Postmortem
I intend this to be Last Words on the recent election - after a week of taking in the aftermath and commentary, a few conclusions:
- The largest impact on the result was from the mainstream media (chiefly Murdoch and Packer) who were very willing to print Coalition lies (interest rate fearmongering for one) and very unwilling to engage in even handed reporting at the risk of giving Labour or the Greens any kind of just coverage (one minor example, Channel 10 Brisbane giving JWH a couple of minutes to spruik his fear-laden themes on election eve, no right of reply given to Labour, straight into a viewer poll on who should be elected) - and JWH wasn't really offering much apart from naked bribes, more capitalising on the fact of not being like the opposition. Note also Labour's policy on media is directly confrontational to the Big Owners whereas the Liberals is blatanly favouritist - likely to have weighed heavily on certain editors;
- The unequal distribution of electoral populations (as many quotas appear to this researcher to be in excess of the allowed 10% margins) continues to favour the sitting government as it did in the last election, making the primary vote irrelevant;
- One could be forgiven for thinking Conservatives are frequently bad winners, evidenced by many comments in forums and blogs (including this one) across the Australian netspace that seem openly gloating and nasty, as have been certain re-elected government members (eg; Sen. Brandis on the ABC yesterday morning);
- The Coalition relies strongly on the apathy of the electorate, it knows that while some issues such as Irak are indeed major negatives, enough of the population are not going to be active enough about the issues to make any impact. Hitting at home over interest rates keeps attention away from other issues also - threats to money will take precedence over almost anything else.
It's time for this blog to take a sabbatical from overly political coverage - while urging readers to remember these issues in 3 years time, if not before.
Item posted by AutoEditor at 11:23 am ::
