1. LABOR 1.85
2. COALITION 1.92

This is a total reverse of the odds since yesterday.

The federal director of the National Party, Andrew Hall, has resigned to take a corporate job in Sydney just months before the federal election. Mr Hall is one of the Nationals’ key campaign strategists. Brad Henderson, the party’s Queensland director, will replace him. – Phillip Coorey

The voters might not put their concerns about their pay packets under the headling of “economic management”, but where they do put it is ahead of the wider issue of the economy which is hardly a surprise. If you accept that this is the case, then it undercuts nearly all the arguments being put by the “press gang”.

Thats not to say that there are not older people out there who are concerned for their childrens and grandchildrens future working lives under this sort of legislation either. If you have children geting close to joining the workforce then you couldn’t help but worry about this sort of legislation.

Point is – people wont look a mug backing Rudd now, even if he does end up losing.

The real thing to watch is not the irrelevant HFG commentariat jumping ship – its the bevy of bureaucrats, industry body figures, senior military, Costello backbenchers and public servants with an axe to grind against this government.

Once these cats start to break ranks there’s going to be shitstorm of dirt for Howard to deal with. He’s made more than a fwe enemies who’ve been intimidated into silence.

1. The “unions are back” scare campaign gets no voter traction, and merely reinforces the perception of unfair IR laws (now stupidly admitted by the government)

and

2. Voters see IR as a prime economic issue – which of course it is for PAYE workers

then … what precisely is Howard going to stage a record poll comeback on? This is his strong suit.

Dare I suggest there’s a strong possibility that he’s rooted.

Are they ‘turning’?

PETER Costello has launched a massive attack on Kevin Rudd’s economic credibility, describing him as “an old-fashioned socialist” and accusing him of opportunistic and dishonest behaviour.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21739647-601,00.html

Rudd’s going to nationalise the banks I tell you! Don’t say you weren’t warned!

I don’t think the way voters determine their vote has changed much with these latest poll results. It will always be the hip pocket nerve rather than Iraq or AWB, but essentially Howard’s argument has now boiled down to “take a pay cut” to give more people jobs. Imo as soon as the argument was reduced to this then the issue was a loser for Howard no mater what spin he put on it.

Howard has spent eleven years appealing to people’s “hip pocket nerve” to get him elected and to help them overlook various scandals and misjudgemnets. Now he essentially goes the other way and asks these people to take a hit for the “good of the ecnomy”. It runs counter to the way he has won in the past.

It has only taken the media around eighteen months to finally get their head around this. Peter Hartcher on his new blog yeaterday came as close as any of them have, to admitting he may have been underestimating the publics reaction to “workchoices”. I think the government spinmakers have done a great job on the media, but as most advertisers will tell you, all the best advertising in the world will not make a bad product good.

CONFIDENTIAL Labor Party polling shows Kevin Rudd’s industrial relations policy has received strong support among the crucial category of swinging voters.

Although business and the Government have attacked the policy ferociously since it was launched two weeks ago, the voting public has embraced it, the research shows.

This helps explain why the Labor leader has promised to keep the policy, with only some “fine-tuning”. It might also help explain why support for Labor has held up solidly in published polls, which John Howard admitted yesterday were very bad for the Government – even after last week’s widely praised budget,

The nationwide survey of 500 voters by Labor’s pollster, UMR Research, done early last week before the budget on Tuesday night, also showed a cool response to the Government’s Work Choices law. Asked to assess the impact of Work Choices on working families, the poll found that 16 per cent said it was good, 8 per cent said it made no difference and 57 per cent said it was bad.

It’s simple really, the IR legislation has been an eyeopener.

Furthermore, $weetie rattling on how we have never had it so good is neutralised by the fact that some people are going to be worse off by Work Choices (very very cynical nomenclature). The fact that the economy appears to be powering on pisses off punters who realise they are going to miss out on the gravy train.

In other words, the economy is not enough, it’s the voters’ wallets, stupid.

If that makes sense…

Any takers?
Ta.

His faux “backflip” on WC was effectively an admission of how rubbish the system is, and, brilliantly, he also lost the gloss of committment to reform in the same fell swoop. Doh!

And Im big enough to admit Im starting to revise my opinion that some exceptions for over 100k workers are necessary. IR really is the government’s problem patch – when it comes to actual voters. Only the Gazette/commentariat see it as an ALP weak suit.

And who’s listening to those losers?

Oh look – more feral price hike sky-is-falling rubbish: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/labor-hit-by-more-pricehike-fears/2007/05/15/1178995158680.html

What is all this? Im thinking it might be business realising Rudd’s a solid show, and trying to knock the edges of the policy – rather than simply trying to win it for Howard.

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/05/16/of-manifestos-and-manifestists-or-has-the-future-a-left/

The truth of the description of the Ruddite Labor Party as “New Labor� is not in any nonsense about allowing mining companies to trample on collective bargaining rights, but in the degree to which a socially and economically conservative leader has largely accepted the legacy of a decade or so of Howardism, and appears to construct policy alternatives more on a sense of the impossible rather than the possible. Greg Combet’s appearance on Lateline tonight was refreshing in this respect, as it enabled us to conceive of what a more unashamedly social democratic electoral agenda might look like, and although I think Rudd is playing a superb game of electoral politics, it’s an agenda which I very strongly suspect would also enjoy electoral success if only Labor had the courage to articulate it clearly.

Combet was superb.

“Will they respect the right of employees individually to freely choose to be a member of a union and to be represented by a union, and secondly will they respect the right of employees to collectively bargain if the majority of them want it,” he said.

“I think if they can come to grips with those two important rights for employees I think there’s every chance of coming up with a really good industrial relations system.

“It’s just not surprising that companies like Rio Tinto have objected to the Labor Party’s industrial relations policy when that policy respects international human rights.”

Mind you the interview on Lateline was funnier even, I love how Bishop can attack the AEC for their ideal of “instilling a sense of wonder,” yet it is sage wisdom when it comes out of the mouth of the PM. Tony Jones really hammered how an the hypocrisy of Howard’s critique of Labour’s education policy as “almost soulless and [a] narrow form of national economic service.â€? I don’t know whether the ARC veto man, P.P. McGuiness that you appointed seem to care much about this “sense of wonder.”

TONY JONES: Help us out here Julie Bishop, is the ultimate purpose of education to prepare students for the work place, or is it also to instil a sense of wonder about ideas?

JULIE BISHOP: It’s clearly a combination. As I said earlier, education is the fundamental, it’s the essential, it’s the enduring building block for a cohesive society -

TONY JONES: But you’re comfortable are you, with that term, ‘a sense of wonder’?

JULIE BISHOP: Well I know where you’re coming from with that terminology and, of course, education must fire students’ imagination. They must have the capacity to learn, they must be taught to learn over their life time and they must develop a love of learning.

TONY JONES: Here’s where I’m coming from, because our viewers may not know. I use the expression ’sense of wonder’ particularly because the Prime Minister is attacking the Australian Education Union for using it. He suggests that they, according to him, suggest that literacy and numeracy tests can’t assess a child’s sense of wonder, something you obviously believe should be part of the education system?

Before I put the Casingbroke Estate on this (and let us not mention anything to Lady Fiona) we need for the respective blowouts to go over $2. We then have a cert. We’d need a couple of mil, EC. Anything salted away in the mattress old boy?