CAMPAIGN DAY 26: 15 DAYS TO GO
The two main parties in Australia suffer perhaps rather more than elsewhere from a common political problem: what to do with your ex-leaders? Whilst Bob Hawke has (alas) been a tireless, loyal, on-message, effective campaigner for the ALP since his departure, Paul Keating is famed for his erratic outbursts – to the extent that he was brought into their 2004 campaign launch through a side door. On our side of the fence, Malcolm Fraser is way, way, way off the reservation.
The reason I bring it up is that this week sees articles in two prominent publications by two ex-leaders, one from each party, each sledging his own team. Thank you, John Hewson. Thank you, Mark Latham. Sigh.
Meanwhile, the campaign goes on. Interest rates have gone up. Opinion is divided as to whether this is good for the government (because it is trusted more on economic management) or bad for the government (because it is blamed for the rise). Negative ads abound. It’s fun.
Which makes me think about our restrictive advertising laws in the UK. The set provisions for broadcast, and the ban on advertising other than in the approved times and manner, mean that freedom of speech is hardly in play; smaller and new parties suffer; and the length of the PPBs puts most people to sleep. Would you favour a free-for-all? Increasingly, seeing the sides going at it here, I think I would.
4 comments:
Alex, your comments miss the fact that the polls so far have hardly moved and Rudd is heading for a landslide. The last two weeks are key as it is a fact that 25% only make their minds up in the final week.
Also the leaders are not, as far as I can make out, campaigning in the ultra marginals but in seats that need a 5%+ swing. Can one assume that these are already lost to the Labor Party?
A collection of coverage on the Latham outburst:
The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22729233-601,00.html (says it's "a bombshell" - probably overstating, but along the right lines IMHO)
Andrew Bolt at the Hun:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/ (doesn't hurt Labor per se, but hurts in that it shows their poor judgment in picking Latham in the first place)
The ABC: http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/09/2086066.htm?section=justin
The Age:http://blogs.theage.com.au/wright/archives/2007/11/latham_arises_f.html ("could be Kev's ruination" - certainly supporting evidence for those who said I was wrong to maintain that the Age is biased)
I don't understand the comment about the length of PPBs. They used to be 10 minutes, reduced in the 1990s to 5 minutes, and in the 2000s to 3 minutes. Three minutes is not a lot of time. The number of PPBs out of election time has been cut back severely.
The more obvious change to make which would make PPBs more significant would be to run 30 second or one minute broadcasts between programmes unannounced in place of TV trailers. The times they are broadcast at now are not going to draw a large audience (6:25 PM on ITV, 5:55 PM on BBC 2, 6:55 PM on BBC 1).
Your second paragraph answers your first. That's exactly what I meant - rather than a multi-minute, set-time broadcast, the ads here in Oz are unannounced 30 seconders.
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