually sing and gyrate at the same ‘real’ time during all the performances of her current tour.  She lip syncs to a fair whack of it. 

Fair Trading Ministers, one of whom in NSW claims to actually know some of Britney’s songs, are even talking about laws to ensure singers do actually sing.  At the same time they are performing.  No time delay.

Sounds fair.  And it should be applied to politicians too.  How many times have we noticed them doing their own version of lip syncing to cheat sheets prepared for them by loyal staffers? (At least it’s Britney’s own voice.) 

No matter what the question, too many over media-trained politicians run their fingers down their ‘speaking notes’ and pick out the answer that most resembles the question.  It rarely works.   Yet they still do it. The old ‘eighties media training dictum of saying what you want to say regardless of the questions is so, well, eighties.  The audience – that’s you and me – have moved on considerably.  We actually listen now.  To the question and the answer, and it jars when they don’t actually relate.  We are so tuned in to news media, our ear is super sensitive to the old ‘tell ‘em what you want’ line.  It grates just as much as Britney’s mouth moving, or not moving, when the song is being sung. 

At least it was Britney’s own voice, sometime.  Time delay is something many of us can handle.  But content miss-match and downright obfuscation is the real rip off.