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Rudd meets Bush amidst bleak outlook for global economy
Mike Dobbie, April 7, 2008

Kevin Rudd is on his first world trip and has taken the Press Gallery with him. Aside from the photo opportunities, the gallery prefers to look at anything but the substance – and there’s plenty of substance they should be looking at. Mike Dobbie wonders why the gallery has focussed on the fluff

The Canberra Press Gallery is on tour. You can tell because it has devoted pages of column centimetres and hours of digital recordings to reporting on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s casual salute to the US President and what hidden meanings can be interpreted from what some in the gallery quickly labelled as a "gaffe".

The gallery doesn’t get out much. When they leave the safe confines of the second floor of the Senate wing of the Parliament building they tend to blink in the sunlight and even get a little lost in the real world which, from the way they report on it, can be quite foreign to some of them. Little things can get blown up into big things and the need to report on something each and every day means the politics gets lost and there is a degree of sameness in their stories despite the claims of intense competition.

Traipsing after Rudd during his first world trip can be tiring, especially when there are good political stories happening at home and there’s little of great political import happening as Rudd glad-hands one political leader after another. But there’s also plenty of nonsense to report on, and even those back in Australia can get caught up in it as well.

The ABC’s Insiders – the on-air "talent" being all Outsiders in this case – devoted almost its entire program on April 6 to discuss Rudd’s body language, gestures and clichÈs (and did same with Brendan Nelson) – while at the same time decrying the pettiness of these discussions and criticising Sydney’s Telegraph newspapers for comments on Therese Rein’s dress sense.

After four months in power, it seems the media is still coming to grips with the new Government. Rudd has his staffers and Cabinet working long hours. It’s a punishing schedule and, if anything, underlines how tired and lacking in fresh ideas and direction the previous government was beginning to look after nearly 12 years in office.

In the foreground, however, have been the mixed messages on the economy. The Reserve Bank has, for the moment at least, left interest rates where they are on the expectation that they may be beginning to bite and that inflation may be curbed. The stockmarket upheavals in the US continue to buffet our own market, gold and oil continue to trade at record levels, rental opportunities and home affordability continue to be out of reach for many young people. And a boutique stockbroker has gone into receivership and been revealed to have oodles of accounting irregularities.

The US economy is still slipping and sliding towards a recession and so inured is Wall Street to the gloom, the slightest bit of good news sends the US stockmarket (followed closely by everyone else) bouncing several percentage points higher, all of us overly grateful for something breaking the dread monotony.

US jobs statistics look particularly bleak with unemployment jumping to 5.1 per cent from 4.8 per cent as 80,000 people lost their jobs last month, on top of the 76,000 jobs lost in February and again in January. The March figure is the worst number to be recorded since Second World War without the economy being in recession. Fewer people in work means less money in the economy, and that means less consumption, which in turn could lead to more layoffs.

The new US president, and Rudd met all three understudies, has a monumental task ahead. Rudd, on the other hand, together with his treasurer Wayne Swan, is still inheriting the inflationary peaks that began under the previous Government and they will have to deal with the painful consequences of the Reserve Bank’s rate rises. The Australian economy remains strong and, on the presumption that our trading partners still want to buy what lies underground as fast as we can dig it out, Rudd and Swan can afford to look more at ease than their counterparts across the Pacific.

Rudd’s casual salute to Bush was a relaxed gesture between two men who got along well enough after a few short meetings. One walks out of his job in early January next year, leaving history to judge his administration. The other is still coming to grips with implementing new policies at breakneck speed. Rudd’s other actions, not a casual salute, need more ink and airtime analysis spent on them.



More articles from this edition of CompareShares:

Stocks:Aussie stocks to win & lose from a rising AUD/USD
Analysis: Rudd meets Bush amidst bleak outlook for global economy
Stocks: Stock of the week - Macmahon Holdings
US: Why on earth would the US slash rates when inflation is rising?
Gold: Recent gold sell-off nothing for bulls to worry about
Expert Panel (options): Should I buy options that are in the money or out of the money?
CFDs: Top ten CFD stocks for the week
Rich list: Australia's richest lose $5b in 3 months
Opes Prime: Travel ban on Opes Prime boss extended
Sub-prime: Subprime doesn't mean doom for Asia

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Mike Dobbie is the former managing editor of Shares magazine.