Victoria Rollison's Blog, page 13

What went wrong for UK Labour?

Through my study of political narratives I’ve learned many interesting things. But the one most important lessons is that a political narrative has to be simple to be effective. I will add yet another opinion to the thousands that are being written this weekend to analyse what went wrong for UK Labour by saying that […]

What will it take for the Greens to be ‘mainstream’?

After today’s shock Greens leadership change, new leader Richard Di Natale has been quoted as saying he wants the Greens to be ‘the natural home of progressive mainstream Australian voters’. Fine. I can see where Di Natale is going with this. This is code for ‘I want the Greens to challenge Labor as the left-wing […]

Curing Outrage Fatigue

I agree with Tim Dunlop when he says we’re currently living through a phase of ‘the normalisation of bad politics’. There are hundreds of examples of the way in which the low expectations of the Abbott government due to their blatantly, and now universally acknowledged ineptitude is giving them a free pass to keep being […]

Labor framed as the villain again

Over the last couple of days, the Twittersphere has been full of congratulations for Waleed Aly’s The Project segment on the Renewable Energy Target (RET). If you haven’t watched it yet, here it is. Apart from the fact that it’s fairly amusing that journalists like Aly get congratulated for talking about the details of a […]

If you don’t love Australia, leave

It’s time we reclaimed Australia. Because I love this country and I hate to see it being sullied by bigotry and racism. I’ve got a simple message for those people who think it’s acceptable to rally in capital cities on Easter Saturday in order to send a message about their hatred and intolerance of people […]

What should Shorten say?

In the political battle of ideas, the weapon is the political narrative. After spending the last year researching political narrative, I have learned it’s not as easy as saying ‘here’s your narrative’, attaching your words to that wagon and off you go and win an election (not unless you’re Tony Abbott). As Bill Shorten is […]

An Open Letter to Peta Credlin

Dear Peta Credlin, First of all let me say that I’m sorry you’re having such a horrible time at work at the moment. Since it’s clear that you work extremely hard and your job is pretty much your life, I’m sorry that your life is fairly horrible at the moment too. I really am. This […]

The Elephants in the Press Gallery

The Press Gallery have been busily, emphatically, excitedly making the most of the new leadership tensions story that Abbott has gifted them over the past few weeks. But amongst the innumerable number of articles about what’s gone wrong for Abbott, how he got to this point so quickly in his first term, and what he […]

An Open Letter to Malcolm Turnbull

Dear Malcolm Turnbull, I hate to distract you from the clusterfuck that is your political party at the moment. But I can’t help but notice you’re all very busy doing whatever it is you do during a painfully drawn out Libspill; you know – making phone calls, counting numbers, receiving phone calls, tallying numbers to […]

We knew who Abbott was back then

I’m really sick of people saying that they didn’t expect Tony Abbott to be the type of Prime Minister he is. I’m really sick of people saying his policies caught them by surprise, that they didn’t expect him to slash and burn to the extent that he has tried, but thankfully, so far mostly failed […]