The SA Politics Thread

[Waewick]

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/821 ... soviet-rag

SA premier compares paper with Soviet rag13:36 AEST Sun Feb 13 20113 days 19 hours 21 minutes ago ShareVIEWS: South Australian Premier Mike Rann has dismissed an opinion poll in an Adelaide newspaper by comparing the journal with a Soviet-era propaganda rag.

Mr Rann reacted after the Sunday Mail published a survey showing his "preferred premier" rating at a record low of 31 per cent.

In the poll, SA Liberal leader Isobel Redmond trounced her opposite number with a 58 per cent popularity rating.

Mr Rann took a dig at the News Limited paper publishing the results.

"Basically, the Sunday Mail is like, sort of, Pravda for the Liberals, it's their cheer squad," he told reporters in Canberra.

Mr Rann said Labor's vote was two per cent below its level at the March 2010 state election when the ALP was re-elected for a third term with a reduced majority.



so what was it when it was trumpeting his bullshit all these years? Hail to the spin king of Adelaide

[Will]

^^The Advertiser has never spruiked the Rann government, and why would it? It is owned by the same owner as the extreme-right FOX network. It has always generated hysteria and negativity for the government. At the moment that is justified, however it has done so even for good things the government has done. Remember the tram extension?

[Vee]

Agree, Will!
I get really annoyed with the constant negativity of the local press eg The Advertiser and Sunday Mail. Too often they bag, ignore or downplay the good things happening in this state and focus on the worst aspects. If a report has positives and negatives, they will slant their report and headline towards the worst element and whip up a rabid response on Adelaide Now. Worse still, the negativity is picked up and transmitted beyond the state.

It saddens me too to see some South Aussies not willing to promote our state, stand up to unfounded criticism and negativity or be an active ambassador for our great state. Examples can be found in social media. Constructive criticism and healthy debate is good but constant negativity impacts on the public psyche.

I was thrilled to see Adelaide score so highly on the Australian liveability index. I feel quite optimistic about the future.
SA is a great state!

[Will]

Agree, Will!
I get really annoyed with the constant negativity of the local press eg The Advertiser and Sunday Mail. Too often they bag, ignore or downplay the good things happening in this state and focus on the worst aspects. If a report has positives and negatives, they will slant their report and headline towards the worst element and whip up a rabid response on Adelaide Now. Worse still, the negativity is picked up and transmitted beyond the state.

It saddens me too to see some South Aussies not willing to promote our state, stand up to unfounded criticism and negativity or be an active ambassador for our great state. Examples can be found in social media. Constructive criticism and healthy debate is good but constant negativity impacts on the public psyche.

I was thrilled to see Adelaide score so highly on the Australian liveability index. I feel quite optimistic about the future.
SA is a great state!

The sad thing is that the Advertiser is so biased that when we have a Liberal government in power they do the opposite and have frequent headlines of "world class" and "booming". Indeed, prior to me joining the skyscraper community in 2002, my only source of info on developments was the press. Hence I would read and cut out articles from the paper. During the Olsen government, the Advertiser would serve as a propaganda apparatus for the government by having frequent souvenir liftouts showing John Olsen in a hard-hat everytime something new was oppened. I have souvenir liftouts for the Wine Centre, the Convention Centre, the Alice to Darwin railway, the Southern Expressway....

[Waewick]

I agree with the sentiments re:not sticking up for Adelaide and SA - it is a topic that gets be very frustrated with not only ignorant eastern seaboard citizens and ex-pat South Aussie with no backbone to stick up for the state and are happy to stick the boot in for popularity sake.

To relate this back to politics, I reckon both parties are as guilty as each other for bring down SA after all a government is only as good as it’s opposition and for 25 years we have had bad governments and bad oppositions.

I just wish I could find a political party in SA that doesn’t reek of Old Adelaide and has some idea how to manage the (hopefully) upcoming boom without the wastage we have seen in the past.

[King]

Well having Governments in power of the Labor Right and the Liberal Right haven't exactly helped things along. If we had a Left-faction Government in place, I think you'd see a little bit more change happening.

[Omicron]

The Advertiser (and especially not the Sunday Mail) is not for news. Surely y'all know this by now.

[Ho Really]

Well having Governments in power of the Labor Right and the Liberal Right haven't exactly helped things along. If we had a Left-faction Government in place, I think you'd see a little bit more change happening.

In what areas? Because if you are talking about development what you have now, somewhere in the middle to the right is ideal (regardless if it is Labor or Liberal).

The Advertiser (and especially not the Sunday Mail) is not for news. Surely y'all know this by now.

Exactly. Unless one of our football teams wins the AFL or we win a war all you are going to get is bad news or negativity regardless of who is in power. So I don't think Rann and his mates have been hard done. You also have to look at who the editor his and what line he tows. Remember sensationalism (of the negative kind) sells.

Cheers

[Omicron]

I simply think of all the building/development stories that have appeared in the Advertiser and how far behind they've been, or how incorrect the details are based on information we've had on this site for months (and verified by the developers saying so here themselves, or the development applications we've checked etc.).

Start extrapolating that to other topics, and you begin to get the idea.

[stumpjumper]

The Advertiser is certainly negative towards the Rann government, but it has not always been that way. The paper was anti-Kerin and pro-Rann at one stage.

Everyone has bias, editors and readers, but to give the Advertiser (which is not a very high quality publication compared with the best newspapers) some credit, it is not easy, objectively, to praise the last few years of the Rann government. (OK, that's biased etc...) Posters here tend to weight heavily construction projects, finding them very sexy, especially tall ones. But there is a lot more to good government than a full bag of 'infrastructure projects'.

The costs of some of these projects is very high, and the benefits often small. Often, they're close to pork-barrelling, too.

IMO, because the govt spends taxpayers' money, it should have to make public feasibility or cost/benefit studies. Too often 'commercial-in-confidence' is used to mask projects which should probably have a lower priority when there are less highly visible demands for govt spending.

At best, govt spending can provide excellent results - look at the early history of the SA Housing Trust, and many later projects. At worst, ill-advised govt spending just wastes money. Look at the National Wine Centre, the Scrimber project, the Government Frozen Food Factory etc. Often the dogs are projects which have been promoted to the govt by persuasive individuals who are seeking advantage without proper cost to themselves.

I'm thinking of the influence on the govt of the Rice father and son of Urban Construct in the Newport Quays project as a recent example. That is still playing out, but it doesn't compare well so far with West Lakes, promoted by Delfin with major govt backing - a similar scenario but a much better conceived development.

[iTouch]

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/rann-sees ... 6008690557

MIKE Rann has compared the Sunday Mail to a Communist-era mouthpiece after a poll critical of him.

Angry at being questioned last Sunday about the Sunday Mail's opinion poll results which showed his popularity plummeting to a record low of 31 per cent, the Premier dismissed the findings, saying: "Basically, the Sunday Mail is like, sort of, Pravda for the Liberals - it's their cheer squad."

Mr Rann was recycling a quote from his former colleague and attorney-general Chris Sumner, who, in 1992, called The Advertiser by the same name, accusing the paper of censoring a story about a delayed rape trial.

Sunday Mail editor Megan Lloyd said: "The Sunday Mail prides itself on being a rigorous, questioning and apolitical newspaper for SA - although we did endorse both State Labor and Federal Labor in last year's elections.
"If it wasn't for the Sunday Mail, Mr Rann would still have a road safety minister with an embarrassing record of speeding offences."

Opinion polls by the Sunday Mail on the Opposition in 2006 and 2009, both showed slumps in support for former Liberal leaders Iain Evans and Martin Hamilton-Smith, triggering successful challenges to their leaderships.

Questioned this week about his own slump in public support on ABC 891 breakfast radio, Mr Rann continued his attack on the Sunday Mail questioning the veracity of the paper's opinion.

Mr Rann said: "Ten years ago, I got, I was given the results of a Sunday Mail poll before they actually started doing the polling, in fact I remember (then NSW Premier) Bob Carr talking to John Hartigan (now News Limited chairman and CEO) and I was told it would never happen again and I'm sure things have changed since then but the fact is when I start worrying about Sunday Mail polls ... we've gone down 2 per cent since the last (state election), 2 per cent in a year."

Former Sunday Mail editor Kerry Sullivan said: "All our polls were strictly above board. What he said happened simply did not occur and would never occur on my watch. Our pollsters were absolutely meticulous and would not even let me have the results until the day before publication".

Mr Hartigan said: "We reject Mr Rann's and Mr Carr's claims that the Sunday Mail fabricated a poll or conveyed the results of a poll that hadn't taken place, and we're waiting for their apologies."

Advertiser News Media marketing information services manager Phil Horwood, who has overseen all in-house political polling for more than a decade said identical procedures were followed.

"Polls for both the Sunday Mail and The Advertiser are done using exactly the same methodology and are conducted by the same people - it just depends which editor asks for a poll to be conducted,'' he said.

''Having spent over 10 years in charge of all outbound political polling conducted by ANPL staff, Mr Rann's accusation of poll results in the past being 'made up' is entirely without foundation".

Mr Horwood's polling has proved remarkably accurate in the past. His polls of key seats in the lead up to the 2010 State Election were within one or two percentage points of the election result. A statewide poll six weeks before the election was within a percentage point of Labor's first preference result and two points of the Liberals' result.

Mr Rann's spokesman Paul Flanagan issued this statement yesterday: "The Premier stands by the criticisms of the Sunday Mail's political coverage he made last week.

"On the issue of matters that occurred years ago, I suggest you contact former NSW Premier Bob Carr who would be able to confirm his phone conversation with the News CEO John Hartigan in relation to coverage of a planned poll.

"Mr Rann was present in Mr Carr's office during that phone conversation. Mr Rann has replied to a letter he has received from Mr Hartigan.

"The Premier has never suggested that Mr Hartigan had prior knowledge of, or involvement in, conducting a false poll, or the preparation of a story based on a false poll."

Mr Carr said yesterday he remembered phoning Mr Hartigan and that he "passed the complaint" about a fabricated poll to him on Mr Rann's behalf.

However he was adamant "Mr Rann wasn't with me, I understand he spoke to (Mr Hartigan) later".

[peas_and_corn]

iTouch: see the top of this page.

[stumpjumper]

MIKE Rann has compared the Sunday Mail to a Communist-era mouthpiece after a poll critical of him.

There's bias for you! From the man with the vast publicly-funded Media Unit.

[AtD]

Thought this deserved its own thread.

So what do you think this means for the major projects: convention center, electric trains, TODs, etc?

[stumpjumper]

I think the ones that are contracted out will roll on. As part of the 'generational renewal' charade which the Weatherill government will put on to convince voters that the change of leadership at the top means a brand new government worth voting for, there will be a 'root and branch' reassessment of priorities. Any projects which have become an embarrassment or clearly a vote loser will be canned.

There may be a remake of history - Weatherill has at least two blots on his record that might now matter:

In 2002, Weatherill won the seat of Cheltenham (formerly Price) with a poster stating (more or less) that 'Only a vote for Weatherill will stop the Libs from subdividing Cheltenham Racecourse. Vote Weatherill to retain Cheltenham Racecourse as open space.'

In recent months, Weatherill has repeatedly said that he would only run for premier if there were a vacancy. This was taken as support for Rann unless Rann stepped down. In fact, Weatherill organised the recent move against Rann. The scenario is very similar to the Gillard/Rudd 'assassination' - a breach of professed loyalty that is still hurting Gillard in terms of trust.

Weatherill is a softly-spoken lawyer, very adept at not answering questions. It will be interesting to see how he minimises the appearance of treachery in his move against Rann, and if the Libs try to bring it up, his pre-election 'lie' about Cheltenham Racecourse.

Back to the subject.