The pay wall prevented me following the newcorp stable; here I relied on the twitter or FB feeds from the more indefatigable right wing followers who breathlessly reported every utterance as though it were fact. Initially some of that reporting was quite weird, the press as players, but as the hours went on the whole affair became increasingly weird in its own right.
I did do some statistical analysis on those who voted for Mr Dutton in the first round to try to clarify the contusions in expressed in my previous post, What a circus! Mr Dutton et al and my own confusions I have to look at this in more detail, but a couple of things that stood out were the:
- relative importance of the Senate (11 out of 35 votes). I guess its easier to be an ideologue because your position depends primarily on votes within the party, although that's not true of the Nats.
- the relative concentration of votes in the smaller States - 3 Tasmania, 3 SA, 1 ACT and 6 WA. This compares to 11 in Queensland, you would expect this, 6 in Victoria and just 4 in NSW. The WA vote is instructive when we come to think of Julie Bishop's results.
Update One 30 August 2018
kvd pointed me to this piece in Medium by Meghan Daum, Nuance: A Love Story (24 August 2018). It's a beautifully written piece, although I have to confess I did not know who most of the people were that she referred too!
Meantime in here in Australia, the resignation of Liberal Party MP Julia Banks as a consequence of alleged bullying by members of her party during the recent leadership spill continues the pressure on the new government.
11 comments:
It's a long read, as opposed to a deep and meaningful tweet, but I thought this article was worth passing on:
https://medium.com/s/greatescape/nuance-a-love-story-ae6a14991059
"Nuance" is not only a lovely word, but it is also a concept which seems to have been lost somewhere along to way to where we find ourselves right now.
kvd
Thanks for this kvd. It's a beautifully written piece, one that resonated with some of my own confusions. And I agree that nuance is a lovely if now lost word. I was reminded of that this morning listening to some of the reporting on Julia Banks.
It also reminded me of how little I know about some of the US debate. I had no idea who some of the people she referred to were. I do know that as someone whose views span I feel that it's increasingly hard to engage in a real discussion. I try to manage this by being respectful and kind, by trying to draw people out even where I disagree with them, but I find a certain weariness of the spirit.
It's easy to withdraw, to narrow focus to those areas where one can make contribution without having to worry about barbs. I guess that I have been doing a fair bit of that lately.
Thanks kvd. Good piece, and one with which I thoroughly agree. The tribes make public political debate almost meaningless. A good book on this is A Short History of Stupid by Razer and Keane.
As a side note, the left has a long and inglorious history of this in Australia. That the right has gone down the same rabbithole just as the left appears to have emerged is not comforting.
I should probably add, apropos of other discussions here, that as far ass I can tell, the infighting on the left destroyed it absolutely. Lee Rhiannon's fulminations against capitalism sound very 1960s these days, and completely out of touch. Having lost their major bogeyman, the communists, it is no wonder that the hard right are conjuring up mythical beasts ('the Islamist horde' which is a repackaged Yellow Peril) to fight. There's no Left left, the Right isn't right and the whole divide is outdated and a complete mystery to my sons' generation. Right now it looks like the LNP is the party of ideologues, major state interventions and budgetary irresponsibility whereas Labor are pragmatic, without real values but probably a safer bet.
That's interesting, 2t. I would have said the left is back with a vengeance. Interestingly, at least to me, back in 2015 I posed this question in a Monday Forum: are we seeing the return of the old left and right? I would be inclinded to stick with my arguments there still.
Just flipping through the channels that is my early morning brain, I came upon a piece in The Guardian which is worth a link, I think.
I often comment acidly on the blatant bias of this masthead - certainly it is a least as left-biased as those on the right - but one thing I have come to appreciate over the years is the brilliance and depth of their cultural reporting, particularly when you take the time to browse through the attached comment streams, on books, movies, and music.
So, hats off to The Guardian and, if you've never been involved in the group-hug that is an extended singalong of "Hey Jude", then you've missed one of the finest things there is about being human :)
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/aug/21/how-hey-jude-became-our-favourite-beatles-song
kvd
Thanks, kvd. I agree with both your points re the Guardian! I am actually a Guardian member so get their emails re up coming campaigns and features. These sometimes annoy me to the point that I wonder why I continue! I do so because they have kept out of paywalls and I can tune the bias out because I know it! And Political Editor Katharine Murphy comes from Tamworth!
It is a good piece, although in this case I only got through six hundred comments! That was as much as I could take. Still I am listening to the Beatles while I write this comment.
Hey Jude is not one of my absolute favourites, although I agree with the sing-along bit! It came out in 68. Ah, the way comes to signify periods in our lives.
Another browse around brought me to my all-time favourite comedian - Dave Allen. I dunno how I got here, but it was worth the journey, and the 5 minutes, to watch him explaining to his son how to tell the time :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QVPUIRGthI
We take so much for granted when we talk with children. My growing brood of grand children reinforces this (to my great pleasure) almost every time I sit down with them.
kvd
ps Jim: Hey Jude not my absolute fav of all time either. But that would provoke another 600 comments - hey :)
Five minutes by the fat or thin hands kvd?! I can imagine how much pleasure you get from your grandchildren. I did, do, like Dave Allen
Funny how "small" history can be sometimes. The below is vision (no audio) of the 'Sermon on the Sandhills' given by Salvation Army officer William B Tibbs within hearing of the frontline, and protected by ack ack positions, at Alamein. Turns out he was born in Armidale NSW 1909 and died quite highly regarded for his wartime service to the troops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlJXPl06tI8 (see also Trove if you search for "sermon on the sandhills)
This information was gleaned from a short history of what apparently remains Australia's 2nd worst aircraft crash near Rockhampton Qld in 1943. It was lent to me by a client who is the only son of another crash victim - one of Australia's most respected war photographers - Harold George Dick - the crash occurring when my client was just 10 weeks old.
What I mean about history being "small" is that I was aware of both these men, and also of the crash a long time ago via my own father and his WWII service - but never would have made any connection between the 3 without having expressed interest in reading this short history of the Canal Creek crash.
kvd
hi kvd. I'm sorry for the slow response. You are right about the "small. I knew of that plane crash, but hadn't heard of William Tibbs. Checking, he was born in Bundarra near Armidale but grew up in Armidale. Maybe a small story there for me.
Post a Comment