The ABC is reporting the election outcome as 73 Coalition, 72 Labor, even though one National Party member has indicated he will not sit as part of the coalition. If they had made a similar choice favoring Labor (eg by accepting at face value the statement of the Green MP that he intends to support Labor) I’m sure the cries of bias from the political right would have reached the heavens.
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John Quiggin 
I recall a study last year from Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh that found that the ABC had the most pro-Coalition bias of any of the main media outlets.
Has anyone else noticed what could easily be construed as a strong Coalition bias in The Age (at least the online version) over the last couple of weeks?
John,
The Greens are not in a formal coalition with the ALP. The Nationals are in a formal coalition with the Liberals. While one National has said that he intends to sit on the cross benches he has not yet done so, and may end up doing as his peers in the WA Parliament have done.
In any case, the chances of him supporting the ALP are pretty remote – I would not give much credence to a Kalgoorlie-based MP surviving (politically) in the event that he supported the MRRT, which would have to be in any Supply bill to be passed if the MRRT is instituted.
John, see Antony Greens Blog
http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2010/08/is-tony-crook-new-nationals-mp-for-oconnor-a-member-of-the-coalition.html
Yes, CPB.
That is the feature of this election, the results of the tabloidisation of the SMH and Age over the last five years, paralleling the deterioration of the ABC and SBS.
That keeps us “harmonised” with american media so the horses dont get spooked..
Andrew Reynolds, if it wasn’t for Labor preferences Crazy Uncle would still be in parliament and Sargent Schultz would not be pissed off.
Yes
Crook wants to play the same game as Katter, Oakeshott, and Windsor.
It gains him media attention. For a politician, this is like heroin.
The National Party of Western Australia Tony Crook is a member of is a state based party, not the Nationals that is a national (federal) party. Confused?
Donald,
The Liberal Party of WA is a state-based party – as are the National Party organisations in each State.
In any case, Tony Crook attended the National Party caucus meeting today as a member of the National Party. Not confused at all.
@Phil
That seems to make the situation far worse for the ABC. Green says “tell us he’s not in the Coalition and we’ll change it”. WA Nats say “he’s not in the Coalition”. ABC doesn’t change it.
PrQ,
Green has stated that the request was withdrawn after he pointed out that the WA Nationals are not a federally registered party and that the federally registered party (The Nationals) are in a formal coalition.
Anyway – as stated, Crook attended the National caucus meeting today.
Let’s just see what happens when Parliament sits.
Windschuttle and Albrechsten sit on the ABC board and anybody watching abc24 over the election campaign could tell you it shows. The day before the election, the same day that all the newspapers reported that Abbott was going to cut $1.5 billion from education, mostly for access to university for poorer students, the ABC ran a story that said outright that on education policy the most significant thing was that there was no difference between the two parties – and of course ignored the $1.5 billion story. I was stunned, I never watch abc24 but had read other people complaining about the bias, the one time that I watch it for five minutes and it’s the most clear cut case of plain misinformation that I’d ever seen outside of Fox.
O’Connor went to preferences, with Tony Crook behind Winston Tuckey on the primary vote. It looks to me Tony Crook was elected on the preference flow from the ALP and the Greens. He might well be in practice, aside from the influence of WA politics, more of an Independent than generally considered, with some debt to those voters that made his election possible. Thus the ABC might be premature.
Oops should Wilson Tuckey – wrong side of the Atlantic.
I think the ABC is biased. It should be privatised or better still mutualised. Give it to the people.
@Andrew Reynolds
i find this entirely unconvincing. Whatever political party might have nominated someone, they are free to take whatever position they like once elected. This MP has done so.
More to the point of the original post, if Green had counted someone as being a Labor MP when they said they weren’t, the screams of bias from the right would be audible from outer space. As it is, they get a mildly grumbly blog post.
Andrew Reynolds, the thread topic is about media and right wing bias.
In three comments so far you have discussed every thing from the price of wheat on the Irish Kiwi fruit market, to who won last week’s daily double at Randwick.
What about addressing the post?
If you like, you can talk about why Rudd put such a rightwinger as Conroy in charge of a portfolio that required action, or the role of Albrechtsen, or Maurice Neumann as abc chairman, or Murdoch behind the scenes, but in at least one of the above, if not something else also relevant, at least address the thread issue, please.
Slightly off topic but apparently the latest AEC numbers have the coalition as winning the popular vote on preferences as well as on primaries. This probably makes a Gillard government a tiny fraction less likely.
@TerjeP
Let’s see if that is still so at the end. Denison, Grayndler and Batman are out as the leads weren’t both from the major parties.
[snark]
deleted – read the comments policy. You’ve used up your snark quota for 2010, Jack.
[/snark]
With hindsight perhaps that is advice that somebody should have given to Julia Gillard.
Terje, even if the Coalition maintain a narrow lead on the two-party national vote I don’t really think that gives them any greater claim to govern. Although this is invariably cited as some kind of moral victory by whichever side wins the popular vote.
I have often thought that citing the popular vote is somewhat misleading, because if the election had been conducted on the basis of which party won the popular vote nationwide the result might well have been different because parties would have put more effort into maximising their vote in safe seats and not just concentrating on the marginals. So if the Coalition wins the popular vote by a tiny margin, you cannot really conclude that the majority of Australians wanted a Coalition government (particularly when you factor in things like protest votes in safe seats and the like).
At the very least, one side would have to win the popular vote by a much bigger margin than the Coalition are ahead at the moment for it to be at all statistically significant.
Fran, does that mean that the 2PP vote for New England, Kennedy and Lyne have already been included in the national 2PP figure? Because they would most likely add to the Coalition’s share of the 2PP vote.
Having watched Tony Crook over a week ago state that he was not in the coalition and watched Antony Green defend the fact that he had been included in the coalition because he had the title National Party I have wondered about the way that the third estate have done nothing to remedy this error. It seems that if there is another story that they prefer journalists will take that story rather than the truth especially if it already has some life to it through constant repetition.
That the ABC has supported this instead of presenting the stated position of candidates shows how effectively the journalists and newsmakers have been affected since the Howard board took over. The control of government institutions is one of the most effective ways to control the political agenda.
MU – I don’t much think anybody has a moral claim to govern. At best they have a legal claim but that depends on seats held. My comment was on what was likely not what was moral and I did use the word “tiny”. However it does seem that Julia Gillard was trying to imply a moral case for forming government when the numbers were running in her favour. Just as Abbott tried to make mileage out of winning the primary vote in spite of our preferencial system.
Perhaps the ABC shouldn’t count Turnbull for the coalition given he sat on the cross benches for the ETS vote and probably would again if push came to shove. However it would be something of a nonsense so I think Anthony Green is taking a reasonably credible position. Personally however I’d prefer if we treated all MPs as independents.
Today the ABC ran the story of the record mining profits and expansion, a story that did not warrant a mention back in April when the likelihood of record profits became known, or while the mining companies were using misleading advertising to circulate the fiction that all this capital investment would be forced off-shore. Gee, and only now that the voting is over is the “surprise” revealed, namely that the big miners didn’t actually think the super profits mining tax would change their investment decisions.
The big miners played us, and the un-investigative journalists / opinion writers assisted the big miners in playing us.
Its ironic that when the ABC first ran the story about the AEC having a 2PP that was slightly ahead for the Coalition, they completely failed to mention that 8 seats which are not contests between the 2 major parties are not counted for the 2PP vote (e.g. Grayndler, Denison, Kennedy etc). I have no doubt that if they were used to calculate the 2PP then it would be slightly ahead for the ALP. I looked at what would happen if you use first prefs from these seats, and it confirmed this. I look forward to the ABCs response to my email complaining about this omission (which has since been corrected).
Love of the ABC must be a universal thing. Here is Andrew Bolt today claiming it is riddled with journalists with a left wing bias:-
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/media_twits/
@Monkey’s Uncle
AIUI, this is so, and O’Connor as well. My point was that until the whole matter is finalised, speculation is premature. I suspect that the ALP will finish somewhat in front, FWIW.
The other interesting observation if that the Coalition in Lyne/Kennedy, as in previous elections, ran with “a vote for Oakeshott/Windsor is a vote for an ALP government”, yet their candidates in these seats were crushed: Windsor 71-29 and Oakeshott 62-38. So from their own mouths, the coalition concedes that these votes were in reality a vote for the ALP.
Despite the coaliton saying it, it’s not entirely unfounded. About half of Oakeshott’s and Windsor’s support comes from people more sympathetic to the ALP than the coalition, and even the ex-Nat voters what these folk to haggle as best they can for local advantage. Both support a price on carbon, and both support the NBN. So the coalition is estopped from making these inferences.
Moreover, in Wilkie’s case in Denison, the consensus is even clearer. Wilkie may have won, but the coalition support there was, in extremis about 22%.
John, Julie Bishop is wrong in assuming the Gillard government has lost their mandate, if anything the L-NP have no mandate given the final result is a deadheat 72-72 giving the incumbent government first choice to form a minority government.
John, given Tony Crook will be in the crossbench I can only assume (unless someone out there knows for certain) that the Party has passed a resolution whereby the majority effectively terminated their affiliation with the National Party of Australia subject to rules 11.4. FEDERAL PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION. If that is not the case then the result will stand ALP 72 & L-NP 73.
I woke up this morning to the sound of ABC News Radio faithfully repeating verbatim the Murdoch Press beat-up about the recalculation of the (constitutionally irrelevant) 2PP vote, and the Murdoch Press beat-up about the review of the IPCC in the wake of “glaring errors”, Climategate, yadayadayada. I made a considered decision some years ago not to spend any of my money ever buying a Murdoch publication and I resent having my taxes spent paying some ventriloquist’s dummy to parrot the Newscorp crap du jour.
From Terje’s link:
“Listen to this c——-er [Abbott] ”
Does anyone know what was dashed out? Normally you can tell at a glance what the swear was, but in this case I’m stumped.
@wmmbb
Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie were elected with Liberal preferences
@Matt c
So what? In both cases, the Liberal tactics were an attempt at making mischief for the ALP and/or in part driven by the need to put distance between themselves and the government they were opposing.
They can scarcely claim a proprietary interest in these candidates, who explicitly disavowed the Libs’ key policies before getting the nod.
This should utterly embarrass the coalition — or it would if they had an ounce of political credibility or integrity.
The funny thing about that Bolt column that TerjeP linked to is the implicit assumption that opposition to Abbott is evidence for left-wing bias. It seems to me that opposition to Abbott is mainly a sign of common sense.
@Peter Wood
And just to underscore this point — is it possible to be a non-leftwinger who opposes Abbott’s policies?
Very much so, I’d say. This is a description of whole swathes of the ALP and significant sections of the Liberals (and probably many Nationals).
“is it possible to be a non-leftwinger who opposes Abbott’s policies? ”
Yo, over here! *waves frantically*
@Jarrah
Indeed … though I was thinking of your milieu when I referred to significant sections of the Liberals, though I accept you aren’t tied at the hip to the Liberal Party
I get the distinct impression that Conservative and Right are synonymous with opposition to policy to reduce emissions – on Q&A Abbott was considered very unlikely to change position on climate because he was a real conservative (paraphrasing from memory). Are there staunch conservatives who treat science based understandings of reality as understandings of reality?
“though I accept you aren’t tied at the hip to the Liberal Party”
Understatement of the year. My party is called the Liberal Democrats, and we hate everybody 😉
Fran – your expecting a bit too much sophistication from Andrew Bolt. I like his work but it is just a blog.
Jarrah – hating everybody isn’t official LDP party policy. I think you’re allowed to like people.
I think hating Abbott (or previously Howard) with the sort of venom illustrated in the bolt article is suggestive of an anti-right political bias. Journalists should be allowed to have opinions but I shouldn’t be forced to pay their wages.
Did yuo see that you’ve been misquoted (or i should say, quoted out of context) by The Australian’s Cut’n’Paste?
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/never-say-never/story-e6frg6zo-1225912089708
@Brad
That will teach me for playing with irony
Terje, 43, If Fran knows it and you acknowledge it, next question is, why is he and his stuff given priority over more substantial and capable commentators and commentary, with tabloid media.
In a Murdoch town like Adelaide, why do I have to open the centre page to Bolt rather than, say, Quiggin?
Why do I therefore know that all future elections will be fought on illusory issues rather than real ones, because of induced public ingnorance?
You are prepared to pay a portion of your wages to prop tax dodging, ignorance inducing Murdoch, but object to the public airing of views you disgree with and would knee cap public broadcasting to ensure this?
“I shouldn’t be forced to pay their wages”.
Well, some of us believe that public broadcasting is necessary to ensure diversity of viewpoint and accurate information, “without fear or favour” and dont see why we and others should suffer for your self embraced induced ignorance and arrogance.
Cut you nose off to spite your face, if you must.
But dont expect anything but derision from those of us who seek to avoid the same pointless fate.
Quiggin isn’t more substantial or capable than Bolt. And you don’t need to open the centre pages or even buy the paper. And I don’t mind you funding a public broadcaster, I just object to the likes of you forcing me to. If I want to cut my nose of how is it any of your business. My nose my choose.
Please excuse poor spelling but this PDA has a mind of it’s own.