In the Australian George Megalogenis and Amanda O'Brien comment on the collapse of Labor's primary vote:

Labor's primary vote has been smashed in every state, with Victoria and Tasmania the only two holdouts not to fall below 40 per cent. When compared with the 2007 election, Labor's primary vote is down 7 per cent nationally, 8 per cent in NSW, South Australia and WA, 7 per cent in Queensland, 4 per cent in Victoria and 3 per cent in Tasmania.

They add that when the Greens primary vote is combined with Labor's, the centre-left forces are actually doing better in Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania than in 2007.

I'm voting Green in a traditional Liberal held electorate (Mayo) that gives One Nation far more votes than the Greens. So what is important for me is the balance of power in the Senate.

I'm in Adelaide. It is held by the ALP Right (Kate Ellis), which is in favour of a fundamentally flawed all-encompassing mandatory internet filter and its confidential blacklist. There are better approaches to cyber safety.

They've got no chance of my vote at all, after allowing themselves to be captured by the miners and heavy polluters on climate change; and doing very little on the Murray-Darling Basin to roll back the big irrigators taking all the water.

We need a green and independent centre-left Senate.

Peter Brent at Inside Story says that Rudd Labor has been captured by the political machine that requires ministers, when speaking in public, and particularly when answering a question, to only employ generalities and clichés.

This approach also represents the logical outcome of an increasing reliance on political machines.... today’s insecure politicians have succumbed fully to the research-generated list of dos and don’ts: keep it simple, mate, and stay on message; swinging voters are turned off by complexity. Don’t appear like you’re up yourself. Use phrases our polling shows the punters are using.

This accounts for the emptiness and vacuousness of what they say. The electoral political lines (talking points) are given to them each day from the machine and they are required to say the same thing.

In the last couple of days they are all getting stuck into Abbot's character and saying the same thing.

"In the last couple of days they are all getting stuck into Abbot's character and saying the same thing."

The negative campaign is appealing to our discomfort with the prospect of the Abbott alternative? They are too extreme.

People tend to forget that Australians returned Howard Governments for more than 11 years, not because there was anything particularly objectionable about Labor, but because Howardism struck the right note with a majority of electors. It's unlikely that many people have subsequently disavowed their preferences and they may simply be returning to their pre-2007 voting patterns, with the familiar presence of Tony Abbott as the face of safe conservatism.

Do progressives find this a plausible analysis? Generally not, they prefer to blame the media for misleading the gullible masses (always exempting themselves of course from the taint of media influence). But then again many progressives have been struggling to explain how Australians could vote the way they have in every election since 1996, excluding 2007. One pundit after another proposes explanations based on top-down political machinations by evil employers acting in concert with the media and the conservatives to mislead and manipulate the populace.

The true answer, unpalatable thought it might be to progressives, might actually be very simple: the majority of Australians prefer what the conservatives offer over any of the alternatives.

The lack of support for the government is almost entirely due to the constant barrage of negativity and spin from the media led by the Murdoch media, backed up by the increasingly right wing Fairfax, echoed by the ABC and the other TV channels , and given shrill hysteria by the radio shock jocks.
Noise, noise noise.
Take a few examples.
From day one of the CPRS/ETS we the public have been subjected to a blitz of pro coal lobby propaganda pushed by a variety of sources, IPA, Monckton/Plimer/et al, even Fielding and later Abbott, all led by "The Australian" [OO].
Constant misinformation.
Now the theme has been continued with the RSPT with the opposition [the media], COALition and the big guns of the mining industry spreading fear and confusion.
The 'boat people' issue reached fiasco point some months ago with a constant on the hour [radio] several times daily [TV] daily [print] barrage [again] of hysteria about a handful of people whose impact on Australia is trivial but presented as the end of our world. Every day, several times a day, this non-issue was given high status as something Australians should be worried about. So much so that the ER poll showed that most people have no idea of the numbers of refugees involved and grossly over-estimate same.
Constant non stop shrill drip drip drip of misinformation.
Sure the government has been responsible for some policies and non policies that require criticism but not to the level it has received.
Generally, by the low standards we employ here in Oz, it has been a mildly competent govt clearly better than the COALition shambles that masqueradesas the official opposition.
Even some of the government's successes, eg insulation, BER, stimulus, have been falsely presented as abject failures.
Until we get rid of the media oligopoly in this country and make the media accountable for its dissemination of [mis]information this country is doomed to a facade of democracy rather than the real thing.

Ken,
you are probably right---the majority of Australians prefer what the conservatives offer over any of the alternatives. That is why Rudd + Co are moving to the Right.

A green Senate would mean that the next Labor government deals with the Greens. The latter would demand that the various subsidies to the coal miners are eliminated. I would welcome such a prospect.

fred,
In the Weekend Australian John Black, a former Labor senator, says that, if the 80 per cent Green preference flow figure falls below 70 per cent, then Labor loses an extra percentage point of its national preferred vote. Governments, he adds, are won or lost on these sorts of margins.

His interpretation of the recent electoral shifts is strange:

The Greens vote is now moving former Labor voters across to the Liberals in the same way that the old Democratic Labor Party moved Catholics into the mainstream Liberal ranks 50 years ago.

The recent Newspoll indicates the same trend is afoot, although it is reasonable to expect that a higher regard by Greens for the Liberal leadership would accelerate this trend.

Bear in mind, however, that this trend was already evident in 2007 when the Coalition was led by Howard, not really a totemic Greens figure for academic lefties, professional consultants or retired worm farmers.So I'd expect it to continue to the election this year.

The tone of the article denigrates the Greens (who have a high socio-economic status) painting them as both extreme left-wing splitters and pawns of the Liberals.

fred
Bernard Keane at Crikey says that:

The slow death of the commercial mainstream media is getting us used to life without it. More than half of the journalism of some newspapers is PR-initiated anyway. And media diversity is undercut by the increasingly dogmatic tone of some outlets, which have become so predictable as to obviate the need to bother reading them

Keane adds that media outlets will only prosper if they can aggregate popular content providers, AKA “brands”. It’s already happening.

Don’t like Andrew Bolt? Bad luck. Get used to him and others like him. The Bolt brand drives lots of traffic. Bolt offers certainty. Certainty has always sold well. But the best part about certainty is that it’s cheap. You don’t have to do too much time consuming, expensive research or have good contacts to be certain. In fact, it’s a hindrance — it introduces unwanted shades of grey.

Certainty will be one of the key media offerings of the future, particularly in regard to political journalism.

Gary,
Acccording to Possum today the Greens preferences are down to 68% flow to Labor.
Time to panic!

In his analysis of the ER poll re what % of 'boat people' constitute migration to Oz he shows that the 38% of the 71% who have an opinion are, in his words, "off with the fairies", not knowing the real number is less than 3% and believing the number to be about 3-20 times greater.

Australians are being consistently misinformed on most issues.

While I'm here can I put in a plug for David Horton's blog?
http://davidhortonsblog.com/
[I just did didn't I?]
Maybe a sidebar link?
cheers.

fred
Bernard Keane at Crikey says that:

The slow death of the commercial mainstream media is getting us used to life without it. More than half of the journalism of some newspapers is PR-initiated anyway. And media diversity is undercut by the increasingly dogmatic tone of some outlets, which have become so predictable as to obviate the need to bother reading them

Keane adds that Outlets will only prosper if they can aggregate popular content providers, AKA “brands”. It’s already happening.

Don’t like Andrew Bolt? Bad luck. Get used to him and others like him. The Bolt brand drives lots of traffic. Bolt offers certainty. Certainty has always sold well. But the best part about certainty is that it’s cheap. You don’t have to do too much time consuming, expensive research or have good contacts to be certain. In fact, it’s a hindrance — it introduces unwanted shades of grey.

Certainty will be one of the key media offerings of the future, particularly in regard to political journalism.

Some do like to spin that Rudd is losing ground because of the other side is creating negative spin but....
As with any commander they have to be seen by the troups to be winning battles. Rudd really hasn't won enough battles to keep the troups motivated. Most of those that charged out of the trenches early on are wounded now and mostly all he has left are the diehards and those that are thinking about shooting themselves in the foot.
The troups need a new leader and a new reason to fight.

fred,
David Horton's interesting The Watermelon Blog is listed under Environment Links

At least part of the reason for Rudd's decline is that he's trying to drag us towards Communism. Chinese Communism at that.

According the that Andrew Forrest bloke... we're on the same road as the Chinese commies... except we're going the wrong way!

‘‘I ask you which communist is turning capitalist and which capitalist is turning communist.’’

Serves us right for electing a geek who can speak a bit of Mandarin! Manchurian candidate and all that...

Kevin Rudd will be remembered as the Kim Hughes of Australian politics.

Not necessarily, Fred. At least hope not necessarily, for the sake of the country.
He's inexperienced but I would not condemn him yet, let's see if he can rise to the occasion, otherwise he will be removed as quickly as Howard in 2007 and the dregs of Blair Labour in Britain.
First thing for him would be to get out the way of all the toadies and staffers who lead him away from the 2007 platform and then get home to renew acquaintances with his family, his pillow and a good night's sleep, so he can function better the following morning.

Paul,
Mark Davis in The Age has a good comment about Rudd's community cabinet meeting in Perth. If he treats it as a kind of cross between a focus group and a community attitude survey, he will draw three conclusions.

Firstly, that opposition to the super tax is confined to a loud and well-organised but narrow sectional interest group. Secondly, that the wider public remains neutral on the issue. And, thirdly, that he can, therefore, win the politics of the debate by focusing on what the government plans to do with the super profit tax revenue: cutting the company tax rate, increasing employee superanuation entitlements and boosting spending on roads, railways, ports and other infrastructure.

Is the campaign against the resources supertax just limited to a oud and well-organised but narrow sectional interest group?

Les
many in Rudd Labor say that the fight with the miners is good for the government because it shows it is willing to take tough economic decisions in pursuit of Labor values.

Of course the NSW Right group say that the issue is hurting the government politically and needs to be shut down as soon as possible through some kind of compromise with the industry.

Les,
you are right re your comment that "Rudd really hasn't won enough battles to keep the troups motivated." As Shaun Carney says in his A policy platform in pieces at the National Times re the carbon pollution reduction scheme:

Rudd emerged from the whole thing as an empty windbag, a leader with no will. The great moral challenge of our time, having received no rhetorical commitment throughout the crucial year of 2009, looked like it was being discarded.The government might have survived this alone, but too many Rudd initiatives were also on the scrap heap. FuelWatch and GroceryWatch had also been junked.

He then says that the massive, challenge the ALP faces is this: it must now disentangle the mess of grievances and disillusionment that lurk within the supporters it has clearly lost, or it is in danger of losing. It will be a monumental task.

Nan,
It seems that Rudds only strategy to get what he wants is to give away money.

Gary,
I see Rudds only chance of a comeback in peoples minds is a cleverly made reality show about him. Cameras following him around 24/7 showing him as a hard worker and getting things done. The 15 second grabs in the media are killing him off.

Les,
the conventional perception of the Rudd Government in the media is one of spin ahead of substance, big plans and little follow-through. This is a politically expedient government, willing to compromise previous promises goals and plans when the electoral context demands.

So how do they counter that? By standing up to the miners.