大象传媒

A slightly mystifying personality cult, in which tens of thousands of devoted fans proudly don shirts emblazoned with his name and number. The ability to make schoolgirls scream and grown men cheer wildly. The boyish grin. The wife who makes gazillions in her own right. The nagging questions over whether the talent justifies all the hype.

But that鈥檚 enough about David Beckham鈥檚 arrival in Sydney. Let鈥檚 turn instead to and his arrival in Canberra.

I鈥檝e said before that the manner of the leader鈥檚 victory in '07 owed much to Tony Blair in '97 鈥� the fiscal conservatism, the muscular Christianity, the vapid sloganeering (for New Labour read New Leadership), the broad smiles, the chumminess with Rupert Murdoch, etc, etc. The British MP , one of Blair鈥檚 great mates, was even in Australia for the latter stages of the campaign for some political coaching.

Now Prime Minister-elect Rudd seems to want to govern like Gordon Brown: with tight, some might argue overbearing, control, strict discipline and a rigid determination to keep his party on message.

Within hours of his victory on Saturday, smiley Kev became stern Kev. All year, he has been trying to charm the voters. Now he has decided it is time to scare the living daylights out of his own MPs.

First of all came the homework he set for them before today's meeting of the Labor party caucus. You have to visit two schools 鈥� one public, one private 鈥� and at least one homeless shelter before descending on Canberra.

Then there was the re-affirmation of a point which he has made before: that he would chose his own ministry free from the traditional influence of the party's factional power-brokers. This time, though, it was delivered with much more authority, since he clearly interprets his victory as having handed him a powerful personal mandate.

Australia has what is sometimes called a Washminster-style of government, a hybrid of the American and the British. Mr Rudd has proved adept at the "Wash" bit of the equation: successfully leading a presidential-style campaign.

In fact, he showed a startling ability to stay on message throughout, which speaks of his 24/7 work ethic, self-discipline, robotic mind, and that infuriating tendency to make journalists redundant at press conferences by not only fielding the questions but asking many of himself.

Now he has to grapple with the "minster" bit, where pesky cabinet colleagues and errant MPs who do not have his work ethic, self-discipline, robotic mind, etc, could easily land his incoming government in trouble. Surely he will find it more difficult to be a control freak prime minister than a control freak candidate.

A quick word on the , who find themselves in what one leading member has described as the worst state since Robert Menzies, Australia's longest serving prime minister, founded the party in 1944.

Now that Labor controls every state and territory, along with the House of Representatives 鈥� a first since Federation - the party's most senior office holder is Campbell Newman, who rejoices in the title of mayor of Brisbane.

So in the Liberal leadership contest today the party has opted for the recuperative powers of a former doctor, the outgoing defence minister, .

The former president of the Australian Medical Association has a penchant for electric guitars, powerful motorbikes and used to wear an earring. Sadly, his public persona is not anywhere near as racy. In the Canberra press gallery, his nickname is for his ability to rattle off reams and reams of statistics.

Rather drearily, Rudd vs Nelson promises to be not so much a gladiatorial showdown as a battle of the stats. Call it slide rule politics.

Curiously, in 1988, Brendan Nelson joined the Labor Party, reportedly in the hope of winning selection to fight for the seat of Denison, the ALP鈥檚 Tasmanian stronghold. When that failed, he joined the Liberals, and won selection in one of the party鈥檚 safest seats, Bradfield in Sydney.

By a vote of 45-42, Nelson beat Malcolm Turnbull, the man with the gold CV who probably paid the price for being too ambitious, too pushy and too moderate. The former Rhodes scholar has been something of a disappointment as a politician 鈥� rather like those fluorescent light bulbs he introduced as environment minister: determinedly low wattage.

Does Brendan Nelson look like a plausible prime minister? At this stage, probably not (Turnbull, by contrast, does). And in the post-war history of Australian politics, no incoming government has been sacked by the electorate after just one term in office.

His challenge over the next few years? To do for the Liberal Party what Mr Rudd did to the Labor Party 鈥� to make it re-electable. Or, to put it another way, to bend it like Kevin.

PS: A heartfelt word of appreciation to all those who have e-mailed and left nice comments on the forthcoming nuptials 鈥� even to the former colleague from my newspaper days who suggested that marriage was not really a democracy but a benign dictatorship. Many thanks.

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• - What's this?

I can't sleep, a combination no doubt of the Diet Cokes, flat whites and chunks of that wonderful Australian delicacy, Rocky Road, that are coursing through my veins.

This new political dawn didn't exactly get off to a rip-roaring start. For a start, I got to see a bit too much of it. I left work, just as the sun was rising, and was then awoken just a couple of hours later by a presenter in London asking me what this election result means for the British monarchy? At least I was in bed at the time rather than on air.

Fascinating question, and one I'll happily return to. Just like what the Rudd victory means for the relationship with the Bush administration? What it means for relationship with Beijing? What it means for the relationship with Australia's South Pacific neighbours? But not now (although feel free to weigh in yourselves).

More thoughts on Kevin, Julia, Wayne, Peter et al, in the week (have you noticed, for instance, how most of the incoming Cabinet could easily make up the cast for a Star Trek-style space odyssey - although Peter Garrett would surely play the role of Starship captain rather than , who would probably be cast as the slightly geeky one who looks after all the computers). But I'm not sure whether this blog will last much beyond the Howard era. And certainly not in its daily form.

But I do want to thank you all for your nice notes, thoughtful comments, acerbic criticisms, and occasional sledges. One of the reasons why I wrote in one of the early blogs about how I loved the invective of Australian politics was in the ardent hope that I would become the recipient of it. And, readers, you obliged. Someone called me an "A1 Galah", which I'm told is not entirely complimentary.

A quick word on the Sydney correspondent job description, which a couple of you have picked up on. I promise you it's a 大象传媒 thing rather than any anti-Melbourne thing (anti-Canberra, for sure, but not anti-Melbourne). Just as our squadron of Washington correspondents cover all 50 states, and our Rome correspondent covers Italy from the toe-cap of its boot to the foothills of the Alps, we try to cover as much of Australia as possible - every state and territory, in fact, over the past 12 months. But having now learnt that it encompasses an area 10 times the size of Britain, I do think we need to take a look at whether the parliamentary seat of Kargoorlie merits a correspondent all of its own.

Funniest moment of the campaign? For me it came in Bondi Junction, when I ran into Bob Hawke. The former Labor prime minister was just telling me all about how green issues had really taken root, when a busker saw him and, in tribute, started to play the national anthem. Trying to make sense of this to the listeners back home, I said: "Mr. Hawke, they're playing the national anthem."
"Yes," he replied, without missing a beat. "I gathered that." Then, fabulously, he started humming along.

As for the most memorable moment? Well, forgive me, but that came over a candlelit dinner in the Tasmanian seat of Denison. For it was there that I asked my Australian girlfriend to marry me. I'm delighted to report that she gave me her first preference. And she will always have mine.

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I write from the ballroom where John Howard delivered his first victory speech as prime minister in 1996 and where he has . It is always interesting to get a close-up view of a political party losing power, especially when it has dominated the political scene for over a decade. And you can usually tell right at the start of a night that defeat is in the offing.

The long faces. The talk of the pivotal importance of postal votes. The clutching of straws. The slight whiff of decay.

When the Labor Party candidate in Bennelong, , appeared on the big screens in the ballroom there were predictable boos and catcalls. The woman who used to interview the prime minister on the box appears now to have unseated him.

As I write, John Howard is milling around the lobby shaking hands with his party loyalists. All very slap-the-back bonhomie sort of stuff. "Thanks John". "Good on ya mate". He is, after all, arguably . Who else has managed to win four elections in a row over that period?

Back in the ballroom, half-drunk champagne flutes litter the stage, and the scene is starting to look very desultory. Who is paying for this party, by the way. By all accounts, the Liberals are completely broke.

He calls himself "Lazarus with a triple bypass", but tonight he looked like a weary and slightly punch-drunk heavyweight champ who went for one title defence too many.

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Hurrah. We've made it. Election day. And I've just been asked by a presenter in London to predict the outcome. As a political tipster, I have a somewhat patchy record. At the last Indian election, I confidently predicted the demise of Sonia Gandhi鈥檚 Congress Party, only to see it achieve . Then, even more foolishly, I suggested that India鈥檚 Italian-born Prime Minister-elect would be living "La Dolce Vita". She wasn't, of course. She hated the idea of becoming PM, and so, famously, did her "inner voice" 鈥� the one that told her to step aside and leave Manmohan Singh with the burden of running the world鈥檚 biggest parliamentary democracy.

So what of Australia, a country which boasts the (I warned you I had become a little obsessive) 鈥� , which is 10 times the size of Britain.

As I told the presenter, I've learnt my lesson about making tips. But I did say this.

I've travelled to quite a few marginal constituencies, and I've spoken to what must be hundreds of voters. Bennelong, the prime minister's very own seat; Eden Monaro, the famed bellwether; Wentworth, the Liberal crown jewel; Bass in Tasmania, which was so important last time round; some of the key marginals in Queensland. In all of those places - and although this is by no means scientific, I think it's telling - what has struck me most is the number of people who've started their sentences with the words "I used to vote for John Howard, but鈥︹�︹��..鈥�

The "but" was sometimes followed by "the failure to ratify Kyoto", "Iraq", "the rises in interest rates". And, most commonly, perhaps "", the controversial labour reforms which could do for John Howard what the in Britain. Both were widely viewed as a controversial reform too far, which hinted of arrogance and of a government so used to the trappings of power that it had forgotten where they flow from: the people.

This, for me, has been the "I used to vote for John Howard but..." election. So let me throw the question over to you. Will that translate into a Labor victory?

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• - What's this?

My name is Nick and I fear I am in danger of becoming an Australian political junkie. I find myself boring friends with the swings needed to win obscure marginals, which, up until six weeks ago, I never knew existed. My mind is cluttered with useless information, like how the South Australian seat of is named after a post-war Australian ambassador to Washington.

Had you asked me 18 months ago, I would have hazarded a guess that was a type of Dutch cheese. Now I can quote the land mass of this all-important bellwether seat.

While we are on the subject, how come there isn鈥檛 a seat named ? Or Lillee? Better still, ? Imagine the pre-selection contest for that one.

On Wednesday night I not only watched a 30-minute television interview with John Howard, but discovered that I rather enjoyed it. Twenty-four hours later, I did the same thing with Kevin Rudd. Ditto. And then there are those 90-minute lunchtime debates at the in Canberra (for those Australian readers who have shared this experience, have you noticed how the moderator always seem to have a very large glass of red wine, which never seems to empty?).

True, there are times when this blog has been a bit of a slog. Mid-way through, a couple of you launched into a debate about whether this campaign was like watching grass grow or paint dry? But for the most part, I have found it rather entertaining and educational, even if it does feel like we鈥檝e been listening to the same sound-bites, statistics and smears for the best part of a year. No more talk of 鈥渨orking families鈥�, please.

On this, the final day of campaigning, I was going to try and write something deep and meaningful about how I reckon Australian elections can be strangely prescient, partly because they come round so often and partly because there is so much government in this country that is has become something of a laboratory for public policy ideas and reforms. In 2005, the Conservative Party in Britain recruited , one of the Liberal Party鈥檚 prime strategists, in the hope he could make 鈥渄og whistle politics鈥� work for Michael Howard in the same way it had benefited John Howard.

If you鈥檙e interested, here are the some possible themes to have emerged this time round.

鈥� The obvious importance of green issues, and their impact, crucially, as vote-shifters. John Howard鈥檚 salutary policy announcement during the focussed on climate change. The all-important seat of Wentworth has almost become a referendum on green issues.

鈥� Housing affordability. Targeting first-time buyers and possibly the parents who are still providing a roof over their heads, Kevin Rudd kicked off his campaign on this very issue.

鈥� Broadband speed is looming larger as a political issue (which is not surprising in Australia, the land of the sluggish internet connection).

鈥� Ditto the availability of hi-tech teaching materials to schoolchildren, like lap-tops (or the 鈥渢ool box of the future鈥�, as Kevin Rudd calls it).

鈥� Water shortages have featured, but, in this , not as much as you might have thought.

鈥� This election has been less about big ideas than managerialism: essentially, who is most capable of running the economy, and, arguably, finding practical solutions to meet the challenge of climate change.

鈥� Does Kevin Rudd鈥檚 fluency in Mandarin herald the day much later in this century, or perhaps the next, when it鈥檚 a much more common diplomatic language?

鈥� This is not Australia鈥檚 first internet election but it is its first YouTube election. Is the reason we are seeing politicians ambushed so frequently now because within a few minutes the material can be uploaded onto the web? Political performance art is here to stay.

I am sure there are others, but I had better go. I missed the debate the other day between Treasurer Peter Costello and Labor鈥檚 deputy leader Julia Gillard, and I鈥檓 hoping to catch the re-run. Honest.

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All sounds a bit Nixonian, doesn't it? A do-it-yourself dirty tricks unit operating in the western suburbs of Sydney trying to nobble the Labor Party by arousing anti-Muslim sentiment.

Back then, it was hapless burglars. Now it is hapless husbands. The men responsible for the bogus Islamic leaflet, making the ludicrous suggestion that the Labor party sympathised with the Bali bombers, were Gary Clark and Greg Chijoff.

Mr Clark is married to the retiring Liberal MP. Mr Chijoff is the spouse of , the Liberal party candidate who hopes to replace her. These days, in the era of political marital partnerships, it's fashionable to talk of "two-for-the-price-of-one". If you elect the husband, you get the wife thrown in - or vice versa. This is a foursome that you would surely want to avoid.

In Australian politics, has the race card ever been so played so crudely and so clumsily? Comments please. Did they really think that voters would believe that the Labor Party sympathises with the perpetrators of the Bali bombings? Surely the answer to that is a universal and unequivocal no.

For its critics, this will reinforce the Liberals' reputation as the mean and nasty party. Critics may also say it makes the Liberals look completely stupid.

Is this a local difficulty, with the fall-out limited to the seat of Lindsay? Manifestly not - especially as it came to light just as Mr Howard was due to make a in Canberra. Unsurprisingly, reporter after reporter got up after his speech to ask question after question about the scandal. Obviously, he condemned the leaflet, and said its authors should be expelled from the party.

But did they think they were doing the government's bidding? In 2001, Mr Howard was accused of appealing to a xenophobic streak among some electors over the controversial "" and episodes. Though obviously misguided, perhaps Mssrs Clark and Chijoff thought this was one for the gipper

On the future of his party's candidate in Lindsay, Mr Howard had this to say. "We, I hope, live in a society where we treat husbands and wives - although we respect the closeness of their relationship - we treat them as individuals and we shouldn't automatically transfer blame for the deeds of one onto the other." In just over 24 hours, the voters of Lindsay will decide.

For Mr Howard, this is clearly deeply unhelpful. The Liberals have lost another day of this campaign over a scandal of their own making. Just as important, such is the controversy surrounding their candidate in Lyndsay, that they may possibly lose a vital marginal seat - absolutely essential to the government's survival.

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Is this election destined to end up in the courts? Are we on the verge of a Florida-style legal bust-up鈥� a stoush鈥� a barnie... a blue?

Certainly, the Liberal Party appears to laying the groundwork for a possible challenge should it lose Saturday鈥檚 election.

So into the "inbox" drops a pre-emptive strike from CHQ 鈥� that鈥檚 Coalition Campaign Headquarters in Melbourne for the uninitiated (John Howard, for the even more uninitiated, leads a coalition of Liberals and Nationals). An email questioning the eligibility of 13 Labor Party candidates to contest this election. That's almost a 10th of its candidates.

Coalition enemy number one is 鈥� you remember, the fella who is trying to unseat the environment minister in the "soapie" constituency of Wentworth (his ex-girlfriend is standing against him).

His high crime and misdemeanour? An alleged violation of election law which states that candidates must give up "any office of profit under the Crown" prior to submitting their nomination papers.

George was apparently a member of the New South Wales Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal. Sounds to me like the sort of body from which you鈥檇 be in a hurry to resign. But the , which disqualifies him from running for parliament.

A lawyer himself, George denies this. A barrister himself, Malcolm Turnbull thinks his opponent should be deemed ineligible. Much is at stake, of course. Wentworth in Sydney鈥檚 Eastern Suburbs is the jewel in the Liberal crown. Since , Labor has never won it.

Some Labor candidates alleged to occupy "an office of profit under the Crown" are university lecturers. , who is contesting the safe Liberal seat of Tangney in Western Australia, is still allegedly an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Western Australia. Bet he never calculated this would happen.

And what of , who鈥檚 contesting the Liberal marginal of Makin in Adelaide. Get this. He might face a legal challenge because he is still allegedly a member of the Adelaide Dolphin Sanctuary Advisory Board.

Are we on the verge of a global first? Is Tony Zappia about to become the only politician in the world ever to be disqualified from office because of his love of aquatic mammals?

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• - What's this?

To a country fair in the fabled parliamentary constituency of Eden Monaro, the sort of event where candidates go in search of voters and reporters go in search of metaphors.

Had the race been full of drama, this backdrop would have lent itself to frenzied talk of rollercoaster rides, and white-knuckle tension. But the Labor Party continues to command an election-winning lead going into the last week of campaigning, just as it did entering the first.

Aside from a spectacular cock-up in the final days, or an unforeseen event, Labor鈥檚 main concern, perhaps, is the geographic distribution of its supporters: that it could win the popular vote but still fall short of the 16 additional seats it requires to secure a parliamentary majority.

It has happened before, of course. At the 1998 election, the then Labor leader won 50.98% of the national vote, but still fell short of the 76 seats needed to oust John Howard as Prime Minister (although the party achieved a net gain of 18 seats, it won only 67 in all).

Eden Monaro has long been a good place to take the pulse of the nation. This vast rural seat in the south-eastern corner of New South Wales is a classic bellwether, which has fallen to the party of government at every election since 1972. That鈥檚 a staggering 13 federal elections in a row.

The sitting MP is , a popular and genial former surveyor who reckons he has clocked up close to a million kilometres in the 11 years that he has represented a seat the size of Belgium.

Such is the vital importance of this seat, that Labor has fielded one of its "star candidates", as they have been called: , a moustachioed former colonel in the Australian Defence Force, who has served in Somalia, Bosnia, East Timor and, most recently, Iraq. As a military lawyer working for the Coalition Provisional Authority, he 鈥� warning of the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Graib long before the New Yorker broke the story. He also exposed some of the sanction-breaking financial kickbacks paid by the Australian Wheat Board, AWB, to Saddam Hussein.

I caught up with Mike Kelly at the country fair, and asked him about the impact of Iraq in this campaign. Like foreign affairs in general, I suggested that it had not featured that prominently.

"It鈥檚 one of those issues which has concerned people in a package of things, which have concerned about the reliability and credibility of the government," the 47-year-old told me. "But people do talk to me about the war in Iraq, and how it鈥檚 been mishandled."

Iraq is not as explosive an issue here as it is in the US and the UK. For a start, the Australian Defence Force has not sustained anywhere near the same number of casualties. is the only "digger" to have lost his life in Iraq, and he was killed with his own pistol . (in Kuwait in June, 2005.)

Similarly, the Iraq war has not divided the Liberal Party in the same way that it has split the Labour Party in the UK or the Republican Party in the US.

Still, my sense is that Iraq has ultimately damaged John Howard, largely because it has become yet another symbol of his almost umbilical relationship with the Bush administration, much like the and the failure to ratify Kyoto.

And while international affairs have not loomed large in this election - a foreign policy debate in Canberra last week made headlines only because the foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer decided to break into French 鈥� it has contributed to Mr Howard鈥檚 unpopularity over the past twelve months. In other words, the damage has already been done. Iraq helps explain why Mr Howard is trying to make up a deficit in the polls which has suffered from all year.

Kevin Rudd has promised the . As a former diplomat, he fully understands the likely impact on relations with Washington. But he probably suspects that George W Bush will be replaced by a friendly Democrat in January 2009 (he is already on record as favouring Hillary Clinton).

In the shorter term, he clearly believes that the promised troop withdrawal is a vote-winner. The presence of a candidate with the military track record of Mike Kelly lends its political credibility.

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• - What's this?

It seems to happen in every election. The star of one of the campaign advertisements ends up having a wonderfully colourful private life which inevitably makes its way onto the front pages of the tabloids.

You know the sort of thing. The elderly actress who plays the lead role in a Conservative party political broadcast rubbishing the Labour Party鈥檚 national security credentials who then turns out to have been a Greenham Common peace activist who spent her formative political years clambering on top of cast-iron lions in Trafalgar Square and daubing them with anti-war slogans. Or the bloke dispatched from the casting agency who more than adequately meets the description 鈥渃antankerous old codger鈥� for a Labour Party broadcast on the perilous state of the National Health Service who then gets outed as the front man of a 鈥淔ull Monty鈥� strip troupe.

Readers, I am sorry to report that we have reached that moment in this Australian federal election.

Labor鈥檚 favourite political ad features a blue-collar mechanic, one of John Howard鈥檚 famous battlers who is now turning against him. It makes a strong political point: that the prime minister is struggling to retain the support and affection of the aspirational working class voters whose desertion from the Labor Party helped win him four terms in office.

"Last time I voted for you, I believed you when you said interest rates wouldn't go up," he says with an accusatory tone, with a good old Aussie 鈥渦te鈥� (pick-up truck) placed strategically in the background.

鈥楴ow you're retiring anyway so, what's the point? Sorry mate, not this time."

The actor in question is the fabulously-named (was he conceived after a visit to a riverside pub in Nottingham or something?).

Now it turns out that Trent Bowater is - brace yourself for this and make sure the kids are out of earshot - a Robbie Williams impersonator.

We have the to thank for this election-eve bombshell, a marvellous piece of tabloid tomfoolery.

鈥淏USTED: Labor鈥檚 blue collar 鈥榯radie鈥� is a full-time Robbie Williams impersonator,鈥� screams the front page headline. Underneath is a wonderful, side-on photograph of Trent doing his Robbie.

We learn from the Telegraph that Bowater has tripped the light fantastic at a string of glitzy venues, from the Campbelltown Catholic Club to the Rooty Hill RSL (Returned and Services League). He also apparently appeared as 鈥淗eckler 1鈥� in an episode of a show called 鈥淲ildside鈥�.

Let鈥檚 hope that Mr Bowater鈥檚 very own wild side does not preclude him from further participation in this campaign - that the Labor Party will, in the words of his superstar alter ego, 鈥渓et him entertain us鈥� at the curtain comes down on this campaign.

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Even since the then governor of Arkansas, one William Jefferson Clinton, appeared on MTV during the 1992 presidential campaign and happily fielded the question of whether he wore "boxers or briefs", politicians around the world have sought to woo the youth vote by revealing similar intimacies and subjecting themselves to similar indignities (for the record, Clinton was a briefs man).

On Sunday night, Kevin Rudd trod the same teen and twentysomething-lined path, .

As I've mentioned before, Rove McManus has already had a major, if inadvertent, impact on this election. After the tragic death of Rove's soap star wife, Belinda Emmett, the then Labor leader Kim Beazley . But he mistakenly conveyed them to Karl Rove, the former White House advisor commonly known as 'Bush's brain,' rather than the chirpy chat show host.

For the gaffe-prone "Bomber Beazley", this proved a blunder too far and Kevin Rudd pounced. Within the month, he was installed as the new Labor leader.

So having played a role in Rudd's rise would Rove McManus now contribute to his fall? Would a politician famed for his control freakery survive in this most uncontrollable and freaky of settings?

The Labor leader escaped with his reputation intact, and possibly enhanced. True, his self-edit function remained very much deployed. But this robo-politico also came across as spontaneous, funny and unprogrammed. At the same time, he maintained his "I-could-soon-be-the-prime-minister-of-this-country" dignity.

To the substance of the interview. What did ear-wax taste like, asked the probing Mr Mcmanus? The Labor leader claimed not to have eaten any, and that his famously ear-wax-coated finger had merely touched his lips.

Had his time as a diplomat in Sweden increased his appreciation of the pop sensation Abba? Barak or Hillary? "Hillary", he quickly replied. What was the difference between a geek and a nerd?

And would he beat Mr Howard in a bar-room brawl? "If I couldn't, wouldn't there be a real problem?" Mr Rudd said. "The guy's 20 years older than me."

But then came the question with which Rove McManus always ends his interviews - a query which the Labor leader had clearly anticipated and seemingly war-gamed: 'Who would you turn gay for?'

"It's funny you raised that," deadpanned Rudd, as he pulled out a notepad from his pocket, on which his staffers had proffered a fewsuggestions - among them, Dame Edna and Kel Knight from the hit Aussie comedy show Kath and Kim.

But then he got mildly serious. "There's only one person for me", he said. "That's my wife Therese."

"Is she a man?" Rove shot back.

Greens leader, the openly gay Senator Bob Brown, came on the show afterwards. "Who would you turn straight for?" asked Rove. The Aussie songtress Missy Higgins, Bob Brown jokingly replied.

A couple of weeks ago, during a visit to a shopping centre in central New South Wales, a shop assistant from a jeans shop asked Mr. Howard who he would turn gay for. He laughed it off, and delivered no response. "As for boxers or briefs?" Your guess is as good as mine.

UPDATE: The latest poll from the "soapie seat" of Wentworth in Sydney shows Malcolm Turnbull, the environment minister, trailing four points behind his Labor rival, George Newhouse. Neither the Liberal Party nor its forerunners have ever lost the seat.

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Australia鈥檚 smallest parliamentary constituency is also one of its most affluent and unquestionably its most madcap. The going-ons in Wentworth have been likened to that great Aussie televisual entertainment, the afternoon soap or 鈥渟oapie鈥� - although its plotlines are surely too implausible.

Set in Sydney鈥檚 posh Eastern Suburbs, against the glorious backdrop of Bondi, Bronte and Tamarama beaches, it鈥檚 a sure fire ratings winner.

What shall we call it? 鈥淏ondi Blues鈥�, 鈥淲entworth Woes鈥�, 鈥淢alcolm in the Middle鈥�? Or, more simply, 鈥淎ustralian Beauty鈥�?

We鈥檝e already been introduced to some members of the cast. You鈥檒l remember the leading man, Malcolm Turnbull, the sitting Liberal MP and federal environment minister, a former Rhodes scholar of Spycatcher and Australian Republican Movement fame. Comes with wife, Lucy, a former mayor of Sydney, two kids and three dogs, Jojo, Mellie and Rusty, who have .

Then there鈥檚 the man who covets the lead role: Labor candidate George Newhouse, another lawyer - as ABC鈥檚 estimable political analyst Antony Green helpfully points out, Wentworth has more barristers than baristas - and a rather charmless local councillor, who is now facing questions about his eligibility to run.

Then there鈥檚 Mr Newhouse鈥檚 former girlfriend, Dani Ecuyer, a former investment banker running not on an anti-George but an anti-pulp mill ticket. She has attracted an inordinate amount of publicity, which offers further proof of Walter Cronkite鈥檚 oft-quoted observation that this is a country with too many journalists chasing too few stories.

Some of my favourite characters have only cameo roles. There鈥檚 the candidate for the Australian Democrats, the wonderfully named , who at the age of 18 is not only standing in his first federal election but voting in his first federal election. He even comes with a surf boy haircut, so watch for a big turn-out among the 鈥淩ip Curl vote鈥�.

There鈥檚 a deadpan Liberty and Democracy Party candidate, Jonatan Kelu, who refuses to instruct his supporters how to distribute their preference votes because that would violate his libertarian principles.

Then there鈥檚 Pat Sheil, a journalist who ran in 2004 under the banner 鈥淪heil be Right鈥� and gained 149 votes. Lugubrious and witty, he鈥檚 a kind of 鈥淏eyond the Fringe鈥� candidate.

Another journalist has inserted herself into the race, though not as a candidate. from The Australian, who left behind an e-mail trail which soon found its way onto the front pages. First, she told Dani that she should give her preferences to Malcolm. 鈥淧lease preference Malcolm,鈥� she wrote. 鈥淚t would be such a good front page. Also, he鈥檇 be a loss to the parliament and George - forgive me - would be no gain. ;).鈥�

Then it emerged she sent a flirtatious email to George. 鈥淟et鈥檚 chat today, shall we? I could come out to Bondi, since I live there. And now you are single, I might even make a pass at you.鈥�

A little later she turned a little nasty. 鈥淓ither you say yes to a photograph smiling and happy and out campaigning, or we stake you out鈥� and get you looking like a cat caught in a trap.鈥�

The unscripted arrival of Ms Overington into the saga even brought about a guest appearance from her boss, the world鈥檚 most powerful media mogul, Rupert Murdoch. In Adelaide for a shareholders鈥� meeting, he said disciplinary action would be taken if she had tried to influence political candidates in the name of one of his publications.

In America right now, . In Wentworth, there鈥檚 no need for them.

So will Malcolm beat George? Will George get Dani鈥檚 preferences? Will Pierce get a haircut? And what of our furry friends, Jojo, Mellie and Rusty?

As they say in the land of soapies, tune in next time to find out.

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The predictive-spell function on my mobile phone struggles with the word Tasmania. Whenever I try to tap out text messages extolling the many virtues of Australia's glorious island state it comes up instead with Tarmanga, which I presume must be a new brand of aftershave or one of Chelsea's latest signings.

Tasmanians, of course, are used to such indignities. Regularly they get left off the Australian map, despite their homeland's rich historic pedigree as the country's second oldest state.

But Australian psephologists would never make that mistake. Although it harbours only five parliamentary seats, Tasmania is a vital electoral background.

A quick word about the island's constituents. They live in one of the most beautiful corners of the planet, they breathe the world's cleanest air, and they all seem ludicrously fit and rosy-cheek healthy.

They have a tradition of environmental activism which stretches back four decades. They also have a track record of blocking green-unfriendly projects, most notably the controversial proposal to dam the Franklin River in the late-1970s and early-1980s.

Fittingly enough, "Tassie" was the birthplace of the world's first "green" party - the United Tasmania Group - which mounted the electoral barricades at the 1972 federal election.

Since then, it has been the cradle of modern Green movement. The leader of the Australian Greens, Bob Brown, who won election to the Senate in 1996, hails from, yes you've guessed it, Tasmania (although he was actually born in New South Wales).

Now, the politics of Tasmania is once again infused by a green-unfriendly project which has made many locals see red.

This one involves the in the Tamar Valley in northern Tasmania, a project which will not only be a blot on the landscape, according to protesters, but damages the area's marine biology, its air quality, its vineyards, and its tourism industry. Feeding the mill with timber will also mean dramatic changes in land use. Some of Australia's best farmland will become forestry.

The state government, which is controlled by Labor, has given the go-ahead to the mill, the island's biggest-ever private investment project. So, too, has the Howard government, arguing that the environmental safeguards will be the toughest in the world.

But that's not good enough for the members of TAP - Tasmanians Against the Pulp Mill, a grass roots campaign which includes some of the Australia's, and possibly the world's, most battle-hardened environmentalists who are expert at the art of mounting asymmetrical protests.

I caught up with a group of them in Launceston. With many in their fifties, sixties, and some even older, they could easily be mistaken for members of, say, a bridge club or amateur dramatics society. But rarely have I come across a group of such determined, well-informed or courteous protesters.

Opposition to the Franklin Dam contributed to the downfall of the government of the Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, because the then Labor leader, Bob Hawke, campaigned strongly against it.

This time round, the politics of the pulp mill are more complicated, because Kevin Rudd supports the government's decision to give it the go-ahead. But the Liberal party probably has most to lose, having gained two seats from Labor at the last election (partly because of the perception that Mark Latham's forestry policy would cost jobs in the local logging industry).

The Liberal's most vulnerable MP is probably , who holds the seat of Bass, where the pulp mill is due to be constructed.

Mr Ferguson's campaign boasts two environmentally-friendly Smart Cars, emblazoned with his name and picture. But many of his constituents do no think his support for the pulp mill is anywhere near as intelligent.

So on election night, be sure to keep a watch on Tasmania, or Tarmanga, as my mobile still insists on calling it. It's the state where predicting the outcome is as confounding as predictive texting.

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As predicted in the last blog, Kevin Rudd's official campaign launch included no primeval screams or yelps of "well alright". True, he was 30 minutes late. But time-keeping lapses are hardly the stuff of You Tube - unless, of course, they involve turning up to a televised debate way after it has started, and then being caught on camera swearing about it afterwards, as the , can testify.

Just for the record, when I tackled a senior Labor aide about this uncharacteristic and unexplained tardiness, she deployed the same fixed grin that her leader has perfected when asked to comment on all things embarrassing. "Smile and the World Smiles With You" could almost become Labor's unofficial campaign song.

As for the speech, it was perhaps noteworthy in two respects.

First, Mr Rudd not only emphasised his credentials as an economic conservative, but implied he was even more conservative than John Howard. Call it "turbo-charged me-tooism". But there was a crucial difference as well.

Referring to the government's pre-election spending splurge, he argued that the prime minister had displayed the fiscal profligacy of an inebriated mariner.

Just listen to this section of his speech, delivered with a suitably scolding tone. "Monday's feeding frenzy of expenditure would actually make inflationary pressures worse... How irresponsible can you get?"

At the end of this reproachful rift, he was in full St Kevin of Rudd mode (was that a halo appearing above his head?). "I have no intention of repeating Mr Howard's irresponsible spending spree鈥� Today I am saying loud and clear this sort of reckless spending must stop."

An aside. For those who take note of such things, Mr Howard arrived from stage left when he delivered his launch speech in the same auditorium on Monday. Mr Rudd made his entrance from stage right.

A second quick thought. While Mr Rudd tried hard to avoid the appearance of hubris or triumphalism, this did come across as the speech of a man who fully expects to be the prime minister by the end of the month.

Arguably, there was a slightly desperate and pleading tone in Mr Howard's offering on Monday. It sounded a bit like the last-gasp pitch of a car salesman seeing a once-keen customer disappearing out of the door. Realising the difficulty in selling what has long been a trusty and popular model, he threw in some last-minute, flashy add-ons - the satellite navigation, go-faster stripes, a green-friendly engine.

To prolong this rather tortuous metaphor (and I promise I won't for too much longer), Mr Rudd offered German engineering and efficiency.

Put another way, the speech was designed and manufactured to sound like a blueprint for action rather than an election-eve sales pitch.

A footnote. For those interested in Australia's fairness doctrine (see "Fair Dinkum"), Mr Rudd scored a quick hat-trick: by the middle of page two of the speech, we had got "fairness", "fair go" and "fair dinkum".

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To Brisbane for the official launch of the Labor campaign. To the very same auditorium, in fact, where . "Geographical me-tooism" I hear you cry. But at least Kevin Rudd hails from these parts.

Remember his opening gambit at the Labor Party conference earlier in the year: 鈥楳y name is Kevin. I鈥檓 from Queensland and I鈥檓 here to help,鈥� which confessedly I thought a little feeble and nerdy at the time, but which seemed to raise a couple of tension-breaking chuckles in the hall.

Security is tight, as they say (how many times do we write and hear that these days?). A police dog has just given my laptop a good sniff, and there are lots of stern-looking security officials hanging around with curly plastic things protruding from their ears. Very presidential.

The mood is leavened by lots of cheery young volunteers wearing bright red "Australian Labor" and "Kevin 07" t-shirts (the party鈥檚 had a bit of a presentational make-over since Mr Rudd took charge). Lots of Rudd aides are moving purposefully around, looking like extras from the "West Wing". Very quasi-presidential.

Hilariously, there鈥檚 a woman at the door with a sheet of paper with five mug-shots of the guys from , the comedians who delight in ambushing events like this. It has come to this: a "Comedy watch-list".

From a distance - three miles, say - a colleague from New Zealand looks a little the one of the Chasers. But I鈥檓 glad to report that after a few suspicious glances, he made it through the door. If he dons a chicken outfit or starts peeling off his clothes, I will be sure to alert security.

I鈥檝e just run into one of Mr Rudd鈥檚 most senior advisors and asked if this is going to be the "Sheffield rally moment" of the Australian campaign. I was referring to the cringe-inducing event held a week before the 1992 UK general election at which the then Labour leader got a little carried away with his lead in the polls and started shouting "Well Alright! Well Alright!"鈥� a display of triumphalism thought to have cost him the election.

He didn鈥檛 seem to know what I was talking about, so I said it was a little like the after the Iowa caucus in 2004 (although Dean had just come third, and Kinnock thought he was on the verge of victory). No chance, he said. Kevin Rudd doesn鈥檛 do screams or "well alrights". Quite.

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Earlier this year an Australian woman travelling in America inadvertently sparked a security scare when, in exasperation at a flight attendant鈥檚 inability to supply her with pretzels rather than crackers, she used the expression 鈥渇air dinkum鈥�. Whilst still on board, a flight attendant demanded to see her passport. On the ground, she was met at the gate by three police officers. 鈥淔air dinkum鈥� had been misinterpreted as a statement of aggression, a term of abuse.

If the same treatment was meted out to Australian politicians, the police in Canberra would have a bulging casebook. 鈥淔air dinkum鈥� - meaning true or genuine - is one of the most oft-heard phrases in the political lexicon. Just as a recent study found that 鈥淚鈥檒l be back鈥� from The Terminator is the most in everyday conversation, 鈥淔air dinkum鈥� would surely occupy a similar spot in a survey of Australian political speeches.

Up until the deputy Labor leader Julia Gillard mounted her 鈥渨orking families-athon鈥�, the main rivals to 鈥渇air dinkum鈥� would probably have been 鈥渇air go鈥� and 鈥渇air play鈥�. A sense of fairness is something which Australians clearly hold dear, which is why the word 鈥渇air鈥� so frequently finds political expression.

When human rights groups started to agitate about the plight of , the Australian detained without trial at Guantanamo Bay, they didn鈥檛 mount a 鈥淔ree David Hicks鈥� campaign. Instead, they called it 鈥淔air Go for David鈥�. Whatever people thought of Hicks personally, polls consistently showed that a majority of Australians thought he deserved his day in a proper court - legal and judicial fairness.

Much of the disquiet over the introduction of the has stemmed from a feeling that it discriminates unfairly against new arrivals from non-English-speaking countries, because the questions are weighted in favour of those with an Anglo background. Similarly, the decision by the Howard government to cancel the working visa of Mohamed Haneef within hours of a magistrate granting him bail aroused similar feelings. Many people did not feel he had been given a 鈥渇air go鈥�.

, the controversial labour reforms introduced in 2005, seem to have caused such great offence because they violate Australia鈥檚 unspoken fairness doctrine.

First, there鈥檚 the detail of the laws themselves, which, among other things, exempt companies employing under 101 workers from unfair dismissal laws and make it harder to mount industrial action. Critics complain that the laws grant too much power to employers and withdraw to many rights from employees. That鈥檚 not 鈥渇air鈥�, so the argument goes.

Second, there鈥檚 the manner in which the reforms were introduced - without prior warning from John Howard at the last election. That鈥檚 not 鈥渇air dinkum鈥�, holler the critics.

Sure enough, when the Howard government sought to mitigate the political damage caused by WorkChoices it introduced a 鈥渇airness test鈥�. The word 鈥渇airness鈥� was deployed to make the measures more palatable (and the test has also proved effective, with statistics just published by the Workplace Authority showing that over 26,000 workplace agreements had been rejected since its introduction in May).

Does Australia鈥檚 fairness doctrine partly explain the mood for change? After 11 years of the Liberal-led government, is Labor about to get a 鈥渇air go鈥�?

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This campaign is starting to feel like trench warfare - a drawn-out stalemate in which neither side is gaining nor conceding much ground. The latest poll shows Labor with an election-winning lead of 10 points - which has pretty much been the same since the beginning of the campaign and the start of the year.

Already, the Howard government has fired off much of its ammunition: the mighty howitzer of on the first full day of campaigning; and big ticket spending promises, like much-needed new infrastructure projects.

It has also relentlessly targeted Kevin Rudd and his shadow cabinet colleagues. But like an artillery unit struggling to find its range, it has yet to register to a wounding direct hit. Mr Howard is usually something of an ace hit when it comes to sizing up his enemies and identifying their points of vulnerability. But Mr Rudd seems to be coated with both Kevlar and Teflon: bullets seem to ricochet off, mud doesn't seem to stick.

The propaganda campaign has so far failed. At a time when the Reserve Bank of Australia was clearly going to for the first during ever during a an election campaign in fear that the booming economy is overheating, which bright spark came up with the slogan "go for growth"? It simply implies that more rate hikes are in the offing. Talk about emphasising the "mess" in "message".

The government's advertising also looks stale and ineffectual. The "learner plate" advertisements might have worked on the former Labor leader Mark Latham, whom many voters considered erratic and untrustworthy, but Kevin Rudd looks and sounds too learned for that tactic to work. And so often have television viewers been bombarded with negative ads claiming that 70% of the Labor front bench is either a trade union official or a trade union member, they have lost the "fear factor" - if, indeed, they ever had it.

As for the campaign events, they look dreary and unimaginative. Mr Howard visits a shopping centre, an old age peoples' club or a small business then answers reporters' questions stood in front of the same pale-blue backdrop, emblazoned with the same slogan - Go For Growth. Australia has some of the most stunning visual backdrops in the free world. There are photo opportunities in abundance. But only once during this entire campaign - when Mr Rudd did his in a glass-bottomed boat during a visit to the Greet Barrier Reef - has either side sought to profit from them.

For the Liberal Party, precious days have been lost on trivialities, such as arguing over the semantic difference between saying sorry and apologising. And at times, the logistics unit has looked hapless.

Who, for instance, scheduled an important health announcement in Melbourne on the morning that the Health Minister, Tony Abbott, was supposed to be in Canberra for a televised debate? Almost inevitably, he arrived over 30 minutes late, and then compounded his time-keeping lapse with a verbal one: swearing in front of the cameras when his opposite number, Nicola Roxon, complained about his punctuality. Another rash of unhelpful headlines. Another day lost.

The of the Coalition campaign, which has just taken place in Brisbane, sought to retool, refocus and revive the flagging crusade. There were modern-sounding new policies on child care, education and housing affordability. And this was by far the glitziest and best stage-managed event of the campaign so far.

For those interested in the cosmetics of politics, it was interesting to note the seating plan at the auditorium in Brisbane, which indicated who the party strategists wanted the cameras to focus on. The telegenic Education Minister Julie Bishop and Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough obviously focus group well. Tony Abbott seemingly does not.

Still, for all its upbeat music and broad smiles, the whole event had the feel of another fruitless "over the top", with Field Marshall Howard ultimately sounding a rather weary battle cry that Australia would be gambling with prosperity if it elected a Labor government - one with a deficit of expertise and experience and surplus of trade unionists.

Given all this, Remembrance Sunday came at a particularly unhelpful moment in the campaign. Not only would the Liberal high command have preferred apparently to stage its official campaign launch this past Sunday, but the visuals were unavoidably unhelpful. A bugler playing the Last Post? A musical coda perhaps for Mr Howard's prime ministership?

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On a day that the most exciting campaign news came in the form of a Labor announcement on dental care - replete, of course, with Kevin Rudd brandishing his Colgate "ring of confidence" grin - I thought I would sink my teeth into something altogether more nourishing: your comments and emails.

First off, thanks for taking the time to comment and write; and apologies for not being able to respond to them individually.

Re-reading them now, it seems that a few common themes emerge:

Howard detractors seem delighted that the manner in which the Prime Minister has won previous elections - by scaring the living daylights out of people on issues like asylum seekers and interest rates - is now making it more difficult for him to win this one. This time round it appears conventional scare tactics won't work because Kevin Rudd doesn't appear to frighten the voters.

Howard supporters seem aggrieved that Howard detractors don't give him enough credit for a) his economic stewardship at a time of unprecedented and extraordinary growth, and b) cementing and embellishing Australia's post-war relationship with America, by far it's most important strategic alliance.

Rudd detractors seem to think he is a complete phoney, who is all spin and no substance. For them, his 'me-tooism' has become a measure of the man.

Rudd supporters seem genuinely aggrieved that he isn't being bolder. They, too, seem mightily unimpressed by his 'me-tooism,' and that of his shadow Cabinet colleagues. Just look at the kicking some readers have given Peter Garrett, the former rock star who now seems to exhibit the meekness of a choir boy.

A couple of other quick and obvious observations:

- there's clearly a lot of anger over WorkChoices, the Howard's controversial workplace relation changes. Here's one to ponder: will Australian political historians come to view it in much the same way that British political historians regard Margaret Thatcher's poll tax?

- there's clearly a lot of anger over the government's refusal to ratify Kyoto, even though, as a number of correspondents have pointed out, John Howard initially welcomed the climate change protocol when it was first hammered out.

- had David Hicks still been imprisoned without trial at Guatanamo Bay, you get the feeling that the question of John Howard's almost umbilical relationship with George W Bush would have generated much the same unrest (not because people are pro-Hicks but because they are anti-Bush). Another one to ponder over something chilled?

More on the politics of climate change later in the week, featuring a long-overdue appearance from Greens leader Bob Brown, and his former mate, Peter Garrett.

More, too, on WorkChoices and the sanctity of fairness in Australian politics.

If you want to know where to hire a silver DeLorean sports car, I have the mobile number of a bloke who can help. If you've tried to make a reservation at Sean's Panorama, you will indeed find that it's actually called Sean's Panaroma.

And if you think there are subjects I'm ignoring, please holler.

On Monday, John Howard officially launches his campaign, in Brisbane. On Wednesday, Kevin Rudd does the same in the same city (although he does at least come from Queensland, before you accuse him of sinister, geographical mee-tooism).

Official launches in week five of an election campaign? As Pauline Hanson once so famously said, when confronted by an interviewer brandishing the word xenophobic: "Please explain."

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There are few things that political journalists take greater delight in than former party leaders breaking their vows of Trappist public silence and dishing vast quantities of dirt on their former colleagues.

All the better if they left frontline politics under a heavy storm cloud, have been harbouring bitter personal resentment ever since, still have the power to open up fissures within the parties they used to lead, and choose to do so in the midst of an election campaign.

Westminster hacks have long relished the public appearances of a handbag swinging Margaret Thatcher, especially if a) she appears in front of cinema hoardings advertising movies like 鈥淭he Mummy Returns鈥�; b) drapes her handkerchief over the tail fins of model aircraft bearing the new 鈥渨orld art鈥� branding of an international airline; or c) .

Evidently, the former Labor leader Mark Latham, who took on John Howard at the last election, has some of that same headline-grabbing allure.

More swinging haymaker than swinging handbag, Mr Latham has punched his way onto the front page of the Australian Financial Review with his caustic observation that this is 鈥渁 Seinfeld election, a show about nothing鈥�, and that there is no real difference between the parties.

Arguing that the dominant ethos is 鈥済reed not generosity鈥�, he continues: 鈥淢any people in the Labor movement are expecting Labor in power to be far more progressive than its stated election promises. I expect a Labor administration to be even more timid, more conservative.鈥�

Mr Latham, whose eponymous featured a daily stream of expletive-ridden consciousness, talks of 鈥渢he zenith of policy convergence鈥�. That鈥檚 a fancy way of describing what countless others have called 鈥渢he me-too campaign鈥� being waged by Kevin Rudd.

On issues great and small, the present Labor leader stands accused of political plagiarism: massive tax cuts, the Tasmanian pulp mill, the intervention in the Northern Territory, the treatment of .

Clearly, there are major policy differences - the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq and the ratification of the Kyoto protocol on climate change, among them - but many voters view him as a shameless copy-cat.

The oft-heard complaint is that such is his determination not to be 鈥渨edged鈥� by John Howard that Kevin Rudd has failed to carve out a distinctive political personality of his own. At times, he has even ventriloquized the prime minister, most notably during the televised debate when he claimed to be an 鈥渆conomic conservative鈥�.

鈥淗oward-lite鈥�; 鈥淛ohn Howard, but a younger model鈥�. Mr Rudd has heard all the barbs.

If anything, he probably welcomes them. They amplify his message of risk-free change.

So perhaps he views the contribution of his predecessor in much the same light. Secretly, he might even like to open his next press conference with words that are appealingly derivative: 鈥淚 knew Mark Latham, I worked with Mark Latham, and, ladies and gentleman, I鈥檓 no Mark Latham.鈥�

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What is the difference between saying sorry and apologising? This subtle semantic distinction is the main talking point in an evermore rancorous post-interest rate hike debate.

"I said I was sorry they occurred," Mr Howard told reporters. "I don't think I used the word apology. I think there is a difference between the two things."

Kevin Rudd accused the prime minister of playing "semantic games". His stern deputy Julia Gillard noted sternly: "This isn't a day for word plays. This isn't a day to be looking in the Oxford dictionary." Labor's treasurer-in-waiting, Wayne Swan, issued a statement which ran the risk of copyright infringements on the lyrics of Bernie Taupin: "Sorry seems to be the hardest word to say for Mr Howard."

That is not strictly true. Mr Howard has made a habit of saying sorry, but refusing to apologise. As he himself noted: "I think we've been through that debate before in the context of something else."

That something else, of course, is the question of indigenous reconciliation, and his repeated refusal to apologise for past injustices to the Aboriginal people of Australia, such as the Stolen Generations.

Mr Howard explains himself thus: if he discovered that a friend's relative had died he would say he was sorry. But he would most certainly not apologise because the death wasn't his fault.

On interest rate hikes and reconciliation, he sticks to a personal mantra: regret without responsibility.

But in an age of Oprah-style public redemption and contrition, is this enough?

P.S. On the subject of words, has anyone been counting how many times Julia Gillard has uttered the phrase "working families"?

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Mid-morning, in a colosseum-like stadium that is sometimes known as the 鈥淕abbatoir鈥�, Cricket Australia ushered in a of the country鈥檚 national game.

Absent from the team were three stalwarts, or 鈥渓egends鈥� as they are known in these parts: retirees Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer. Trying to fill their giant-sized cricket boots were two novices, debutant fast bowler Mitchell Johnson and opening batsman Phil Jacques, and a spin bowler, Stuart McGill, who not only boasts the wicket-taking abilities of Shane Warne but the same corpulent girth.

Australia became the world鈥檚 sole cricketing super-power because of the bowling combination of McGrath and Warne, the game鈥檚 most successful ever partnership.

Now what?

Between them, Mssrs Warne, McGrath and Langer accumulated 374 test matches. Mssrs Johnson, Jacques and McGill can muster just 42.

No wonder it鈥檚 a sense of nervousness rather than excitement that greeted what turned out to be a rain-interrupted new dawn. Sure, Ricky Ponting is still there, so, too, Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist. And marvellously, it was the reassuring voice of 77-year-old Richie Benaud who provided commentary on the first ball at the Gabba.

Still, Australian cricket fans have been confronted with an unfamiliar concept: change.

Judging by their electoral behaviour, Australian voters are similarly fond of the status quo and are a notoriously change-averse bunch.

There have been 23 federal elections since the late-1940s. The government of the day was sacked in only four of them. In the past 23 years, there has only been one change in government, when Paul Keating was ousted by one John Winston Howard.

At the state and territory level, too, you have to go back five years 鈥� 2002 in South Australia - to find evidence of that genuine Australian rarity: a sacked government.

鈥淭ime for a change鈥�: the world鈥檚 most tried and successfully tested political slogan does not have the same resonance in Australia.

Why so?

Clearly the powers of incumbency are immense. Prime ministers can set political agendas, look important at international summits and mount pre-election spending sprees. Helpfully, the Sydney Morning Herald publishes a daily 鈥溾��. Today it shows that the Liberal-led government is outbidding Labor on the spending promise front by $A54bn to $A51bn. Many of those pork barrel projects have clearly been targeted at marginal constituencies. A new road here, a new technical college there.

The tax-payer also provides sitting MPs with a hefty campaign war chest, paying for printing entitlements and mail-outs.

And what of compulsory voting (which, I know, should technically be called 鈥渃ompulsory attendance鈥�)?

Forcing eligible voters to turn up at polling stations is commonly thought to help Labor, because it drives up turn-out among the working classes and immigrant groups. But is there an argument to be made that it helps incumbents by compelling people to vote who don鈥檛 really care either way, and therefore plump for the government of the day?

The nationwide polls suggest still that this will be a 鈥渃hange鈥� election, and that the Howard government has reached the point of political perishability. And unquestionably, governments often struggle after 10 years in office. Just ask Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac or Jean Chretien.

As Australia鈥檚 most powerful 鈥渃ricket tragic鈥� knows all too well, on the highest of highs, with a 5-0 Ashes win over England and a lavish musical farewell at the Sydney Cricket Ground. While the three champions shuffled embarrassedly on the balcony of the home team dressing room, an opera singer serenaded them from down below with the tear-inducing aria 鈥淐on te partiro鈥� 鈥� 鈥淭ime to Say Good-Bye鈥�.

John Howard is plotting his own retirement, saying he鈥檒l step down well into his sixth term as prime minister. But will he be given a chance to script and orchestrate his own wistful send-off?

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Decided on Melbourne Cup day but announced the morning after, could this be the hike that stops the nation re-electing John Winston Howard?

So widely trailed has been the since the last election that Liberal Party strategists will no doubt be hoping Mr Howard鈥檚 famous 鈥渂attlers鈥� in the 鈥渕ortgage belt鈥� have already become anaesthetised to the pain.

Better still, some believe that the prime minister can perform political ju-jitsu and turn what should be a Labor strength into a vulnerability. One Liberal MP, Cameron Thompson, made the mistake of stating that publicly, saying an interest rate rise from the Reserve Bank of Australia, the country鈥檚 autonomous central bank, would be a 鈥減ositive for the government鈥� because it would focus voter attention on the economy, supposedly its main vote-winning selling point.

As the government mounts its counterattack, we will be hearing the figure 17% being bandied around: the fear-inducing cost of borrowing under the last Labor government. The opposition will respond by reminding voters that when John Howard was treasurer in the Fraser government it was a whopping 22%.

For the record, interest rates have been lower under Mr Howard (an average of 5.39%) than they were during the Hawke/Keating years (11.31%).

Knowing an increase in the cost of borrowing was all but inevitable given the inflationary pressures in the Australian economy, Mr Howard and Peter Costello have for weeks been busy preparing the groundwork. On matters economic, Treasurer Costello has taken to expressing himself in almost apocalyptic terms, warning of a 鈥渇inancial tsunami鈥� engulfing global markets if China floats its currency. And what of the in America, and the panic it could easily engender?

The message is emphatic, if a little fraught: at a time of economic turbulence and volatility you need a steady hand on the tiller of the Good Ship Australia. Trouble is, this change-averse electorate is already in a mutinous mood.

Kevin Rudd faces a different challenge. For him, this has to be a gloat-free day, and he has to avoid the public appearance of taking delight in the government鈥檚 and home owners鈥� misfortune. He launched his campaign on the issue of housing affordability. No doubt he was anticipating today鈥檚 rise, and hoping to turn the 鈥渕ortgage belt鈥� into Rudd country.

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On this High Holy Day, when a group of galloping horses has such an immobilising effect on the people of Australia, I thought I would use the fervour generated by the to spare a quick thought for the nation's political punters.

While the latest poll published today shows that John Howard is edging closer 鈥� or slowing coming up on the rails, in the parlance of the day 鈥� Labor still has an election-winning lead of six points, as it has done all year. That's why the country鈥檚 bookies continue to call the electoral race in Kevin Rudd鈥檚 favour.

If you look at the country鈥檚 five leading bookmakers, as the website has helpfully done, none gives the Liberal-led coalition more than a 29.2% probability of victory (the average probability of a Howard victory is 27.9%.) That would imply a lop-sided Labor victory.

But look at the seat-by-seat betting in the 30 or so 鈥榤arginals,鈥� the constituencies which will ultimately decide the outcome of this election, and you get a quite different picture: one that suggests a cliff-hanger rather than a Ruddslide.

Before the election was called, , an economist based at Stanford University who blogs on Australian politics, identified 15 seats that the coalition would lose and Labor would win, based on the odds of three leading bookmakers.

Tantalisingly, it meant that Labor fell just one seat short of victory (a net gain of 16 seats is its winning post).

His latest estimates, based on the same bookmakers鈥� probabilities, suggest that Labor will gain 76 out of 150 seats 鈥� a one-seat victory.

To tread the dark path of sporting clich茅 once again, the bookmakers鈥� odds suggest the election will go right down to the final furlong, with a possible photo finish. It also raises the intriguing possibility that Labor might achieve the national swing it needs for victory 鈥� 4.8% - but that its vote will not be geographically concentrated in the right marginal seats (the same thing happened to Al Gore, of course, in the ).

On the subject of the Melbourne Cup, I鈥檓 in Tasmania at the moment visiting the site of the proposed pulp mill in the Tamar Valley, of which more later. In Launceston yesterday I ran into Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran, as he kicked-off the Liberal Party鈥檚 campaign in the key marginal of Bass, which the government presently holds.

After this August鈥檚 outbreak of equine influenza threatened the postponement or even cancellation of the race, he is clearly hugely relieved. 鈥淗ow would I look as the minister responsible for the cancellation of a $A400m festival, not to mention the angry punters,鈥� he told me.

Of course, the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia meets today in Sydney, and will likely decide to increase interest rates for the sixth time since the last election (they鈥檒l announce whether they鈥檝e decided to do so first thing Wednesday morning). Imagine the political fall-out if the Melbourne Cup had been called off, too.

A Labor victory and the cancellation of the 鈥榬ace that stops the nation鈥�. On the first Tuesday of last November, when John Howard looked to be cantering towards a fifth straight winner鈥檚 rosette, what would have been the odds of that?

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Malcolm Turnbull has a super-sized ambition, which Australia has always found difficult to contain. In the mid-1980s, as a thirty-something lawyer, he started to carve out an international reputation when he took aim at the British establishment in the famed Mr Turnbull represented Peter Wright, the former MI5 agent whose candid biography the British government sought to suppress. The trial in Sydney is perhaps remembered for the phrase 鈥渆conomical with the truth鈥�, uttered by the then UK Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, under withering cross-examination from Turnbull and to audible guffaws from the press gallery.

After humiliating the British Establishment, he then sought to remove its footprint from Australia. He did so by leading the republican movement in the mid-1990s. Some interpreted Mr Turnbull鈥檚 involvement as a nifty piece of job creation - inventing an Australian presidency so that he could one-day occupy the post. (Had he not been hampered by the geographic inconvenience of being born in the completely wrong country, many think he would ideally have liked to become the president of the United States). With neither job available to him, the man presently charged with protecting Australia鈥檚 environment has set his sights on becoming prime minister.

Since entering parliament in 2004, the 53-year-old has risen quickly and easily through the ranks. In September last year, he became Australia鈥檚 鈥渨ater tsar鈥�, reporting directly to John Howard on how to deal with the so-called Big Dry. This January, as well. Arguably the government鈥檚 most polished media performer, Mr Howard presumably hoped Mr Turnbull would become the acceptable face of what many regard as an unacceptable environment policy - that he could sell the government鈥檚 repeated refusal to ratify Kyoto to an increasingly sceptical public.

Now, it seems, Turnbull has admitted defeat on that front. In cabinet seven weeks ago, the environment minister reportedly argued that the Howard government had nothing to lose by belatedly . He was rebuffed, however, by cabinet colleagues, who thought a pre-election flip-flop would look panic-stricken and unprincipled. Now this 鈥渋nside-the-cabinet-room鈥� revelation has been leaked to the papers, possibly in a move to help save his parliamentary career.

Fittingly enough, Mr Turnbull represents the most glittering jewel in the Liberal crown - the Sydney seat of Wentworth, which includes Bondi Beach, fashionable Point Piper, and the millionaire belt of Bellevue Hill. Since Australia became Australia, it has never gone anything other than Liberal or its centre-right predecessors. Now, though, boundary changes have made the seat a marginal, and green issues are looming large.

Worse still for Mr Turnbull, the influential businessman Geoffrey Cousins is . The reason that is particularly noteworthy is because Mr Cousins is a former close confidant of John Howard.

The Cousins campaign is payback for the government鈥檚 decision to give the green light to what protesters argue is a decidedly un-green project - a massive new pulp mill in the beautiful Tamar Valley in northern Tasmania.

鈥淚 am hoping we can cost him his seat,鈥� Mr Cousins told me, with a edge of menace in his gravely voice. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 want to see Malcolm Turnbull as the minister for the environment, or the shadow minister of the environment. He鈥檚 a man of ability, and there are not a vast number of those in the Australia parliament. But if you don鈥檛 use that ability to good purpose then go and do something else.鈥�

Now Mr Turnbull has another enemy combatant to contend with - an unlikely one, too. Peter Cundall, the genial presenter of the ABC television鈥檚 popular 鈥淕ardening Australia鈥�- the green-fingered Lancastrian horticulturalist claims the environment minister approached him at a Sydney flower show in August and said that the Tamar Valley in Northern Tasmania was a .

Mr Cundall went on: "I also think that when he said, 'oh Peter, Peter I just want you to know I hate this so-and-so mill, I hate it,' he was also I think extremely concerned about the effect it was having on his own campaign in Wentworth."

Malcolm Turnbull claims he has been misrepresented and never expressed an 鈥渆motional response鈥� to the pulp mill. Ultimately, the voters of Wentworth will decide who is being economical with the truth.

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John Howard's early morning walk is the gift that never stops giving for people wishing to ambush, admonish or abuse him. All you have to do is find out where his entourage is staying, set your alarm early, don some suitably comic get-up or pre-prepare some suitably acerbic rebuke, and then wait for the great track-suited one to power-walk on by.

Last week, he was confronted by a group of white-gloved ladies, resplendent in floral frocks and 1950s vintage hats, who described themselves as The John Howard Auxiliary Fan Club. They dispensed iced "yellow cake" and "fake Viagra" to help with his "listless election". Then on consecutive mornings, first in Canberra and then in Adelaide, he was heckled by passers-by. One used language which would have made even the Australian cricket team's slip cordon blush.

The most accomplished and prolific ambushers are, of course, the guys from the , arguably the funniest thing on Australian television (discuss?). Now internationally famous for driving a fake motorcade into the Apec summit in Sydney and conveying a comedy Osama Bin Laden within metres of the US president's hotel, the Chasers have turned baiting the PM into something of a political art form.

Recently, they hired a silver DeLorean sports car, got one of the guys to dress up as a mad professor and then offered to take Mr Howard "Back to the future" so that he could relive and re-write history. In particular, they offered him the chance to resign over a year ago, the time when his treasurer and long-standing rival Peter Costello publicly complained that Mr Howard had reneged on a deal hatched years back in opposition to stand-down midway through his second term in office (he's now seeking his fifth).

Not for one moment do I think that John Howard wishes he had stepped down. Such defeatist thinking is not part of his molecular structure. And, in any case, back then it looked like he would be facing the former Labor leader, Kim Beazley, already a two-time loser. But I offer as talking points two ways in which John Howard might wish to re-write recent electoral history.

First, he would have conducted a very different campaign in 2004, for the manner in which he won that election has made it much trickier to win this one. Promising to keep interest rates low was always going to be a political hostage to fortune. And, on Wednesday, it looks like they will rise again, the sixth hike since the last election.

Arguably, he could have left the then Labor leader Mark Latham to dig his own political grave, rather than excavate so furiously himself. Counter-intuitive as it sounds, Mr Howard may have done too well three years ago. In that victory the seeds of what could be a defeat this time round might one day be found.

Here's the second strand of the "Howard did too well in 2004" thesis: that the Liberal-led coalition achieved such a resounding triumph that they wrestled control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time since the Fraser government in the 1970s. With no real check on his parliamentary power, Mr Howard launched , the controversial reforms to the industrial relations laws which have contributed to his unpopularity. Worse still, WorkChoices were not trailed by the prime minister at the last election, and were foisted on the public without warning.

So here's what Mr Howard might have done if he had taken the wheel of that silver DeLorean, and enjoyed the luxury of becoming a track-suited time-traveller: gone back to 2004 and conducted a campaign which would have better safeguarded his political future.

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Tied to Sydney at weekends so he can battle to save his parliamentary seat in Bennelong, John Howard should perhaps consider a night out at the theatre. Just across the water from his harbour-side official residence, Kirribilli House, the political comedy Don鈥檚 Party is playing to almost-packed audiences in the bowels of the Sydney Opera House.

The play is set on election night in 1969, when Don Henderson, a schoolteacher and failed writer, throws a booze-fuelled party to celebrate what he fully expects to be a long-awaited Labor victory in the federal election. Joining him in his Melbourne suburban home is a dysfunctional ensemble of old friends and new acquaintances: a lecherous lawyer, a self-absorbed artist on a journey of sexual experimentation, a humourless dentist, a couple of nervy housewives and a boorish university lecturer. Posters of the then Labor leader, Gough Whitlam adorn the set. A self-confessed Liberal voter is treated first as a social outcast, then as an object of sexual desire.

Admittedly, Mr. Howard might not appreciate the play鈥檚 adult themes of late-sixties partner-swapping and permissiveness. Nor, for that matter, one of its main premises: that anyone who votes Liberal is somehow mentally deficient. But surely he would applaud the play鈥檚 denouement: a victory for sitting Prime Minister John Gorton and another term in office for the Liberal-led government.

Back in 1969, there was a strong feeling that the government had been in office too long 鈥� a staggering 20 years - and was bereft of fresh ideas. It had committed Australian troops to an unpopular war in Vietnam, drawing complaints that the government was toadying up to Washington.

The parallels do not end there. The Labor Party was led by a popular moderniser, Gough Whitlam, who campaigned on a raft of forward-thinking policies. He vowed, for instance, to ditch the "White Australia" immigration policy.

Eventually, though, he was beaten by a Liberal Party which successfully hammered home its core message that the economy would not be safe in Labor hands and that Mr Whitlam would be bullied by the unions.

Given Labor鈥檚 disastrous performance three years earlier, 1969 was always going to be a tough year to achieve a breakthrough. And ultimately the party scored a net gain of 18 seats, which teed up its victory three years hence. Mr Rudd, you will remember, describes the 16 seats Labor needs for victory this year as the vote-winning equivalent of "climbing Everest" - although he clearly believes he can make it in a single ascent.

Mr Whitlam鈥檚 failure to achieve a similar feat in 1969 means that Don鈥檚 Party collapses into a drunken stupor of dashed electoral hopes and thwarted sexual advances.

Just the sort of storyline which would have John Howard bellowing "encore" from the stalls.

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Kevin Rudd might be intent on fighting a flawless, error-free campaign, with neither a foot nor a word nor a factoid out of place. But it is his errant finger which continues to dog him 鈥� the one that delved into his ear canal, excavated a lump of wax and then popped it into his mouth.

The ear-wax munching episode happened some six years ago during a parliamentary debate in Canberra, when Mr Rudd was a lowly Labor backbencher and probably didn't even realise a television camera was capturing his every move.

Some 500,000 You Tube hits later, the clip has become something of a global phenomenon since first appearing last week. The American comedian Jay Leno has even run it on his late-night chat show, to the delight and disgust of his audience.

Winston Churchill once said that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. Evidently, footage of a politician scoffing ear-wax travels at an even greater velocity.

The global branding of Kevin Rudd is not going well. The last time he received so much international attention was when news emerged of that boozy visit four years ago to a New York strip club, replete with gyrating pole dancers.

Then, Mr. Rudd told reporters that he had never claimed to be "Captain Perfect", and that he had only ever got drunk three times in his life 鈥� arguably, a much more shocking and vote-losing revelation.

In Bob Hawke, Australia elected a beer-drinking champion, who famously imbibed a yard of ale in under 12 seconds. With four consecutive victories, he was the most successful Labor politician ever. But will this barbeque-loving nation countenance a leader who snacks on ear-wax?

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I love the lingua franca of Australian politics: the hate-filled colloquialisms, the mean and nasty metaphors, the take-no-prisoners style of verbal jousting.

This is a nation famed, and in some quarters feared, for its sporting sledging. From a journalistic viewpoint, its political equivalent is a notebook-filling joy to behold.

Of course, the former Labor leader Mark Latham was its most fluent practitioner. Commenting on what many regard as an overly-cosy relationship between John Howard and George W Bush, he : "Mr Howard and his government are just Yes-men to the United States. There they are, a conga line of suckholes on the conservative side of Australian politics."

For those who prefer their sound-bites in more easily digestible forms, he offered an even pithier alternative: Mr Howard was an "arse-licker".

Sometimes parliamentary question time in Canberra can be a watch-from-behind the-sofa affair, so fierce and vitriolic is the rhetorical onslaught.

Soon after arriving in Australia, I had dinner with a Labor shadow minister, who earlier that afternoon had been ejected from question time for his use of unparliamentary language. He sipped on his chilled chardonnay as if it was vintage champagne, revelling in his spell in the 'sin bin' like a pig who had just emerged from a gigantic vat of mud.

Kevin Rudd speaks a very different political language. First of all, he uses weird phrases. Long-awaited policy announcements, for instance, will come "in due season", a phrase he repeats almost robotically.
And how about "all over red rover", a line used repeatedly in relation to the debate over the television debate. The word Wacko seems to be another personal favourite.

Ahead of that 90-minute televised 'stoush' (another wonderful Australianism meaning 'fight') in which the leaders tried to 'spruik' their policies (yet another, meaning 'sell'), the Liberal Party even went as far as to release a 'bingo card' of 40 Ruddisms which it invited viewers to tick off.

Seemingly, they were trying to elevate 'nerd-speak' into something which disqualifies you from high office. Reporters have taken to calling him 'the Cliche Kid'.

Rudd's cautious use of language not only reflects his political personality but is surely part of a carefully thought-out political strategy: to conduct an error-free campaign, with not a stray word out of place. The strategy comes apart, of course, when others make mistakes, as Labor's environment spokesman Peter Garrett did .

Mr Garrett, the dome-headed former Midnight Oil front man, said a Labor government would sign a post-Kyoto climate change protocol, regardless of the involvement of China or India. His leader had to slap him down, in so doing echoing John Howard's oft-heard assertion that international agreements on climate change are worthless without those two emerging giants.

To quell the storm, the Mr Rudd deployed a volley of eco-jargon, talking of 'points of stability', 'commitment periods', 'interim targets', 'steering points' and 'scientific endpoints'.

Devotees of old-style political plain-speaking will therefore have savoured the rip-roaring contribution of former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating. In a virtuoso performance last week, Mr Keating at Treasurer Peter Costello, himself a savage political bruiser. Claiming the Treasurer had "been in a hammock 10 years", he then described him as "the laziest, most indolent, most unimaginative treasurer in postwar history".

The man that The Sun labelled 'The Lizard of Oz' for manhandling the Queen during a visit to Australia in 1992 was at his sharp-tongued best.

I have not yet heard Mr Rudd's reaction to his former leader's attack. No doubt it will come 'in due season'.

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