ReadWrite-grogsgamut

My Drum piece today is on a few things, but mainly the ongoing call that a wages break-out is imminent. Rather oddly this ongoing call occurs despite all evidence failing to support it. But such is the way of the work in this era where facts just seem to get in the way.

I also reference Dickens' Hard Times. It is not may favourite of his works though. My top 3 of his novels would be:

1. David Copperfield
2. Great Expectations
3. Bleak House

I have a few on the shelf waiting to be read – Little Dorrit is the next most likely. The problem is that Dickens’ works are generally on the weighty side and I am finding it harder and harder to find the time to read the big tomes.

In other news, in Crikey today Derryn Hinch was giving his views on good journalism. His response contained this line:

I don’t read amateur blogs, I read the real blogs

“Real” obviously no longer means what it used to….

So many media reports for so many months for so few votes.

All of that for 31 votes. Less than a third of the vote.

Back in September last year, Michelle Grattan wrote a report with the headline:

Rudd only nine votes short of top job: opposition

It began:

“SPECULATION about Prime Minister Julia Gillard's leadership has been re-ignited by claims Kevin Rudd canvassed with a Labor MP whether he would run for the job.”

All last year and this year so much speculation has been “reignited”, has been “mounted”.

Last week oh so many press gallery journalists took to Twitter with glee to tell everyone it wasn’t a beat up (or actually many chose to use “made up) such as SBS Karen Middleton:

“Hey you know I think there might be something in all this leadership talk. But then I could just be #makingitup”

As the blogger of the site “Things Bogans Like” tweeted in response:

“a great deal of replacing 'beating up' with 'making up' by journos today...”

It is almost churlish to single out Middleton, because there were many many other in the press gallery agreeing with her.

Sorry folks. It was media driven, not caucus driven.

How long has it been going? Well April last year The Daily Telegraph ran a story on Rudd “conducting a street walk with the member for the marginal seat of Banks, Daryl Melham”, which had this subtle headline:

Rudd's run for Labor revival

And yet the article by Simon Benson and Alison Rehn contained this line:

“Senior Labor sources maintain the caucus is unlikely to ever entertain putting him back into the leadership.”

Unfortunately those “senior Labor sources” (who have been shown to be spot on) were forgotten and replaced by other “senior Labor sources”.

But this was just the end of so much wind. In September last year a third candidate was being thrown around (though in the meantime we also had speculation about Peter Beattie coming back), and then the classic:

Coalition leader Tony Abbott prepares for Kevin Rudd

By the start of this year, the reporting went from predictions of a challenge happening sometime in the next 6 months to it a case that a challenge will happen – it must!. I said on Twitter at the start of February that it seemed like Gillard had entered “the killing zone” – and she had – there was absolutely no way “the story was going to go away”. It was a self-fulfilling proposition. Every press conference contained questions about leadership – she was being told in opinion pages that she had to bring things to a head – that if she didn’t call a spill it would be a sign of weakness – The “PM knows this farce cannot continue” type story.

And so a leadership vote was held and Rudd by all reports got one minister to change sides – Albanese and that happened on Saturday – ie not last year when “cracks were appearing”. Had there been any actual momentum building inside the caucus for a spill? Well Rudd got 31 votes, and given reports are that he had a bit over 20 votes back in 2010, we can quite clearly say the answer to that is no.

All this for 31 votes.

Once Gillard called the leadership ballot, it became so obvious that Rudd wasn’t going to win that the media needed a new narrative. This is the classic win-win for the media. Best of all for the press gallery, journos like Simon Benson, who has been the prime banger of the leadership-speculation drum, are now able to write:

THE outcome of today's leadership ballot no longer really matters. The damage has been done.

The spear throwers of the Labor Party have done their work well. They have mortally wounded not only Kevin Rudd but Julia Gillard as well.

And this apparently, was the point of it all.

Contempt is the emotion that most comes to mind.

And thus seamlessly the media shifts into the third-candidate story or the Rudd being drafted as leader story. Here’s hoping this time they wait to see if there are more than 31 votes for this option before shifting their reporting into overdrive.  

A nice little insight in to how many in the press gallery think came on Saturday just prior to Albanese holding his press conference to announce which side he was taking, the ABC’s Latika Bourke tweeted:

Very likely Anthony Albanese will back Kevin Rudd. #respill

The Australian’s Lanai Vasek replied:

I hope he does, for the sake of a very good yarn.

Yep – who gives a sh*t, so long as they can write a good story.

My Drum piece from yesterday looked at banking costs. 

The latest unemployment figures came out today. I’m a bit flat out editing my book at the moment, so I’ll just fling a few graphs at you.

The seasonal rate dropped from 5.2% to 5.1% (or if you want to get really anal, from 5.2256864% to 5.0854746% a drop of 0.1402118% – though that is all a bit meaningless). The trend rate stayed flat at 5.2%

The actual employment number did rise:

“Employment increased 46,300 (0.4%) to 11,463,900. Full-time employment increased 12,300 persons to 8,063,100 and part-time employment increased 34,000 persons to 3,400,800.”

But a comparison of the trend and seasonal counts of employment are interesting:

The trend is flat (and has been for a while). The seasonal rate is jumping around a fair bit, but the Government (and everyone else who likes working) will be hoping this past months big seasonal boost keeps going.

One rarely looked at figure is the rate of employment as a percentage of the population. The trend measure of this shows that not all is rosy:

There has been a dip in the past 6 months reflected by the decline in the Participation Rate

So all in all, not boom time figures, but certainly not lousy, either.

My Drum piece this week is on interest rates and some remarks by Andrew Robb that I found amusing.

Not much else to add today. My book is due with the publishers on 22 February, so life is currently a mess of stress and mess, as I come to grips with editing it all and locating those missing papers I have conveniently filed on my desk under a stack of other papers conveniently filed on my desk under a stack of other papers….

Not sure what I will be doing post 22 Feb at this stage. I haven’t had a break really from work or writing since January last year, so I suspect a week’s rest will be in order. If I make it to then.