The forestry division were probably decent unionists too at one point. But when their livelihoods were threatened, instead of seeing the writing on the wall and adjusting to the new reality while they had time, they turned reactionary. The coal miners will do the same.

Or, if he does, it’s not widely reported by a media in thrall to their man of steel.

Did anyone think Howard looked old and grey on the telly tonight? I mean, Rudd looked young and grey, but also prime ministerial.

Some posters feel that Rudd can just coast into government pointing out Howard’s failures. This isn’t true because a) people don’t know him well, and b) he doesn’t have a lot of credibility as a policymaker. The idea of the Australia Day ad was to address a) and the summit to address b), all well ahead of the election. Salvador is right. It’s one of Howard’s mantras that you can’t fatten the pig on market day, and Rudd is doing the unsexy wonky stuff well ahead of the more-heat-than-light environment of the election campaign.

Yes, Rudd will be in trouble if he does too much of one or the other. But what seems to be happening here is that Rudd is closing off Howard’s options. If Howard can’t whip up fear (Labor is unknown, untried; they might stuff it up; isn’t Julia Gillard frightful?), he’ll have to battle Rudd on the level but arid battlefields of policy.

True, Howard could call an election at any time. Despite the attempts of the media to present an immediacy to this story that it just doesn’t have, and despite the question behind polling, there wasn’t a election last weekend and there won’t be one this weekend either.

Whenever a poll comes out Rudd tells people to take a cold shower – sound advice.

The Mining & Energy Division has previously had bones to pick with the ALP over climate change policy, but on those occasions it never looked remotely like turning on the kind of hissy fit which the Forestry Division turned on in the 2004 election campaign. The Mining & Energy Division is the left of the left of the trade union movement, and given its politics and ideology it will not pursue its global warming agenda in a way which is harmful to the wider labour movement or to Labor’s chances of defeating the Coalition this year.

The Mining & Energy Division may find bones to pick with Rudd over specific aspects of climate change policy, but come the election it will be running as hard as any other union against Howard.

I want that written in blood, please. The CFMEU white paper on CO2 that Paul linked to last year was not that impressive as I recall.

BTW, Paul Norton is right. I know the CFMEU have also been engaging with their members on the issue of climate change – in fact they have a position paper out that is about winning consensus.

Rudd’s intelligence was wrong. For ‘climate change’ read ‘water’.

But Tingle stll sees Rudd as scoring because he broadened the issue.