The dying days of the Fourth Reich: it's the 2007 AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION

Newspoll shows coalition gain of one point, world ends.

Interest rate rise and ALP advertising blitz about to kick in.

"Is Mr Rudd going to walk behind you and copy your walk as well?" one of the men asked Mr Howard.

"He won't be able to keep up with you, bro," another added.

u_____________u

As if ^that's not going to be on the news tonight too.

I think it's too late for that to hurt Rudd now.

I just realised, that Newspoll was taken between Friday and Sunday, which is when Garrett's fuck-up was the ONLY focus of political news. So probably a slightly false reading.

i hope so. i wonder if labor need to make more of coalition's sophistry, help voters be offended rather than swayed by it. it's so hard to know whether people see it as just that, or not. attacking garrett for not being as smarmy and calculating and disingenuous as they are should be something that backfires on them, rather than helping them.

Definitely. Most Australians have nothing against Garrett, even if they don't agree with his activism. Attacking him is rather like stabbing a teddy bear.

I still don't even get why the Garrett thing is news. As though, if it was Labor's HORRIBLE SECRET PLAN, he'd casually tell it to some right-wing radio fuckwit. First time I've ever respected Richard Wilkins when he came out and said it was obviously just a joke the way he heard it.

Why does no one in the media understand "margin of error"?

I guess most people here are aware of this, but Ross Gittins has been providing consistently excellent coverage for The Age/SMH for the past couple of months. He's very left-leaning but he's not afraid to point out when Labor are being morons. Most importantly he actually knows about the things he is talk about, which is pretty rare for a commentator.
Yesterday's column on John Howard's class warfare I thought was pretty fantastic. Other OTM columns:

Why affordability allowances are crap and don't work
Rudd = Howard Jnr
Howard's focus on economic growth is dumb and won't do anything anyway (Gittins has a great series of columns where every couple of weeks he will point out that John Howard has no influence over interest rates bar the inflationary impacts of his tax cuts, and that the Reserve Bank couldn't give a shit what he thinks)
Tax cuts are shit and don't help Howard's battlers anyway (see also here

Downer , our FUCKING FOREIGN MINISTER, calls Rudd a 'show-off' for speaking Chinese to Chinese people in China

Nearly everything I hate about Howard's cabinet is distilled right there.

Downer is an overgrown spoilt brat, the kind of petulant, whinging little shit who would bleat 'It's not fair!!!!!' and go running to teacher every time he gave another kid too much lip and got a thick ear for it.

Was it really just 13 years ago that more than half the Liberal Party though this man was a potential Prime Minister?

otm, i find him the worst of the lot. one election i saw him being interviewed at home with his family and he had a teenage son who was exactly like him, a simpering smug plate-faced prig with the exact same namby-pamby voice as his father, it was horrifying. junior said modestly that he thought he might like to go into politics as well. i was imagining tellys being smashed all over australia.

Ross Gittins is one of the better commentators but I find the Rudd=like Howard meme to be extremely unpenetrating, based on very basic analysis. Really, it's just what opposition leaders DO. John Howard in 1996 basically promised to be like Paul Keating with less touchy-feely social justice bullshit (obviously that stuff was v. important but the average voter disagreed).

If anything, if you want a Labor leader who was exactly like Howard, look no further than Mark Latham, whom the left WUVVED.

Rudd's good for a bloke from Nambour.

Really, it's just what opposition leaders DO.

Then once they get in they just change it all?

Howard did. In the 1996 campaign he pretended to not be a ranting fucking racist anymore.

LOL Forever at Don Dunstan building a freeway through the Downer Family Mansion, btw.

Back in 1970, but still.

Webber: yeah, pretty much. But there are things you can get away with saying from Government, and ONLY from Government and you look like a loony if you say them from Opposition. (One of these things is TAX CHANGES, for instance).

You might not see any changes until Rudd's second term, but you will see them. Howard's first term didn't annoy me too much at all, and I don't even care about the GST.

I agree, and I even voted for Howard in that second term.

I dunno if I said this but if there's no interest rate rise tomorrow, despite all the relevant parameters demanding one, it'll look incredibly suspect. Howard will be blamed for interfering whether he has or not. Whatever happens tomorrow, he cannot win.

I love moments like this.

Well there we go.

the rate-rise we had to have.

Howard has apologised for the rate rise.

APOLOGISED.

How his spin doctors are planning to turn THIS into a positive is anyone's guess. I really do think he's fucked now.

Mr Howard said the reason rates had increased was that there were concerns about inflation in the economy.

He said those inflation pressures were coming from three sources.

"The continued strength of the economy, the very fact that our economy is growing strongly, is a predominant cause for this interest rate increase," he said.

The two other ones are unimportant, you guise.

Ah, but in this brand new development (and after several months of him talking up his economic strength (i.e. all he's got)) he has just told the Australian public that he stuffed up. ON THE ECONOMY.

Surely most of his party is crying right about now.

Also his "GO FOR GROWTH" slogan has suddenly vanished.

ha!

I can't wait to see how Murdoch's papers paint this.

ONLY HOWARD CAN SAVE US NOW: EXPERT PANEL

LIBERALS THE SENSIBLE CHOICE IN TOUGH TIMES

RUDD EATS BABIES: SOURCE

Also his "GO FOR GROWTH" slogan has suddenly vanished.

Wait, it's still there, just obscured by an Australian flag.

Hey I just realised something:

"The continued strength of the economy, the very fact that our economy is growing strongly, is a predominant cause for this interest rate increase," (Howard) said.

What he's saying here is "go for growth" = "interest rate hikes"

Presumably that means a vote for Howard is a vote for higher interest rates.

Just wow.

Ross Gittens

So Howard could have called the election well before yesterday's meeting of the Reserve Bank board, but he didn't bother. That may go down as one of the great miscalculations of modern politics.

Rather, he chose a campaign slogan, Go for Growth, that's now proved embarrassingly inappropriate and has had to be ditched. He wanted to claim the credit for the economy's rapid growth and promise that under the Libs it could continue indefinitely, leading us back to full employment.

also

A fortnight ago Howard and Costello were claiming the inflation rate was at its lowest in almost nine years. Now they say there's a lot of inflation in the system so only they can be trusted to manage this "more challenging and difficult economic outlook".

Yep, and until today that would have been difficult for the average Jo(e) to digest. A rate rise followed by Howard APOLOGISING is the most digestible event this year.

And the election's in 2.5 weeks.

lol

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2005/12/13/johnhoward_wideweb__470x313,0.jpg

poor john ;_;

HE AM CRY.

Presumably that was taken earlier, when he realised he's actually gay and will have to stick his doodle into men.

More immaturity: this came into our letterbox today...

http://home.iprimus.com.au/jrsmorrison/Images/100_23.jpg

On Insiders at the weekend, George Megalogenis noted that Liberal advertising doesn't have Howard on the front. I notice yours doesn't, and the one we got yesterday didn't. Meanwhile, every ALP brochure has Rudd all over it. It's a sign that Howard's own members have so little confidence in him that they're going it alone.

Oh and it seems to apply to billboards as well. The only billboards carrying Howard's face are the ALP ones attacking him. MAJOR shift from previous election campaigns.

If anything, if you want a Labor leader who was exactly like Howard, look no further than Mark Latham, whom the left WUVVED.

Almy, are you watching the environment minister debate? Apparently it's on now?

Nah, I'm at work, that other debate was a sick day :)

The Austrailan's headline today: 'Business back PM on rates'. So I wasn't far off yesterday.

Ah that's a shame. I did enjoy the last one.

P'raps I'll liveblog election night, if I'm not out on the streets hugging people and getting pissx0red.

i see that johnny is now trying to claim that 'sorry' is not an apology. hmmm

Oh god, really??

Yesterday he also claimed his interest rate promise in 2004 isn't important, but what is important is the "aggregate impression" of what he said. "Aggregate impression" clearly means "I lied, but OMG LOOK A GORILLA!! <runs>".

TS: "aggregate impression" v "core promise"

The Austrailan's headline today: 'Business back PM on rates'. So I wasn't far off yesterday.

Yesterday's front page of the Daily Telegraph site was "Rates up, but more leave on offer!"

Nevermind that the leave is unpaid and most employers would be willing to give you unpaid leave beforehand anyway (or do I just have a knack for working for people that aren't collosal jerks?)

The IR laws already have provisions for all the leave you could ever want, anyway. It's called "firing you without notice"

v "two-day promise"

xpost

Does anyone honestly trust anything Howard's front bench says anymore?? With interest rates and GST and non-core promises and moving goalposts about inflation/interest rates being good/bad, why the galloping fuck should we suddenly believe this crap about unpaid leave?