The Ultimate Whinging Pom

There has been a relentless anti-Government campaign being run in our media over the past eighteen months.

What? You hadn’t noticed?

Up until Tony Abbott became Opposition Leader on Dec 1, 2010 through the acceptance of a vote from Peter Slipper, there had been the usual argy bargy of political reporting. The good bits were exposed along with the bad.

Media opinion was somewhat divided and there was a semblance of balance.

Then Tony Abbott began his campaign of ambitious bullying, commonly referred to as complete negativity. He has been willing to embrace the title of Dr No. He has been willing to talk down everything which may be construed as a positive. He has been willing to disregard any damage he is doing to our country. Could this be because this is NOT his country? After all, he IS a Ten Pound Pom.

The Ultimate Whinging Pom.

He has been encouraged by a lack of investigative journalism in the Australian Media. The Press has perfected the use of  “Paid for Comment” media whores.

Perhaps the vigour “Commentators” and the Sleaze Press use in pursuing anyone in public life who is alleged to have used a prostitute is intensified because, in those prostitutes, they recognise kindred spirits. Jealousy is a destructive emotion.

The Media/Abbott campaign of negativity has had its desired effect and ALP stocks have never been lower.

Yet now it is becoming obvious that there are limits to this campaign. It is all very well to claim that hot is cold while everyone’s comfortable until the shivering doesn’t begin.

A credibility gap finally appears. Fran Barlow has an interesting comment on the Crikey blog, Poll Bludger. Playing to the subconscious of a large part of the electorate with economic dog whistles.

The release of the GDP figures this week could be the straw which breaks the media’s back. While everyone else on the world is able to enviously see the Australia economy for what it is, it has taken the remarkable numbers we saw this week to open our eyes.

We are not a nation of Little Orphan Annies wearing cardboard-soled shoes. Even though we have been told, and many believe, that earning only $150,000 a year is a sign of individual poverty and need.

Add to this growing economic realisation the multiple sexual scandals which the Abbott-led Opposition has brought to our attention. Each one has the finger-prints of the Manager of Opposition Business in the House, Christopher Pyne all over it.

It’s becoming difficult for the Opposition and the Media to pursue the “Slipper Incident”. There may be some bonus badly done paper-work at the end of this saga but the sexual innuendo has become tainted by the background of the main witness, James Ashby.

The media escort service is no longer receiving instruction from their political customers on this matter.

The long-running Thomson Scandal is quickly imploding as Tony Abbott’s “Hero” Kathy Jackson is revealing herself, and being revealed as something else. Again, while there are some mutters still being heard in the Press, the volume has gone way down from “Eleventy” to around 1.5.

Things are changing so much that we are finally seeing stories in the dead-tree media which call into question the long term viability of the long-running campaign of denigration. The Australian Financial Review and The Sydney Morning Herald have each sounded discordant note in the heretofore monotoned symphony of Gillard-hating.

All this is leading up to a weekend when I believe political polling is taking place. So desperate measures have been called for.

The Australian has chosen to re-open, for the hundred and eleventyth time, leadership speculation! SURPRISE! SURPRISE!

And, as I write this post, Tony Abbott is on my TV promoting  much stronger action against “People Smugglers”. Effectively using the legal framework of guilt on allegation which was perfected in the Slipper and Thomson cases he is surreptitiously setting out a case for overturning all legal protections for everyone!

The efforts of the Liberal Party to regain the momentum this week are becoming as predictable as they are vindictive. The words and whinges of this 10 Pound Pom are beginning to sound as threadbare as his claims to having the best interests of Australia at heart.