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Hitwise Intelligence - Alan Long - Asia Pacific

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Climate Change defeats a Prime Minister

June 24, 2010

Maybe a simplistic headline, but Australia now has a new Prime Minister after Kevin Rudd stood aside for Julia Gillard to take the reins of the Federal Labor Party and the Australian Government.

An impending federal election combined with a series of political errors, such as the handling of the Home Insulation Scheme and the backflip on the ‘greatest moral challenge of our generation’ - Climate Change, forced the hand of the Labor Party factional heavyweights jittery enough to make a move.

Throw in the Mining Super Tax as part of the overall Tax Reform, Immigration and Health Reform and Kevin Rudd’s government was facing challenges from all sides. But what do we as the Australian public care about? Which issues are the ones we are interested and invested in, and did the Prime Minister read the temperature of the community accurately? Obviously not.

Using search data as a way of tracking interest in specific subjects I have constructed a series of search term portfolios based around Health Reform, Tax Reform (including the Mining Super profits tax), Climate Change, and Immigration (including asylum seekers) to gain a grasp on the comparative importance to Australian Internet users.

Of all of the issues, Climate Change has the highest level of awareness followed by Immigration, the two issues that Kevin Rudd has been criticised most heavily for over the past months. The Insulation Scheme while a debacle on many fronts didn’t capture the broader interest in the community and was able to be overcome comparatively quickly.

Comparing search volumes of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, against the backdrop of Tony Abbott, highlights the increased interest in Julia Gillard over the past months, increasing 450.0% since the beginning of April (week ending 19 June 2010 compared to week ending 3 April 2010), while Kevin Rudd has also seen an upswing of interest over the same period of 93.8%. These upward shifts for the Labor Party Leaders occurred at the same time that interest in Liberal Leader Tony Abbott fluctuated from its 2010 peak in week ending 3 April to currently sit 73.8% lower, a concern for the Liberal’s confronting a 2010 election campaign.

Interestingly the top 10 search term variations for each of the Labor Leaders are not too critical or negative, as could be expected, considering the recent political events.

One interesting variation to note is the 8th most searched for term featuring Julia Gillard – ‘Julia Gillard treason’. Maybe the Rudd family will be responsible for this search terms growth during the current week.

As Australia’s first female Prime Minister it is an historical appointment and the newspapers and bloggers will have a field day picking over the remains of Kevin Rudd’s political career. What will be interesting to watch will be the rebuilding of Julia Gillard. I have no doubt that social media will have a very large part to play and it will be fascinating to watch it unfold.

One thing that can be sure is that Labor is listening and Julia Gillard will put Climate Change back on the current agenda before any election will be called.

Could this have the unintended outcome of being the remaking of Malcolm Turnbull?

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