Wow... someone had their bag pinched; and it makes the news!

Could the news get any more wonderfully relevant?!?!

Recently, politicians have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Both at a state and federal level, the opposition Liberal politicians seem to be having leadership troubles. However, as far as I see it, most of these issues are created by the media, for the media.

Take a look at this article for instance. It's just one of a large amount of articles about the apparent leadership issues within the Federal Liberal party, following the leaking of some emails.

Looking at the byline for that article, it states that

...a leaked email exposed deep divisions in the party's leadership.

This email was apparently from Malcolm Turnbull to Brendan Nelson. Mr. Turnbull was expressing his disagreement with the fuel excise cuts proposed by Dr. Nelson in his budget reply speech. It would appear there was some difference of opinion over these cuts, and Dr. Nelson's view finally prevailed, or he had the final word. Simple.

However, since then, not one news article that I have seen has objectively reported this without attempting to raise speculation on the nonexistant leadership issue that makes news. There was a disagreement between the two most powerful frontbenchers in the Opposition. So what? Both they and a variety of other Opposition frontbenchers and other prominent figures have been forced to deny any leadership troubles, and they have done so; many times. Yet still we keep reading reports on this leadership issue.

Is it so hard to find quality news? Is it too much to ask for objective media coverage? Do we really have to read unsubstantiated allegations in the news???

Further to my earlier post, the news today announced the result of the recount in the Victorian seat of McEwan. This time, the Liberal sitting MP, Fran Bailey, was declared the winner by a margin of 12 votes. I wonder what Mr. Mitchell thinks of the "very very clear" message he got last time around?

Reading the news last night, I noticed that the ALP (Labor Party) had won the Victorian seat of McEwan by a margin seven votes. This is an extremely close result, but what I noticed, was the Labor (winning) candidate's response:

Definitely the message is obviously very very clear that people want Labor, they want Kevin Rudd, they want the new ideas and fresh thinking...

I'll just repeat that, and add my own emphasis:

Definitely the message is obviously very very clear that people want Labor, they want Kevin Rudd, they want the new ideas and fresh thinking...

So a seven vote margin constitutes a very very clear message to Mr. Rob Mitchell? Considering that this electorate contains in excess of 100 000 voters, this is a margin of less than 0.007%. There are many things this may be, but it is certainly not a clear message that the people of this electorate want Labor. I would have expected someone who will be representing Australians in Parliament to show a little better judgment than that. If there is any message that Mr. Mitchell can get from this result, it would be that the people of his electorate are evenly divided, and he should be working hard to show that he was worthy of receiving this seat from the Liberal incumbent.

EDIT: The margin has now been reduced, first to five votes and then increased to six, and the Liberal candidate has requested a recount.