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The 2007 Federal Election

Probabilities for Individual Seats

1st November 2007 - Newspoll figures by State released today give an interesting picture of the probabilities for each of the 150 seats. more

The Polls are Pointing to Labor

The opinion polls all of this year have been pointing to a Labor victory. You will find a record of Newspoll here.

Rudd On and Off the Record

Tuesday, October 02, 2007 - ... playing the underdog against an arrogant front runner is virtually the only hope left for the Coalition in this election campaign. more

Swing by State

Saturday, 22 September, 2007 - Every three months Newspoll consolidates its fortnightly national polls to provide a view of what is happening state by state. The latest such analysis suggests that there is a strong swing against the Coalition Government in every sate except Western Australia where the swing is only half the national average. more

No Ticker Replaced with a Busted One

Thursday, September 20, 2007 - Liberal election tacticians always reckoned they did well when they described Kim Beazley as having no ticker. The idea did settle in some minds that nice old Kim did not have the heart for the tough decisions that Prime Ministers are always confronted with. So perhaps it was a clumsy attempt to denigrate Kevin Rudd in a similar way that led to the leaking yesterday to the 9 Network's Laurie Oakes details of the heart valve transplant that the Opposition Leader had 15 years ago. more

Keeping it Cuddly

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 - They will be working overtime in the Department of Finance from now until election day attempting to come up with a sensible estimate of what all the election promises of the major parties would cost if they turned out to be of the core variety and the necessary legislation actually got through the Senate. We have been keeping tabs on the promises made by the Coalition Government since the May budget (see The Grass Roots Gravy Train) and an impressive list it makes but Labor is not to be outdone. There are 230 carriages on our opening Labor Party Gravy Train and you can find the full list here.. more

Two Battling Strategies

Tuesday, September 18, 2007 - Listening to Alexander Downer talk about Kevin Rudd is a lot like one of those old "Where do you get it" advertisements that helped make John Singleton famous. They annoy the hell out of you but the message gets through. The Foreign Minister was at it again this morning in his irritating attack dog mode. "I say to all of our parliamentarians - and I think they believe in this by the way - have confidence in the strength of our record," is the way Mr Downer put it.  "Have confidence that the phoneyism of Kevin Rudd will be exposed in time." more

A Little Bit of Financial Uneasiness

Monday, September 17, 2007 - Prime Minister John Howard will be pleased the Newspoll dice rolled in his favour this evening with the two party preferred vote for Labor returning to the 55% level it had been fluctuating around for months before the jump a fortnight ago to 59%. While it is hardly a good result to be 10 percentage points behind at the start of an election campaign it is good enough to put an end to the speculation about a change in the leadership. more

Threatening to Take His Bat Home

Monday, September 17, 2007 - The Prime Minister is getting himself in to something of a tangle trying to tell the voters of Bennelong whether or not they will have a by-election if he is returned to the House of Representatives. more

Filling the Trough with a Little Laura

Friday, September 14, 2007 - My thanks today to "Barbara and Mick" for drawing my attention to the front page of this week's Blue Mountains Gazette where the Liberal Member for Macquarie, Kerry Barlett, is reported as announcing a $60,000 Commonwealth grant for CTV camera's and street lighting for Katoomba's main streets. Such largesse is clearly going to be a feature of the election campaign as the Government tries to tap in to yet another traditionally state political issue. more

Back to the Future

Friday, September 14, 2007 - It just seems mighty strange when a politician, desperate to prove that he is not yesterday's man, goes back 25 years to come up with a "new" policy for training nurses. But so it was today with Prime Minister John Howard when he announced that the Australian Government will invest about $170 million additional funds over five years to create 25 Australian Hospital Nursing Schools to deliver hospital based training within major public and private hospitals across the country for enrolled nurses. more

Playing the Role of Beggar

Thursday, September 13, 2007 - The beggar is an unusual role for a Prime Minister to play but that is what John Howard has been reduced to. Last night on television he well and truly had the begging bowl out. "There's a lot of things I want to do for the Australian people", he told Kerry O'Brien on the 7.30 Report, "and that's why I would hope that they might be kind enough to re-elect me."

The real embarrassment - the kind most people get when confronted with a poor wretch asking for money on the street - came from watching the nation's political leader incapable of giving any evidence of what he actually wanted to do for the Australian people. His plaintive plea for re-election amounts to an assertion that the job needs Howard and, more importantly, that Howard needs the job. "I won't find it easy if I am re-elected to retire", he said. "I won't find it the least bit easy because I am very committed to this job, and I will not like leaving it." more

A Few Million Reasons

Thursday, September 13, 2007 - There are a few million reasons why the Liberal Party might be doing better in Eden Monaro than a study of the national polls would suggest. more

And Now for Next Tuesday

Wednesday, September 12, 2007 - Hope springs eternal in the politician's breast but a little bit of encouragement from the pollsters can help foster the sentiment. Prime Minister John Howard knows that so he made sure he had a good news polling story to tell in this morning's party room meeting. After searching through the reams of date provided by the Liberal Party's Crosby|Textor research team, the PM found the example of Eden Monaro where recent surveys showed that Special Minister of State Gary Nairn, at least in Mr Howard's version, still had his nose in front of his Labor opponent. more

Fighting the Good Fight

Tuesday, 11 September 2007 - John Howard abandoned his normal formula for discussing the leadership this afternoon. No more talk of saying he will stay as long as it is in the best interests of the Liberal Party and as long as his party wants him to. Those questions, he told a press conference held jointly with the bemused visiting Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, were resolved last year. It was not in the Party's interest to revisit them. "I have never run from a fight before and I do not intend to do so now", said the Australian Prime Minister as he turned his back on the press and strode back to his office. more

A Belated Search for the Vision Thing

Monday, 10 September 2007 - John "I'm Staying PM" Howard is off on a belated search for the vision thing that will prove the pundits and the pollsters wrong in predicting he cannot win the federal election later this year. A tough and defiant Mr Howard announced his quest on the ABC's AM program this morning after declaring he has no intention of stepping down so another leader can try and cut back Labor's 14 point lead in the AC Nielsen poll in the Fairfax press. more

It's the Team, Stupid

Thursday, 6 September 2007 - Treasurer Peter Costello has read and understood the Mark Textor research. In his public appearances Mr Costello religiously stresses that he is campaigning as part of a team. That is exactly what the CrosbyTextor Nationwide Strategy Overview of June recommended. more

A Scare a Day to Keep Labor Away

Wednesday, 5 September 2007 - A scare a day to keep Labor away is the prediction Julia Gillard neatly makes about the form the Liberal Party campaign will take from now until polling day. Her leader Kevin Rudd is out spruiking the same message as he predicts a close election, whatever the opinion polls might indicate, because John Howard is a "very clever politician and we're going to see, as we've seen before, a very big fear campaign from him about unions, about interest rates, and his claim that the sky will fall in if people vote for anyone other than him." more

A Clever PM Postpones an Answer

Monday, 3 September 2007 - John Howard knows better than any politician that governments should not set up inquiries when they do not know what they will find. His handling of the two Cole Commissions of inquiry proved that. The first one established the case that trade union blackmail was redistributing income from property owners to building workers and laid the foundation for laws lowering the incomes of workers along with the costs of construction. The second cleared the Coalition Government of direct responsibility for paying the blackmailers of Saddam Hussein's Iraq so that continuing Australian wheat exports could contribute to the cost of weapons later used to fire at Australian troops.

It is safe to assume then that the Prime Minister has a pretty shrewd idea what just retired High Court judge Ian Callinan QC will find from his investigations into the origins of the equine influenza outbreak that has so upset pony club riders and the horse racing fraternity. The difference this time is that Mr Howard is not expecting the inquiry, which he promised yesterday "will fully examine the investigation now being carried out internally by AQIS (the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service) and any other relevant material and documents", to absolve his Government of responsibility. Mr Howard clearly suspects there is no scapegoat to find for "any lapse of quarantine protocols". This is purely and simply an exercise in damage control. What the inquiry will deliver is a delay in the guilty verdict against the government run Eastern Creek Quarantine Station until after the election. more
See also: Will the horsey crowd punish a Government?

What is a Labor Promise Worth?

Tuesday, 28 August 2007 - Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd today gave us a reminder about one very important aspect of Labor Party election promises: a future Labor Government will not have the power to keep any of them. The fate of all Labor's legislation will require approval by a Senate where it certainly will not have a majority and where it is even possible that a Coalition Opposition will have the numbers in its own right. more

Stealing the Abbott's Cassock

Friday, 24 August 2007 - The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing called its report tabled in the Parliament last December " The Blame Game: Report on the inquiry into health funding " and Kevin Rudd has clearly read it. Ending the blame game has entered his every day lexicon and much of the material in the Labor health policy he unveiled yesterday comes from the committee report. more

Silence the Best Policy

Thursday, 23 August 2007 - That the importance of occupational health and safety in the work place relations debate is not seen as a subject of importance by the national press is hardly the fault of Julia Gillard. Labor's deputy leader and shadow Minister for Industrial Relations was hard at work yesterday telling the Victorian Division of the Safety Institute of Australia all about it but I did not notice here on the television news or read any of her words of wisdom in their morning's newspapers. Which proves that Ms Gillard is developing in to a very good politician - one who can avoid publicity when it is not needed while being out and about enough to avoid being called lazy. more

A Major Mistake

Strike One to Pauline

Monday, 20 August 2007 - Back in December last year when Pauline Hanson announced that she was going to take another tilt at Federal politics by contesting a Queensland Senate seat the ABC radio program The World Today reported that immigration policy was well and truly on her agenda. more
See also
Predictable Rage Greets Ms Hanson
Testing Australian Tolerance of Muslims

Sunday, 19 August 2007 - Making a fuss about Kevin Rudd going to a New York strip club is the kind of tactical mistake that can cost a party an election. more

Federal elections home page

The Government's Grass Roots Gravy Train
Keep track of the Government's election promises.

Labor's Grass Roots Gravy Train
Keep track of Labor's election promises.

Election Advertising
Keep tabs on the ads

The Election Diary
Daily notes on the campaign

The Election Indicator
Assessing the probability of victory