We are about to bombarded with hundreds of thousands of political images, ads and videos.
In the period between now and when Scott Morrison calls the election many of them will be paid for by taxpayers just as he has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past few years on supposedly informational ads which actually promote his government.
The latest Roy Morgan Research Trust and Distrust quarterly report is bad news for Scott Morrison and the media.
The top line voting intention situation – LNP 42% and Labor 58% is bad enough- but the deeper feelings explored in the survey explain the onset of panic among some Liberal MPs.
When asked what, if anything, would worry you if the LNP were elected at the next Federal Election? representative responses included:
The Morrison Government is not only out of touch with much of the community but also with Australia’s business community – as demonstrated by the February 2022 Australian Institute of Company Directors member survey.
Morrison may believe in can-do capitalism but capitalists don’t seem to believe in can-do Scott Morrison.
Once upon a time, more than a century ago, stonemasons working on new Melbourne University buildings walked off the job in their campaign to win an eight hour working day.
Many workers today – whether casuals or professionals – would love such a life today.
In the early 1800s Victorian workers generally worked 14 hours a day for six days of the week. But in April 1856 the workers won an eight hour day and commemorated the win by holding an annual march from the Carlton Gardens to the Cremorne Gardens in Richmond – an event which unions and workers marked for 95 years. In 1934 a Labor Government made the day a paid holiday but the last eight hour day march was held in 1951,
Whether it’s a war, sports, politics or the launch of a new soft drink the PR industry is always there.
It’s sometime invisible – indeed one of the fundamental rules of effective PR is that you should never actually see it – it should shape things without anyone seeing how it’s done.
But this is increasingly difficult to achieve in a society so drenched with propaganda and PR that the tactics have become an issue in their own right.
If anyone wanted to test the validity of Marx’s comment about religion being the opiate of the masses they would undertake a systematic global survey to ascertain how lower socioeconomic status (SES) harms or protects psychological well-being.
Now seven academic teams from universities in Germany, Denmark, Korea, Switzerland, the UK, USA and Australia have done exactly that in a paper published in PNAS last year.
Morrison may be making a fundamental marketing mistake in his current frenetic pursuit of photo ops.
It was extremely effective in 2019 when he was relatively unknown – that is while he was known to be the new Prime Minister – but his background, personality and interests were not
So, pursuing a tactic of presenting as regular bloke doing regular things was both sensible and effective – particular when opposed to Bill Shorten who was easy to portray as an apparatchik skilled in political scheming.
9News has had on the Telstra Media site, on which it is featured, a link to a story about the Governor-General’s message to veterans – “you did as your nation asked ” – since August 2021.
Sometimes the item is the first you see in the Top Stories section and sometimes it slips down but whichever it’s always there among the Top Stories – which must make it the longest-running reference to an event or comment yet featured on the site.
In the late 16th and early 17th Century there were, among many writers, two exceptionally great English poets and playwrights – Shakespeare and Jonson. But who is best remembered by the general public today?
One retired quietly to the country and didn’t do much about having his work published. The other fastidiously ushered his work into print, sometimes carefully edited it to delete controversial phrases and ideas and promoted himself relentlessly.
Australian students are now going to be force fed our Western and Christian heritage and be told that the Anzac legend will no longer be ‘contested’.
Putting aside our ‘Western’ heritage – even given that Asian people trading with Indigenous inhabitants have played a role in our history since before Cook arrived and common enough to later amaze Mathew Flinders when he found many Makassan ships around what is now the Northern Territory – the Christian heritage if taught comprehensively will at least make the subject more popular than a teenage slasher movie.