Remembering Julia Gillard - Part One

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was in office for a total of 1,098 days from 24 June 2010 to 27 June 2013. 

After 21 August 2010 she was at the head of a minority government, yet she ranked first out of 24 Australian prime ministers for the numbers of pieces of legislation passed per day with a rate of 0.495.

The Guardian 28 June 2013
Click on image to enlarge

Is Prime Minister Abbott so desperate to control the message and lift his flagging polls that he risks alienating Australian mainstream media?

This was how The Australian commenced its 5 January 2015 article about Prime Minister Abbott’s latest public relations misstep:

TONY Abbott’s office has triggered frustrations with the media by excluding a TV crew from the Prime Minister’s sudden visit to Baghdad, limiting access to his speech to Australian troops and joint statement with his Iraqi counterpart.

A camera crew sent by the major TV networks was left in Dubai when Mr Abbott flew into Iraq with his personal staff, forcing the media to rely on footage provided by the Prime Minister’s office.

This is how individual journalists reacted to the unannounced Iraq trip on Twitter:

What Iraqi News knew on 29 December 2014:

(IraqiNews.com) On Monday, the official government spokesman, Saad Hadithi revealed that the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott plans to visit Baghdad in the coming days, while noting that Abbott will discuss with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi the support and the equipment of security forces to confront the organization of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Hadithi said in an interview for IraqiNews.com, “Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott will visit Baghdad in the coming days to meet with President Minister Haider al-Abadi to discuss military cooperation between the two countries.”

He added, “Abbott will discuss with al-Abadi the subject of development, training and equipping of security forces with weapons and ammunition,” adding that, “Australia has shown its willingness to provide military support to Iraq to face the terrorist gangs of ISIS.”

This is part of the 5 January speech Australian journalists were not allowed to hear as it happened:

This is my first visit to Baghdad. It is my first visit to Iraq.

Iraq is a country which has suffered a very great deal. First, decades of tyranny under Saddam Hussein. Then, the chaos and confusion that followed the American-led invasion. Most recently, the tumult, the dark age, which has descended upon Northern Iraq as a result of the Daesh death cult, but Australia will do what we can to help.

These are some of the images of varying quality which Team Abbott appears to have released to the media and/or posted on Facebook:

These are the poor quality propaganda videos his personal media crew created:

http://youtu.be/XCrDn8j812Y  http://youtu.be/Ba4XP0rhWL0

However, the Prime Minister's attempt to control the media message was not successful as one can see from this interpretation of that 5 January speech in The Sydney Morning Herald later the same day - which contained only one mention of 'death cult' and opened with this message about a war of which he approved and agreed to Australia's participation in:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has blasted in his strongest terms yet the US management of Iraq following the 2003 invasion, branding it a period of "chaos and confusion".

It seems the days when Abbott just had to don a helmet and flak jacket to have the media treat him like a hero have long since passed and his latest attempt to reverse the public relations situation is only making matters worse.

I imagine Jane McMillan is thankful she is on holidays and not returning to the the prime minister's office as his media chief. 

To quote Bruce Hawker writing in The Age: When a Prime Minister is on a collision course with public opinion there can only be one result.

UPDATE

Political cartoonist Alan Moir sums up what appears to be the general response, to the Prime Minister's visit to Iraq, in his latest effort for The Sydney Morning Herald on 6 January 2015:

NSW voters are one step closer to knowing who "A Co" is

On 24 June 2014, the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) issued a summons to “A Co” requiring the production of certain documents, relating to email accounts and electronic calendars, in accordance with s 35(1)(a) of the Independent Commission Against Corruption Act 1988.

“A Co” went to the NSW Supreme Court in August 2014 unsuccessfully seeking to quash the summons. The court concluding: There is nothing in the material before me or otherwise to support a conclusion that the Commission's decision to issue the summons miscarried, that the permissible scope of a summons issued under s 35 of the Act has been exceeded or that the law pursuant to which the summons was issued was otherwise invalid on constitutional grounds. In those circumstances, the plaintiff's challenge to the Commission's summons should be dismissed.

“A Co” then appealed the Supreme Court judgement in A v Independent Commission Against Corruption [2014] NSWCA 414 and lost on 5 December 2014, with the court continuing the suppression of the identity of the (a) the applicant or (b) the person whose electronic records are sought to be produced to the ICAC  until public release of any ICAC report of the investigation to which the summons to produce relates, or until further order of this Court.

As ICAC will not be issuing reports on any investigations ahead of the hearing of Independent Commission against Corruption v. Cunneen & Ors S302/2014 in the Australian High Court on 4 March 2015 and subsequent judgment, there are some months yet to wait on any unmasking of “A Co”.

Thereafter, the Streisand Effect may possibly come into play.

Revealing a basic limitation of regional employment services contracted by the Abbott Government - they can't do much if the jobs aren't there

The new Australian Minister for Social Services Scott Morrison has begun to talk up the need to raise the retirement age to seventy years of age and make people under thirty wait six months for the dole, stating that he would be actively engaging with the Senate to get the additional bills through in the new year.

Clearly he has not looked beyond his own rigid personal and political ideologies. 

This excerpt from a 29 December 2014 article in The Northern Star clearly demonstrates the limitations of employment services contracted by the Abbott Government in regional areas:

Murwillumbah resident Ainslie Meiklejohn-Griffiths, 29, has an honours degree in sociology and yet struggled to find work for more than 18 months in her chosen field.

Well-suited to working in the community, social services and local government sector, she never progressed to the interview stage of several short-term contract positions.

This despite her achieving first class honours at Griffith University with her marks ranking her in the top 5% of the university.

"With my Arts degree I also had 100 hours of volunteer service working on policy development at a PCYC," she said.

"I was looking for social work jobs, youth jobs, office work, anything to do with writing."

Ms Meiklejohn-Griffiths' job search took in an huge area from Lismore to north of Brisbane.

"I was well aware I'd have to travel to work," she said.

"I'd accepted that challenge but I was still looking - fruitlessly."

Working with a case manager from a local employment agency was a waste of time - the only jobs available were shelf-stacking in supermarkets or fast food service roles.

"They didn't even find me those jobs, but being a jobseeker and not liking having no money, there were the jobs I was already applying for off my own bat."

"It was a waste of time for everyone involved.

"I didn't want to be in that position but I was - it was a waste of services."

The fact of the matter is that the Northern Rivers region the industry pool which provides employment is limited and both unskilled and skilled jobs are not always available.

Something the Social Services Minister will probably fail to either recognise or fully appreciate given his political history in government and personality profile – making him more likely to see only the negatives in these Northern Rivers regional employment statistics:

Coffs Harbour-Grafton regional area employment statistics for May 2014 (taking in the state electorates of Clarence (69%), Coffs Harbour (100%), and Oxley (18%):

Employment grew by an average of 1.8% annually between 2000 and 2014. Across NSW the average annual growth was 1.4%.

Overall unemployment rate - 6.3% (Rank 13). Regional NSW overall unemployment rate - 6.2%.

Overall labour force participation rate – 56.6%. Regional NSW overall labour force participation rate – 58.9%.

Youth unemployment rate - 10.3%. Regional NSW youth unemployment rate - 12.5%

Youth labour force participation rate - 68.0%. Regional NSW youth labour force participation rate - 67.8%

Proportion of local employees in part-time positions - 40%. Regional NSW - 33.6%.

Richmond-Tweed regional area employment statistics for May 2014 (taking in the state electorates of Ballina (100%), Clarence (31%), Lismore (91%), and Tweed (100%):

Employment grew by an average of 1.6% annually between 2000 and 2014. Across NSW the average annual growth was 1.4%.

Overall unemployment rate – 7.2% (Rank 5). Regional NSW overall unemployment rate - 6.2%.

Overall labour force participation rate – 55.7%. Regional NSW overall labour force participation rate – 58.9%.

Youth unemployment rate – 11.5%. Regional NSW youth unemployment rate - 12.5%.

Youth labour force participation rate - 77.5%. Regional NSW youth labour force participation rate - 67.8%/

Proportion of local employees in part-time positions – 41%. Regional NSW - 33.6%.

Coalition ministers at both state and federal level have a tendency to fail to realise that labour force participation rates and youth participation rates have both risen since 2000 within what is essentially a small Northern Rivers industry pool and, to ignore the fact that veterans/aged pensioners make at least half of the 38.2% of the region’s population over 15 years of age receiving cash transfer payments from the Commonwealth.

The real productivity picture for the Northern Rivers shows how hard the region does work to make its own prosperity:

Across a range of industries, the numbers show that the value of the saleable product per employee is significantly higher than average.

Our 12,900 retail trade workers boost the local economy by $64,674 every year, compared to the state average of $58,697 and national return of $62,282.

Another of the stand-out numbers shows how amazingly competitive our local manufacturing is. Each of our 6,538 manufacturing employees contributes $167,126 to our local economy, far surpassing the state and national averages of $135,674 and $118,609 respectively.

At the big end of town, although our numbers are below the average, these industries are still huge contributors to the local economy: the information, media and telecommunications workers flow back $214,920 each (compared to state $255,486 and national $232,875) and every financial and insurance services worker brings $319,987.

It would be a tragedy if, in driving the Abbott Government’s fascist ideology forward, Scott Morrison broke this region’s will to succeed against the odds.