Morgan has Labor at 54.5% to the Coalitions 45.5% and Newspoll has it 50/50 two-party preferred. That confirms our polling of last week where the positions of the parties had returned to where they were in October 2010.

The results, averaging these two polls, would be somewhere around a 52.5% Labor victory. It could be a bit lower than that, as Morgan uses a mix of face-to-face, SMS and Internet polling. I suspect the second two capture enthusiasm to some extent, as well as voting intention.

But, however you read it, the odds favour a Labor victory.

What that means is that expectations, which now favour a coalition victory (as demonstrated in the betting markets which give Labor only around a 25% chance of winning), will now start to favour Labor. And when that happens voters will start to think about what another term of Labor would mean.

A Rudd government at the next election would lead to nine years of Labor government, assuming that the parliament after this runs its full term. That would make it one of the longest-running governments in Australia’s history.

There was always a question mark over the way in which the Governor General appointed Kevin Rudd Prime Minister, but little discussion. Now, in stating that they may not support Rudd if he defers the election until October, the Greens have bolded and italicised that question mark.

Rudd governs with their support, but that support cannot be tested until the parliament sits, which will occur on Tuesday August, 20.

But what can they do then? If Rudd refuses to agree with them, they could withdraw their support and give it to Tony Abbott, on condition that he move immediately to an election. From the Greens point of view, that would seem bizarre.

And it ignores what the independents might do. Bob Katter has said he supports Rudd, but we do not know exactly where Wilkie, Oakeshott, Thompson, Slipper and Windsor would sit.

But what if Rudd decides to pre-empt the parliamentary sitting and approach the GG directly for a date of his choosing?

This is just another shambolic episode in the shambles that has become the Parliament of Australia, and could easily have been avoided.

Perhaps the coalition didn’t want to raise the spectre of 1975, but in my view, given the statements of a number of players, and the state of the parliament as hung, they should have been publicly raising the issue as to whether, and on what conditions, he had the support of the house, and when the election should be held, with a view to influencing public debate and the Governer-General.

Even if they didn’t the Governor-General should have asked some hard questions, not just of Rudd, but of the Greens and Independents, as well as the Opposition.

And a prudent GG would have commissioned Rudd on the basis that he went to parliament and sought the confidence of the house immediately, after canvassing issues, like this one, that were likely to arise.

None of this happened, and indeed the Solicitor General pressured the Governor-General from the government’s side, issuing a statement that there was no reason why she shouldn’t commission Rudd.

This at the same time as she has a personal conflict of interest, with Bill Shorten, the key player outside of Rudd and Gillard in all of this mess, being her son-in-law.

Which opens up the republican debate again I’m afraid. There does have to be a better way of appointing the head of state than the one we have now. And while the Republic has been off the agenda as far as the public is concerned for over 10 years, perhaps the Greens have found a unique way to put it back on.

And to think I thought I’d only see one 1975 in my life!

That’s Asynchronous Stupidity Syndrome, and I’m sure there’s a manual somewhere to cure it.

Forget, for a moment, political thrashing and bashing, multiple human rights outrages, or lofty national goal-setting. The immediate challenges of a new gadjet take precedence, for a while.

It was clear that if I didn’t take the leap soon, I would be left too far behind to catch up. So I acquired a new phone with as big a screen as possible. Those QR codes had me intrigued for years, and I will need mobile data for travel.

As soon as I turned it on, I felt invaded. I naively thought I could download apps as I wanted and needed them. Instead, it came replete with icons that not only had obscure functions, but wanted me to download, update, agree to terms and conditions, set up a password, syncronise with unknown other machines…and the damm thing kept making random noises.

It was clear I was not giving it the attention it wanted, as if I had adopted a malevolent tamagotchi that needed regular feeding. When I agreed to something with my Facebook account, suddenly all the photos from past blogs appeared in the phone’s Gallery. That was handy, sort of. And when I opened the maps, I saw they have me pinpointed with a triumphant red flag. Nice if I ever need an alibi, I guess.

Clearly, privacy was not going to be an issue – there is none. The convergent streams of data and social contacts have got me in their crosshairs, and I have surrendered to the gods of chaos as I slowly pick my way through the digital mine field.

An additional insult came when a call finally came in. Since I’m now running two phones, and the old one is too obsolete (only got it last year!) to transfer contacts, it is a slow sifting process to add names, numbers and email addresses of what suddenly seems like too many people. I’ll never know who called, as I couldn’t answer it. Much too obvious was the green phone symbol; I finally worked out that you have to tell the settings how you want to answer the phone. That didn’t strike me as particularly smart.

The worst moment was when this big object slipped out of a pocket and fell into the composting toilet. My first words were less ironic and much ruder than ‘oh shit!’ But I managed to rescue it, safe in its cover, with no damage. Worked out how to rotate the bins for my rotaloo along the way, I’m proud to report.

It is easy to view the learning curve of these gadjets as forced exercises in keeping one’s mind active, elastic and challenged. It is just as easy to take the view that it’s a cruel joke designed to gobble up precious time. There was a moment of ridiculous awareness when I found myself heading off to my little craft room, pockets stuffed with an MP3 player, a ‘real’ digital camera, and two phones. I almost needed a day pack, as I was also carrying a thermos of tea and the cat. Simplicity it was not.

Like a real tamagotchi, my smartass phone is going through life stages. At the moment it is quiescent, even starting to be convenient. I like the links to news sites, and I’m hoping I haven’t unwittingly signed up to some with big charges. I think I’ve bought a book for 99 cents, but can’t yet work out how to download or read it. The predictive text is much friendlier than on my other phone. It is both fascinating and maddening. I started reading every QR code I came across, but quickly found they were usually just links to web pages with advertising. I’ve worked out how to turn off the data roaming so I don’t get hit with big charges while travelling next month.

I felt I’d finally arrived in the convergent world when I found myself only half watching the evening news, while elegantly flicking through in depth stories on my gadjet. So I’m getting there. If you would like advice on using a smart phone, please do ask me. I guarantee I can compound your confusion.

Kevin Rudd has just launched his first campaign ad. Of course he doesn’t want a “negative campaign”, because then he’d have to justify himself. Instead he’s trying to rerun the 2007 campaign. I’m not sure that he’ll be able to get through a whole election campaign kidding the country that he’s never actually been PM.

If he’s going to run campaign ads, then it’s time he went to the Governor General, called the election and went into caretaker mode. That would really raise the standard.

Of course, he’d be flat out running a positive campaign at the moment, because then he’d have to run on Julia’s policies, although, apart from Gonski, it’s hard to actually come up with a Gillard policy that didn’t have a Rudd genesis.

And this has a downside.

Gillard was in trouble as Prime Minister not because she was a woman, but because the policies were no good, and their execution worse.

Not only that, but they were contradictory as well.

Gillard’s basic strategy was to promise the world and leave Tony Abbott with the tab, that way, if he won and when the bill  was found to be unaffordable, Labor would be able to come back at Abbott as a heartless slash and burner. And if she won, well, reneging on promises is a smaller problem than not winning.

In grabbing Gillard’s policies in order to run a “positive” campaign in the hope of winning Rudd swaps places with both Gillard and Abbott.

It’s also a campaign which is out of sync with the times.

Something happened between 2007, when Rudd devised the thought-bubble style of campaigning, and 2013, and that something was the GFC.

What the GFC has done is change the national psyche. We’re now all savers, and the glass is always half empty. Not only are we looking the gift horse in the mouth, but we’re increasingly sending it back. We know that the cost of hay could send us broke.

All of which swings the debate back onto taxes and debt, the Liberals’ strong suit.

It’s just not tenable any more for a government to promise the world and put it on the mortgage.

This bind isn’t going to go away, so Rudd might as well go the election now. He’s just going to irritate the rest of us by stringing it out, and pretending to govern at the same time.

It’s in all the crisis management handbooks – the first thing you do in a crisis where you’re to blame is apologise and accept fault. It works so well that politicians like Peter Beattie managed to turn saying sorry into an election winning tool.

So of course Kevin Rudd is going to apologise for the Pink Batts fiasco and the deaths of three young tradesmen, but does he mean it?

The signs aren’t good. The complaint of two of the parents interviewed on 7.30 last night was that he had apologised personally to them, and that when he had met them he couldn’t even remember their names.

Yet when Rudd made his “apology” there was no indication that he had remedied either of those points, and you can be sure that if he had rung the parents, or made an appointment to see them, he would have mentioned it.

But worse, and contra the handbooks, Rudd tried to shift the blame to the contracting companies.

The indications are that the real person he is sorry for is himself.

There are also shades of the Beattie techniques in Rudd’s wholesale “intervention” into NSW Labor. Putting aside the fact he doesn’t have the power to intervene, it reminds me of Beattie’s successful tactic with the Shepherdson Inquiry which revealed rorting in the Queensland ALP.

Beattie not only took total responsibility for the problem on himself, but declared he had to be re-elected because he was the only one capable of fixing the problem. The result was that he turned his minority government into one with a huge majority after the next election.

Of course nothing was fixed, and a few short years later we saw Queensland cabinet minister Gordon Nuttall jailed for corruption.

We can expect a lot more sorries from Kevin. The government he leads has a record of incompetence, and when you analyse its headline policy achievements, with the exception of Gonski, they are all policies that started under his first prime ministership.

The question is, will people believe him.

Sorry is a double-edged sword. While a well-executed and genuine one can propel a public figure to even greater heights, a poor one can drive them from office.

Former governor-general Peter Hollingworth never really mastered the art of sorry and ultimately lost his job for not being empathetic enough.

All the signs are that empathy is in short supply in the Rudd office as well.

C-3PO or the Ruddbot?

The stilted unidiomatic bureaucratese, the command of multiple languages which you hope is stronger than his command of his own, a lack of physical co-ordination, an overblown sense of self-importance and ability, extreme risk aversion, confusion of mind, and complete conviction he is always right in contradiction of the facts.

It’s Kevin Rudd and it’s also C-3PO the protocol droid in the Star Wars Trilogy.

It came to me as I was watching his performance on the 7.30 Report last night.

During the interview with Leigh Sales Rudd burped and bumbled his way around a series of questions, including the question of whether he had been “wrong” in his original policy on illegal boat arrivals.

I know what they think out in Western Sydney and the outer-suburbs of Brisbane, and all he had to do was admit he was wrong, even if he didn’t believe it, to convince us that perhaps there was a “new (real) Kevin”. Even a dishonest confession would show he’s at least learned to think strategically.

Labor’s problem was never just with the leader, it is the whole team, including the hired help, and their lack of competence, or control over their leader, was in evidence last night.

Rudd did the interview from his own office which was cluttered with bric-a-brac (including a poorly draped Australian flag and some hard-to-identify personal photos) and had a chintzy liberty print feel to it. It seemed to be a reflection of the state of his mind .

This is not a set that any competent media officer would have allowed, Rudd should have been in the ABC studio, if not in Sydney, then somewhere else. His interaction with Sales would have been better, and it would have sent the subliminal message that Rudd was engaged, not aloof and hiding behind the trappings of office and family.

During the course of the interview he invited  Tony Abbott to beat him up, challenging him to debate him on the economy at the Press Club, and declaring that Abbott has nothing to fear because he is a “boxing blue” and Rudd is a “kid in the library with glasses”.

Come in spinner – not. I don’t think Abbott is going to fall for the Brer Rabbit gambit, even though I think there is a good chance that he would beat Rudd. In fact Rudd is trying to have an each way bet – if he beats Abbott, then it’s brains beats brawn, and if he loses, hopefully it is so bloody that electors are turned off Abbott.

Abbott’s right. The test of Rudd’s mettle is an election campaign, not a series of debates at the Press Club. The challenge also betrays Rudd’s insecurity in his own “popularity”.

Challenging an opponent to a debate is the mark of the under-dog politician playing catch-up politics. The leader who is comfortably ahead doesn’t want to risk his dominance by putting it to the test in a gladiatorial arena.

Faced with the Ruddbot, Abbott would be best placed to play R2D2, the little robot that could, and did.

Or just ignore him altogether.

We’ll see Abbott on the 7.30 report tonight and be able to see how they shape up.

My bet is that after seeing both of them, even many of those who like Rudd, will start to decide that if you’re choosing someone to play poker against leaders of the world like Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, or even Frank Bainimarama, the protocol robot is not your man.

P.S. For another, equally damaging take on Rudd, check out Wednesday Night Fever from last night.

We’ve been assured that Kevin is reformed, but the signs are there that nothing much has changed. Take the election date for example.

Who remembers 2007 when John Howard seemed reluctant to go to an election? The airwaves were full of Labor spokespeople, including Kevin Rudd, and fellow travellers, branding him a coward and anti-democratic for allegedly wanting to defer the election.

We last went to the polls on August 21, 2010. So Julia Gillard’s date of September 14 was actually an attempt to gain her another month in power.

The 2007 election was on 24th November, while the 2004 election was on October 9, so we can cede her that.

But a date in October, as Kevin Rudd appears to be proposing suggests complete contempt of the electoral purpose.

We have maximum three year terms of government, and without a change to the constitution, that is what they should be. The constitution does allow for some extension over that, and there are complications around the return of writs, but throughout Australian history barely anyone has been prepared to push it past three years and one month, with the Chifley government pushing it the furthest waiting for three years, two months and thirteen days before going to the polls in 1949 and being defeated by Sir Robert Menzies.

The polls may show that Kevin Rudd is preferred as Prime Minister to Tony Abbott, but Rudd’s behaviour shows he doesn’t believe them and so he wants to govern for as long as he can, with, or without the legitimate consent of the people.

He can’t be allowed to get away with this any more than John Howard should have. Where is the chorus calling for an election on the due date?