Day: July 15, 2010

Labor voters cheer up

~ Andrew Norton ~ 17 Comments

Happiness research always finds that right-wing people are happier than left-wing people. And so it was again in the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes 2009.


Questions: If you were to consider your life in general these days, how happy or unhappy would you say you are, on the whole …
Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as Labor, Liberal, National or what?

But as you can see in the figure, Labor identifiers have cheered up compared to the 2007 AuSSA, which was mostly carried out during the last months of the Howard government. The ‘very happy’ happiness gap has halved from a Coalition lead of 12% in 2007 to 6% in 2009. The proportion of very happy Coalition identifiers has dropped by only one percentage point, so the explanation is happier Labor supporters rather than less happy Coalition supporters.

Narcissus reflects

~ Andrew Norton ~ 9 Comments

The Paul Keating letter to Bob Hawke complaining about his treatment in a book he admits he has not read is classic Keating.

Who else could in the same paragraph say that a true account of the Hawke-Keating years would record ‘how lucky you were to have me drive the government during your down years, leaving you with the credit for much of the success’ and say of Hawke that ‘Narcissus-like you cannot find enough praise to heap upon yourself’?

Keating has many talents, but self-awareness seems not to be one of them.