Like a lamb to the slaughter, Swan is to debate Costello next Tuesday night on the economy, tax etc. This will be like Tyson against ... well, me in the boxing ring. I'm pretty sure it's against the Geneva Convention.
Rudd's arrogant taunt offerring to debate Costello and Howard at once has backfired nicely.
Costello ideally should have closed ranks with the PM on the worm, rather than permitting it. But given the ethics of the media in this country it was going to be used dispite his objections, so might as well not be afraid of it.
The worm is bad for 3 reasons.
Firsly, the worm, like the ABC's debate pre-amble and wrap-up is just another way of the media telling the viewer what to think, and it should be discouraged. People can make up their own minds. This is supposed to be a democracy.
Secondly, The worm is not scientific and does not necessarily indicate the mood of the general public. It is open to manipulation. The controllers can be put in the hands of anyone. These people are not necessarily are representative sample of the population. We have to take it on trust from Channel 9, the people who openly broke the trust of the broadcasting regulatory body by including the worm, to not fiddle the figures by skewing the sample. Leave the figure out and it can't be fiddled.
Thirdly, The worm's encourages, and it's results are distorted by, herd-behaviour. The worm tempts people to behave in a herd-like concensus-driven way rather than make up their minds on their own about the various issues and points raised in the debate.
The whole reason why we have secret ballot not just to protect the voter from politcal persecution, but because the results of a non-secret voting process where everyone can see how other's are voting - like the worm or a focus group - is distorted by interactions between the people. People feel intimidated if they are not part of the concensus, and chance votes because of fear. People want to get with the winning team, and chance votes because of amition. People deliberately rebel sometimes just to be different but without an invidual reason, and chance votes because of infantile posturing. All of this is herd behaviour.
The worm, like the ALP, is the enemy of individuality.
