Judgment Day for Labor

We've been to Australia several times this year. And wherever we've been, when we've talked to people about politics, they have been hanging out for today; the day of the Federal Election. And they've been hanging out for today because they want to bring an end to six years of appalling government.

The polls open in about three-and-a-half hours time as we type this. And it seems that the only question remaining now is over the margin of victory for the Coalition, and whether Labor will just get defeated, or whether Kevin Rudd's party will get annihilated.

The Sydney Morning Herald has details of the final round of polls:

Australians are preparing to sweep aside six years of Labor rule, installing Tony Abbott as the country's 28th prime minister in an electoral verdict leaving no room for doubt.
A swing of 4 per cent against Kevin Rudd's government threatens to strip the ALP of future stars as voters cast a harsh judgment on the party's internal divisions.
A poll shows electors will turn their backs on big-picture policies to price carbon, tax big miners, and build a first-class national broadband network, in favour of the smaller horizons of reduced debt, smaller government, and a new domestic-first focus.

The latest Age/Nielsen survey suggests 54 per cent of the nation's 14.7 million electors are embracing the Coalition.

Labor's primary vote has slumped to 33 per cent, with the Coalition on 46 per cent.
Primary support for Labor, and Mr Rudd's own popularity, are now as low or lower than they were in June 2010, suggesting the party that has twice changed prime ministers and torn itself apart in the search for votes is back where it started.
Mr Abbott has maintained his 7-point lead as the more trusted of the two leaders.

Other polls also point to a Coalition victory, but a slightly closer result. The final Morgan poll found the Coalition ahead after preferences by 53.5 per cent to 46.5 per cent, the Galaxy poll put it at 53-47, and the Essential poll found the Coalition leading 52-48.

 

Whilst the polls themselves make grim reading for Labor, that's not the worst of it; the carnage could be even worse; read on:

 

If applied uniformly across the nation, the 4 per cent swing would cost Labor 14 seats.
But strategists on both sides expect Labor's losses to be even higher, with as many as 25 seats falling into conservative hands.
That is because the national average is skewed by higher-than-average pro-Coalition swings in the big population states of Victoria (4 per cent) and NSW (5 per cent).
The poll of 1431 respondents was taken on Wednesday and Thursday evenings.

We will be staying up tonight to watch TV coverage of events as they unfold. But barring some sort of miracle, Tony Abbott will be the next Prime Minister of Australia, and the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd years will be consigned to the history books. And somehow, we doubt that history will be kind to the about-to-be-former Labor government and its leaders.

With a Wainuiomata-born wife, Tony Abbott is likely to be a far better friend to New Zealand than Kevin Rudd has been. Here's hoping that a new era of trans-Tasman co-operation is about to be born.

 

Love's Labors Lost

Things are looking grim for Kevin Rudd and for the Australian Labor Party. They are facing near-certain defeat at the polls on Saturday, and probable annihilation.

And this opinion-piece in the Sydney Morning Herald is just one piece in the puzzle as to how far Labor has fallen. Under the heading No going back when it's over, Melbourne barrister Rachel Doyle SC writes (with our emphasis added):

In 2010, I ended the longest and most significant relationship of my life. We got together when I was in my early 20s and were together for over 17 years. Ending it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.
The worst part was - he didn't even notice when I left. Sure, we had both emotionally checked out years earlier, but I thought that when I finally walked, it would at least engender a reaction. I'd been trying to get him to pay attention to me for a long time: picking fights, flirting with others and issuing spectacular ultimatums about what he would have to do to keep me. But when I left: nothing. Not a flicker.

Of course, relationships change. I didn't expect him to stay the same forever. But in the end, he just changed so much I didn't know who he was any more.

By 2009, he had become restless and fickle. First he'd want one thing, then another. He was skittish. A screw-up. He was hanging out with people I barely knew. By 2010, he had started to let down his friends, was caught out telling lies and breaking promises. I just couldn't trust him any more. On rare occasions, there were flashes of the brilliant, principled person he used to be. But it would fade away rapidly to nothing. He contradicted me. Then he started contradicting himself. Ultimately, he became vain, petty and cruel.
He hadn't acknowledged me or my needs for years. That I could take. But it was when he stopped caring about the children that I knew I couldn't stay. He blamed them for things. He punished and belittled them. And that, I could not ignore.
In the end, I didn't even tell him I was leaving. It was cowardly. But it was obvious nothing could bring back the person I used to know. So, a couple of years ago, I just walked out without saying where I was going or why. A small part of me thought (vainly) that when I walked, it might be a wake-up call and he would come crawling back. He never did.
Recently, he got back together with an old flame. Someone he was with between 2007 and 2010. After a very public reconciliation and much flaunting of their rekindled love for one another, the relationship already seems to be on the rocks. Me ? I haven't found anyone else. I doubt I ever will. Now when I see glimpses of him in the distance, it's been so long the hurt barely registers. I don't know him any more. I certainly don't know what he stands for, and I can't believe a word he says.
His name? The Australian Labor Party.
I joined Labor in 1993. I was a committed member, although I wasn't part of a faction or a branch. I handed out how-to-vote cards, I made donations. I attended fund-raisers. I identified with the party. I promoted and publicised its tenets. I admired many of its leadership group.
By the middle of 2010, I resolved to let my membership lapse. But I thought that despite our relationship being over, we might stay friends.
As Josh Bornstein wrote on The Age's Comment pages a month ago (''No Moral Limits to What Rudd Will Do to Win''): ''Do I grimace and turn the other way? … I cannot stomach voting for a government that treats other human beings in this way. A line has been crossed.''
Josh was writing about Iranian refugee Shayan Badraie. For me, the final straw was the heartbreaking photos of the orphan, Seena Aqhlaqi Sheikhdost. His photo was published widely in February 2011, while debate raged in relation to whether he would be permitted to attend the funeral of his family members in Sydney or remain in detention on Christmas Island. When I saw those photos, I knew the Rubicon had been crossed.
Asylum seeker policy is complex. I don't pretend to have all the answers. But one truth is clear and unassailable. There is no acceptable reason for imprisoning (or ''detaining'' in the language of both major political parties) children who have done nothing more than step onto a rickety boat because their parents told them to, or because relatives literally carried them aboard. None of these children has sought or caused the situation that maroons them on our shores.
I do not need a psychologist to tell me that imprisoning a child for any period of time is very likely to cause irreparable gaps in their education, physical and psychological development and do untold harm to their emotional health.
On June 16 The Age reported that Department of Immigration statistics confirmed 1852 children were still being held in immigration detention on Manus Island, Christmas Island and elsewhere, despite the government's pledge most would be out by June 2012.
After Labor and I split up, I thought I would always vote for the party I had loved for so long. Now, not only can I no longer bear to have the ALP membership card in my wallet, but I cannot even vote for them on Saturday.
Some people stay together for the sake of the children. I've ended it for the children.

If Rudd and his fellow Labor top-rankers aren't deeply troubled by Ms Doyle's opinion-piece, they most certainly should be. Because this story is not unique. Over the weekend a bus driver and union member told us that he was voting for the Coalition for the first time ever because it was the only way to get rid of Rudd; we won't use the adjective he did, but it was not flattering towards the Australian PM!

There are tens of thousands of Rachel Doyles right across Australia, and Labor is going to discover that when the polls close on Saturday evening. Then the ALP will, like its New Zealand counterpart in 2008 and again in 2011, have an opportunity to cut off some of the diseased tissue, and begin a period of rehabilitation and recovery. The NZLP has yet to avail itself of that opportunity; will the ALP do likewise?

The Herald-Sun on Rudd, Gillard and Labor

The Sunday edition of the Herald-Sun in Melbourne. In an editorial entitled Time voters took a new direction the leader writer notes:

AFTER six years of failed government, Australia finally has the chance to take a new direction. Labor has failed itself and our great nation.
Under both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, the party has been riven by incompetence, abysmal policy and bitter internal wars.
Australia cannot afford to keep the most dysfunctional and inept government in its history.
The Sunday Herald Sun supported Mr Rudd when he was elected in 2007. But his performance was so erratic on so many fronts that even his own party couldn't tolerate the damage anymore.
His successor was just as bad, but sadly Labor resorted to recycling Mr Rudd only to find him the same flawed character they dumped in the first place.
On the other hand, Tony Abbott and his team have shown they are ready to fix the mess and restore strong government. Mr Abbott has displayed courage, decency and a great capacity to listen to the people. His party is united and has presented a powerful case for change.
Mr Abbott kept calm as Labor ripped itself apart and lurched from one crisis to another, focusing his team on addressing the issues that matter most to Australians - a strong economy, job creation and a prosperous future.
This Government has fumbled and stumbled its way to a deserved defeat on Saturday, through disunity, the failure of its policies and its inability to deliver them. Its leaders have been so preoccupied with surviving attacks from enemies within that they have been distracted from governing.
Australia bears the scars of Labor's bungling: ballooning debt, asylum-seeker fiasco, carbon tax backflip, Building the Education Revolution blowout, delayed and overpriced national broadband project, deadly home insulation botch-up, mining tax debacle. The list goes on.
Labor has wasted billions of your taxes on schemes ranging from the feckless to the reckless. Near the top of a long list is the Home Insulation Scheme that cost several lives, as well as $1 billion to clean up. Then there was the $16 billion lavished on schools for works which, too often, were overdone, bungled or not needed.
The rate of illegal migration by boat - cut to a trickle under John Howard's Pacific Solution - exploded exponentially under a rudderless Labor leadership that attempted to disguise porous borders as a humanitarian principle. This Government has let in 50,000 boat people at massive cost to the taxpayer - and the loss of hundreds of lives of gullible-paying passengers lured by people smugglers swift to exploit Labor's dithering border protection policies.
Mr Rudd started out calling climate change the moral challenge of our time but he soon reneged, deferring an emissions trading scheme. This led Ms Gillard to try the on-again, off-again carbon tax that was so obviously a sop to the green vote of the inner-city elite.
Mr Rudd campaigned "to end the blame game" with states over hospital funding, but his scheme to claw back GST revenue to pay for it was dumped, as were all but nine of the hundreds of ideas aired at his 2020 Summit.
Mr Rudd inherited a $20 billion surplus from the Liberals but it evaporated in the global financial crisis, to be replaced by deficits. One reason of many for deficits is that the National Broadband Network has been bogged down in delays, its cost ballooning to $37 billion instead of $4.7 billion for the more modest plan mooted in the 2007 campaign.
Just last week, Treasury officials contradicted Mr Rudd's claims of a $10 billion black hole in Mr Abbott's election promises. If not a lie, this is at best the latest embarrassment a rejected and recycled leader has inflicted on a party unsure what it stands for and out of touch with those it calls "working families".
Individuals are often wrong, crowds rarely are. It seems Mr Rudd has been around long enough for Australians to sense the character flaws his own colleagues rebelled against three years ago.
He doesn't stand for anything except his own overweening ambition. That worked when he was riding the incoming tide of generational change in 2007 but now he is beating against the current. After six years in which the Government has declined from the inept to the disastrous, voters can now test the Coalition's alternative.
The Sunday Herald Sun believes Australia needs less waste, smaller government, reined-in deficits and stable and decisive leadership to secure the country's future.
There are no surprises in that list but it is easier to promise these sensible aims than it is to deliver them.
Mr Abbott has led his party into this election with distinction. He has known defeat before, and has emerged stronger and more determined from the experience.
This time, Mr Abbott deserves his chance, and we believe he will be an outstanding prime minister.

Labor, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have done everything in their power to demonise Tony Abbott, just as Labour and Helen Clark did here in 2008 to John Key. It didn't work for Miss Clark in 2008, and it is not going to work for Mr Rudd and Labor in 2013.

Australia is on the brink of electing a coalition government to be led by the Liberals and Tony Abbott. The Lucky Country may just be about to become just that once again as Labor is sent to Coventry to lick its wounds, prune the deadwood and disease and rebuild. 

The ALP should note however that the New Zealand Labour Party has had that same opportunity since its defeat in 2008 (and again in 2011), but it is yet to take the opportunity.

Why Labor is losing; and what it means for the NZLP.

We were out and about yesterday, after our business meetings ended.We even met a Liberal Party candidate for one of the local electorates doing some good, old-fashioned street corner campaigning; good luck Kevin!

But we haven't seen hide nor hair of anyone from the Labor Party; they seem to be keeping a low profile. And this opinion-piece from Paul Strangio in the Sydney Morning Herald may help to explain why:

In the near half-century since the dawn of the ''modern'' epoch of Australian politics - a milestone conventionally associated with Gough Whitlam's ascension to the Labor leadership in the late 1960s - Australia has witnessed five changes of federal government (1972, 1975, 1983, 1996 and 2007).
Two of those transitions involved the ALP losing office: Whitlam was defeated in 1975 and Paul Keating's government was beaten in 1996. When compared with those occasions, a notable difference about the mood in 2013 is the seeming lack of passion among Labor partisans as they contemplate the likely demise of the Rudd government.
Labor has traditionally been the party capable of stirring followers to emotional pitch, and those passions have commonly been intense when the ALP is bracing itself against defeat. It has been a catalyst for party faithful to metaphorically mount the barricades.

1975, of course, had its own exceptional circumstances, with Labor partisans animated by a potent mixture of rage at Whitlam's dismissal by governor-general Sir John Kerr, and adoration of their cruelly felled prime minister. Whitlam's rallies during the campaign were even more charged and messianic than the exultant ''It's Time'' campaign meetings of 1972. Such was the fervency of the Labor crowds that the Whitlam entourage was seduced into believing that the party might defy expectations and prevail at the ballot box.
Passions were more subdued in 1996. Labor had expended much of its emotional energy three years earlier rallying behind Keating as he fended off the challenge of John Hewson and his fundamentalist free-market manifesto, ''Fightback''. There was little hope of another salvation in 1996 and the dominant mood among Labor followers was one of sombre foreboding that matched the demeanour of the elegiac Keating. Yet the ''true believers'' still drew inspiration from Keating's ''big picture'' and felt sick at heart that the public was poised to spurn his vision in favour of the provincialism of John Howard's promise of a ''comfortable and relaxed'' Australia.
By contrast, in 2013 Labor faithful appear devoid of emotion - dare I suggest there is even a smidge of indifference about what is coming. Yes, there is apprehension at the spectre of a Tony Abbott-led Coalition government and spasms of anger at the anti-Labor assault of the News Ltd press, but the fate of the Rudd government is failing to generate much anguish.
Why the dearth of passion? Part of the answer is that the leadership civil war of the past three years has left the ALP emotionally wrung out. I suspect some Labor loyalists remain numb at the pitiless internal destabilisation and ultimate cutting down of Australia's first female prime minister, Julia Gillard.
Furthermore, as the campaign has progressed, it has become evident that by not daring to speak Gillard's name, Labor's re-election pitch has been left with a significant hole. Notwithstanding the flaws of her incumbency, Gillard established a reform record that felt like it was worth fighting for - most notably, the disability insurance scheme and education funding reform. Yet, intent on erasing Gillard's prime ministership from public consciousness, Rudd has appeared reluctant to fully own those measures for Labor. In turn, the campaign has spotlighted how comparatively thin and uninspiring are his reform credentials.

We are relatively recent converts to the niceties of Australian Federal politics. It's only really been since the John Howard years that we have taken more than a passing interest.

But the machinations within the ALP since 2007 have been fascinating to watch, and even moreso at the moment because they are mirrored in the bitterly divided New Zealand Labour Party. 

Labor and Kevin Rudd are headed for a crushing defeat next Saturday if the pundits here and the bookies are to be believed. You can still get a bet on the Coalition; at $1.02 back for your dollar. Labour is paying $11 to be reelected.

Surely, this is going to lead to wholesale change at the top of the ALP. But the question we have is this; what is needed for there to be wholesale change at the top of the New Zealand Labour Party? Will any of Messrs Cunliffe, Robertson or Jones be the catalyst for significant change, or will it just be more of the same?

Kev's large and menacing shadow

Kevin Rudd got a bounce in the polls for Labor after his knifing of former Australian PM Julia Gillard. But as the SMH reports, the lustre is wearing off:

It was brief, dignified and to the point, but Julia Gillard's statement that she would not attend Sunday's Labor campaign launch was startling, too. How quickly we move on; how quickly Labor wants us to move on.
Gillard has disappeared. She has posted just one thank-you tweet to well-wishers since being ousted as prime minister on June 26, barely two months ago. She reportedly has bought a house in Adelaide to be close to her family. She won't be sitting with other Labor luminaries on Sunday because she doesn't want to ''distract in any way from Kevin Rudd's powerful message''. She has ''fervent hope'' for a Labor victory.
There was so much left unsaid in Gillard's two-sentence statement. Was there irony lurking there, not wanting to ''distract'' Rudd, the man whose distractions all but derailed the 2010 campaign and played a sizeable role in destroying Gillard's prime ministership?

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What is Gillard thinking as she watches Labor's campaign, the dashing of the fantasy that ''the people'' just love Kevin Rudd, that Kevin Rudd alone can win this election because Kevin Rudd is a brilliant campaigner who can make us believe that Kevin Rudd offers a ''new way''?
Whatever Gillard is thinking, she'll hold her tongue for now. She may not be physically present in Brisbane, but her political ghost will be. Labor may have little choice but to pray that voters' memories are short, but it cannot erase its past, cannot pretend this election is all about scary Tony Abbott and his ''cuts, cuts, cuts''.
The central question is whether this election will turn out to be a judgment on Labor's six years of division that has overshadowed its policy achievements, or whether through gritted teeth we'll risk another three messy years because we're scared of what Tony Abbott might do.
I have been around too long to predict election outcomes, but it is looking as though September 7 will be a day of reckoning for a party that has come close to destroying itself. Labor seems so hollowed out that perhaps it had no choice but to grasp onto an American-style campaign centred around one man, Kevin Rudd, the man who more than any other contributed to the party's predicament.
Perhaps Rudd's elevation will mean that Labor will avoid the ''catastrophic defeat'' it faced under Gillard, and it will console itself with that. But there is so much heaviness in Labor's campaign, weighed down as it is by bad memories and bad blood.

 

Labour is in deep strife. A new poll out this morning shows Labor getting a bath in key marginals in New South Wales and Victoria. The bookies have already paid out on a coalition victory.

So will this image be Rudd's unfortunate epitaph?

Rudd and Labor lied

There's only one political story in Australia today; Kevin Rudd and the ALP have been telling lies; the Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Labor's campaign is ''in tatters'', leader of opposition business Christopher Pyne has declared, as Labor defends its release of Treasury and Finance documents to claim there is a $10 billion black hole in Coalition savings.
The war of words over Labor's black hole claims escalated on Friday, with a defiant Treasurer Chris Bowen and Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese insisting the government's claims were correct – despite the secretaries of Treasury and Finance taking the highly unusual step late on Thursday of publicly denying that they had examined opposition policies.

The scenario really is quite simple. Labor claims that Treasury has found a large black hole in the Coalition's election spending promises. But two of Australia's most senior public servants, Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson and Finance Department Secretary David Tune have emphatically denied that; read on:

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson and Finance Department Secretary David Tune issued a public statement advising that neither had examined the opposition's policies, and any modelling used for costing government policies before the election could not credibly be applied to opposition policies.
The statement said that the departments had been asked by the government to cost various ''policy options'', and: ''at no stage prior to the caretaker period has either department costed opposition policies''.
Late on Thursday the head of the Parliamentary Budget Office, Phil Bowen, also weighed in to the political stoush, issuing a statement that advised: ''Unless all of the policy specifications were identical, the financial implications of the policy could vary markedly.''

There has been a huge backlash over here, and Labor is copping it big-time. If this was Kevin Rudd's magic bullet, all he's done is taken careful aim at Tony Abbott then shot himself in the foot.

We'll have more fallout tomorrow, but for now, it's dinner time!

The Dave 'n' Julia Caption Contest

As we've said before, some photographs just cry out for a Caption Contest; and this is one of those:

You know the rules; keep 'em short, humourous and pithy, and don't get unnecessarily personal. Beyond that, you're limited only by your own imagination.

We'll get things started:

Well Julia; now I know what it's like to be Rudded. But it's been a Helen of an experience...

Another Labo(u)r leader in strife

David Shearer has gone the same way as Australian Labor Party leader Julia Gillard; knifed in the back from within their own caucus.

Kevin Rudd got something of a dead-cat bounce in the polls after he broke his promise not to challenge Ms Gillard. But Rudd's honeymoon is over, as people begin to remember just what he was like the first time he was Prime Minister.

And in fact it's so bad that Kevin Rudd may not even hold his own seat in Queensland; theguardian.com reports:

Kevin Rudd is trailing Liberal rival Bill Glasson in his apparently safe Brisbane seat of Griffith, in alarming news for Labor from the latest Guardian Lonergan poll.
Glasson, who is running an intensive local grassroots campaign, leads Rudd on a two-party preferred basis by 52% to 48%. The poll's margin of error is 4%, but its findings raise the possibility that without a big effort on his home turf, Rudd could become the third prime minister in Australian history to lose his seat, behind John Howard in 2007 and Stanley Bruce in 1929.
It raises a dilemma for Labor strategists who need to salvage Labor's national campaign but also give Rudd time to campaign in his seat. Rudd was criticised for pulling out of a local candidates' debate in Brisbane on Thursday night because he was campaigning interstate.
"This shows Mr Rudd needs to be very conscious of what is happening in his own electorate. He needs to focus on the battle as well as the war," Lonergan research managing director Chris Lonergan said.
The poll of 958 Griffith voters, taken on Wednesday night as Rudd and Coalition leader Tony Abbott debated at the Broncos leagues club in Brisbane, found Rudd had 38% of the primary vote, down from the 44% he achieved in 2010, with Glasson on 47%. The Greens candidate was on 11%.

Losing his Griffith seat would be a mortal blow for Kevin Rudd and Labor, but it might also be just what the ALP needs; to be rid of Rudd for good.

And stories like this won't do Rudd's chances any good at all; news.com.au reports:

A MAKE-up artist who says she smoothed the complexions of Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott ahead of last night's people's forum has hinted that the Prime Minister was rude to her.
Lily Fontana, a Brisbane make up artist, took to Facebook after her encounter with the leaders, praising Mr Abbott but saying one of the men had treated her terribly.

Here's the Facebook post in question:

It's not the first time that Mr Rudd has behaved obnoxiously; check out the video at the foot of the news.com.au story, but not at work! But he also gave Tony Abbott the chance to make a memorable comment (the emphasis is ours):

 

Mr Abbott said he did not witness Mr Rudd's interaction with Ms Fontana because she applied his make up "in one room and I imagine the Prime Minister was looked after in another room."
"As for other conversations or lack of conversations (she had), I'll just leave that to Mr Rudd."
Mr Abbott has agreed to another people's forum with Mr Rudd, who he described today as misleading and a liar.
When asked about his outburst last night about whether Mr Rudd would "ever shut up", Mr Abbott said his opponent was "all talk and no action".
"One contest that I can never win against Mr Rudd is a talkathon," Mr Abbott said.
"I'm not against talk - my problem with Mr Rudd is he's all talk and no action and when he does take action it's invariably action that damages people."

With just two weeks until Australia goes to the polls, the tide is going out on Kevin Rudd and Labor. In two weeks time we'll know how badly the tide has gone out.

 

 

 

Rudd's honeymoon is over

Watching the New Zealand TV coverage of the Australian election campaign is interesting. The MSM seems determined to portray Liberal leader Tony Abbott in the worst possible light, whilst indiscretions from Kevin Rudd (and there have been plenty) go without comment. But the Herald this morning suggests that nothing is going to save Kevin Rudd; check this out:

The campaign for Australia's September 7 election continues to fall Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's way as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd struggles to sell both himself and his policies.
Opinion polls are locked into a trend pointing to a Coalition victory, hardened by a series of surveys in key marginal seats predicting Labor wipeouts. Unless Rudd can dramatically reverse these trends in the next three weeks, the Government will struggle to retain the seats it already holds, let alone pick up the extras needed to deliver victory.
Both Rudd and Abbott are set on a do-or-die battle, rejecting alliances with the Greens to form minority Governments, although Labor does now stand a good chance of winning back the Melbourne seat held by sole Greens Lower House MP Adam Bandt.
Rudd's election-opening promise of a "New Way"is falling flat. The message is not resonating with voters under daily siege from Opposition attack advertisements reminding them of six chaotic years of Labor rule.
Labor is returning fire with a scare campaign warning of a slash-and-burn Government under Abbott, who has yet to announce the details of his economic policy and its costings.

They will not be revealed until the final week of the campaign.
Voters will have another chance to assess both leaders in the next face-to-face confrontation at a nationally televised "people's forum" at Brisbane's Broncos League Club on Wednesday.
In the meantime, they have the daily run of headlines and policy statements pouring out through newspapers, social media, television and radio.
So far, Abbott has dominated these.
Appearing confident and assured, he has narrowed his campaign to a small set of key points, hammering them home through slogans and short grabs that present a constant, consistent and potent message.
He has also successfully dismantled the wall Rudd had built to protect the Government on its most vulnerable fronts - the economy, carbon tax and asylum-seekers.
Abbott has sliced through Labor's economic arguments with a blunt axe, reinforcing perceptions that the nation is in deep and worsening strife.
He has ignored Rudd's move to end the carbon tax a year early and move to an emissions trading scheme, lumping them together in a promise to dump it as soon as he wins office.
And while Labor's harsh stand on asylum-seekers has narrowed the gap significantly on the issue, Abbott has kept it alive and to the front of voters' minds by reminding them of the numbers that have arrived since Rudd won power in 2007 and announcing further draconian measures of his own.
Rudd, in contrast, is lacking fire and energy.
His appearances are lacklustre. He has no simple, clear message to define his campaign.

The television coverage here is somewhat reminiscent of the 2005 New Zealand General Election, where the media had a clear and obvious bias against Don Brash. By way of example, there has been barely a mention on TV of Rudd having cheated in a televised debate last week, using notes when that had been prohibited.

But the numbers are not stacking up well for Rudd; read on:

After rallying his troops, Rudd conceded he was struggling and told reporters: "I've been in a few tight spots before and I've managed to fight a way forward. I intend to fight my way forward."
More promises came over the weekend. Rudd pledged hundreds of millions of dollars more for the car industry and big hospital spending in western Sydney; Abbott more money for indigenous employment and a parental leave scheme that would provide six months' leave on full pay plus superannuation for new mothers.
The polls continue to swing his way. A Galaxy poll in News Ltd papers yesterday gave a 52-48 per cent lead to the Coalition, with a series of other polls pointing to Labor losses in key marginal seats.
These include the Brisbane seat of Forde, being contested by former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, parachuted in to bolster Labor's hopes.

The Beattie move was controversial, and looks to have back-fired on Labor in spectacular fashion. Labor is facing a rout in Queensland. And today there's more bad news for Mr Rudd, this time from South Australia.

As luck would have it, we have a brief trip to Australia planned at the end of the month. It will be most interesting to be on the ground over there for a couple of days just a week out from the election on 7th September. 

Kevin Rudd's honeymoon was brief; now it would seem that the Australian voters can't wait to sign the divorce papers.

Quote of the Day - 27 July 2013

This one comes from Andrew Bolt, in the Herald Sun:

Same deal on boats. Abbott's promise to "stop the boats" in his first three years always seemed dodgy.
Too many are now coming and stopping them would take more toughness than the Senate, the courts and the media were likely to allow. But then came Rudd.
Desperate to fix a problem he caused by scrapping our tough border laws in 2008, Rudd promised something tougher than any politician before him.
All boat people as of last Friday would be sent to Papua New Guinea, he declared. None would ever settle in Australia.
With that, Rudd didn't just give Abbott the basis of a deal he himself could use in government. He also destroyed Labor's moral grandstanding.
As Opposition leader in 2006, Rudd preached that "the parable of the good Samaritan is but one of many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to a vulnerable stranger in our midst. That is why the Government's proposal to . . . rely almost exclusively on the so-called Pacific Solution should be the cause of great ethical concern to all the Christian churches".
This same man now has Labor backing a Pacific Solution on steroids. Labor promises to send all boat people - mainly Muslim - to a poor, corrupt and violent country that bans homosexuality and unanimously passed a motion in Parliament to consider banning non-Christian faiths, too.
Could any Labor MP backing Rudd's plan today berate Abbott for being mean tomorrow to the "stranger in our midst"?
That Rudd's plan is already in tatters, less than a week later, will make Labor's objections to Abbott's plans seem even emptier.
Already more boat people - 355 - have arrived since Friday than there are beds left at the Manus detention centre, the one PNG facility ready to receive anyone.
Already another boat has sunk, with dozens feared dead.
Already PNG is suggesting there may be a cap to the boat people it accepts.
In other ways, too, Rudd has smoothed the way of a Prime Minister Abbott.

Kevin Rudd's back-flip on boat people is as insincere as it is unsurprising. Can anything that Kevin Rudd now says be taken seriously?

And let's not get started on the back-flip on Julia Gillard's much-reviled carbon tax...

Is Gillard a goner?

It's all on for young and old in the Australian Labor Party; the Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Julia Gillard's controversial attempt to rescue Labor by claiming Tony Abbott would marginalise women and change abortion rights has backfired, with support among male voters collapsing.
In a finding certain to ratchet up pressure on the Prime Minister's besieged leadership, the latest Fairfax-Nielsen poll has found Labor's standing has continued to slide, led entirely by a 7 per cent exodus of men, while failing to lift substantially among female voters.
According to the monthly survey, the ALP's primary vote now has a psychologically devastating ''2'' in front of it with less than three months to the election on September 14.

Ms Gillard also has gone backwards as preferred prime minister, giving her the lowest approval rating in a year.
The poll coincides with the final sittings of the 43rd Parliament and shows that at 29 per cent, Labor's primary support has slipped below the 30 per cent barrier for only the second time this year. With the Coalition attracting 47 per cent of first-preference votes, Labor trails by a staggering 18 points on primary votes, putting the overall two party-preferred vote at 43-57 in favour of the Coalition or 42-58 based on how the 1400 respondents said they would allocate preferences.
If reflected at the election, that would mean a 7 per cent swing to the Coalition on the 50-50 hung Parliament result of 2010, and mean the loss of 30 or more seats, virtually halving Labor's representation now.
But the poll also shows that with Kevin Rudd in charge, almost the entire advantage to the Coalition would be wiped out, taking Labor's primary vote up to 40 per cent, the Coalition's down to 42 per cent, and the two party-preferred split to a dead-heat 50-50.

Here's why speculation is so rife that, in the words of the old Sam Cooke classic, a change is gonna come:

As nervous Labor MPs gather in Canberra for what many fear will be a tumultuous session in which the leadership issue may explode, the poll confirms Mr Rudd remains personally more popular than Ms Gillard with a preferred Labor leader rating of 58 per cent to her 32 per cent.

But among Labor voters, Ms Gillard still holds a 6 point lead. Mr Rudd's 26 point lead over Ms Gillard overall was beaten by the gap between former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull and his successor Mr Abbott.
Mr Turnbull is twice as popular among all voters as Mr Abbott at 62-32, once again confirming that neither main party leader is popular and that voters strongly prefer the former leaders.
Arriving at Canberra airport on Monday morning, Mr Rudd said he had ''noting further to add'' on the leadership question.
''I have nothing further to add on what I've said before,'' he told reporters.
Earlier this month, Mr Rudd said he was not a candidate for the Labor leadership and ''I do not see any circumstances under which I would return to the leadership''.
He said that his purpose in Canberra this week - as it had been in travelling around the country in support of Labor MPs - was to stop Mr Abbott from becoming the next prime minister of Australia.
''He is the single, most . . . extreme right-wing, political leader that the Liberal Party has ever thrown up,'' Mr Rudd said.

We have little doubt that things are going to get pretty acrimonious when the ALP caucus gets together later today. We've heard radio reports this morning suggesting that Rudd has the numbers, but he was alleged to have the numbers a couple of months ago, and he bottled out.

But it's clear now that Labor is headed for an unprecedented defeat in September under Julia Gillard. The threat of impending unemployment for so many ALP MP's may be a strong motivator to try and do something desperate to limit the carnage. Rudd may not win for the ALP, but he may stem the bleeding, and save a few of his fellow MP's.

We will be watching developments from the West Island with some interest. But it seems that one way or the other, the end of the Gillard era is nigh.