Now, I know this isn’t his fault, but when a woman is knocked to the ground in front of you and you just walk away, perhaps you owe someone an apology. In this campaign this could be the defining moment that Mark Latham’s “muscle-up” was in the last one.

The problem for John Howard is that people have just made up their minds that they want a change of government, so there’s not much that will deter them. That doesn’t mean that Labor doesn’t have some problems holding on to them. GetUp commissioned research which suggests that the Labor vote is lagging in the […]

There’s less water than there used to be, because of global warming, so to make up the shortfall we build desalination plants, which are the most energy intensive way of harvesting water, leading to more greenhouse gases, leading to less water, leading to more desal plants. You can dispute the truth of the initial syllogism, […]

It’s hard to believe that in the course of only three years the federal Liberal party could have gone from being some of the best campaigners the country has seen to the butter-fingered, fumbling no-hopers that they appear at the moment. Interest rates and Kyoto illustrate this well. The interest rate promise was that rates […]

The Labor Party has shot so many ads, that now they are running ALP TV. Their latest ad features a scare campaign on Global Warming, and I’ve already seen it a number of times on terrestrial TV. But where is the Liberal counterattack, on this or any other matter? Since the early blitz on the […]

I think Kevin Rudd won the debate tonight. Apparently the worm, which Channel Nine managed to save from extinction, thought so. But after 2001 when the worm gave the debate to Kim Beazley, but John Howard ended up winning the election, I’ve lost a little faith in its predictive abilities. Why do I think that […]

It was supposed to be Kevin Rudd who would be “playing with the Prime Minister’s mind”, but it seems like the PM is doing some tinkering of his own. Yesterday’s Liberal ad targets Kevin Rudd’s positive attack ad, targetting the Liberals’ negative attack ad, with a school masterly attack on Rudd by the PM which […]

The latest ALP attack ad is cute – it’s the “wounded innocence” approach. John Howard opened his campaign with some negative advertising hanging L plates around Kevin Rudd’s neck. Rudd responds with an ad which opens with Howard’s ad and then cuts out to show Rudd saying “Mr Howard always resorts to negative scare campaigns…it’s […]

If you pick on someone for being ignorant, it’s a good idea to know what you’re talking about yourself. Wayne Swan broke that rule when he tried to capitalise on John Howard’s gaffe when Howard failed to accurately name the official cash rate. This brought him even with Kevin Rudd, who a few weeks ago […]

The announcement today by the government of lowered direct tax rates stymies any more “Howard lite”pitches by Kevin Rudd. By locking increased revenue into tax cuts the government makes it a clear choice for Labor – you can either back us on tax cuts and give up some of your positions on health, education and […]