Over the weekend, I read Annabel Crabb’s Rise of the Ruddbot.

It’s fascinating to take a trip back to a time when a Liberal leadership team of Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop seemed fanciful. Just as much as it’s weird to go back and read right wing columnists opining in the 2007 election campaign that if we voted for Kevin07, we’d really get Julia Gillard as PM some time in the parliament’s term.

Funny business, politics.

Reading Crabb’s account of Malcolm Turnbull’s fighting press conference as his leadership crumbled, I was struck by how so many of us citizens (and so many Liberals) thought we’d be seeing his warnings that the party he led risked becoming a “right wing fringe outfit” endlessly portrayed in Labor ads. Up until very recently, the default ALP advertising gambit would have been to feature vision of successive Liberal leaders and wannabes and has-beens all trashing each other gleefully.

But we’re not seeing those ads, and for an obvious reason.

In an era of short memories, the retooling of the Ruddbot as KRuddMP has enabled the Liberals to claim that their party represents experience and safety (although Bronwyn Bishop, Kevin Andrews and Philip Ruddock, notable Howard era returnees, don’t seem to feature in their campaign).

There’s more than one irony in the way both parties are trying to position themselves on the right side of the fear/security dichotomy in this campaign.

Cross-posted at the ABC’s Campaign Diary blog.

Now, the folks at Open Australia have put up a site where you can scan in and upload leaflets. It’s here.

We have noticed a tendency for all threads currently to devolve into general election threads. We’re not thrilled by it.

Please keep the general election campaign talk on these Election Open Threads, and keep discussions on the other posts focussed on the topic presented by the author. The one and only topic that is not welcome on principle on these Election Open Threads is Endless Rehashing of the Labor Leadership Change.

Off topic posts in other threads are liable to be summarily deleted at the discretion of the moderators.

Direct communication by political parties is also important, tending to trump the febrile discourse of the national print media in effectively communicating with electors.

Much of this also goes under the radar, particularly outside the cities, or the areas where journos themselves tend to live. An example is the direct dissing of Kevin Rudd in the ‘sustainability’ mailout Labor distributed in Macquarie last week.

This is your chance to tell us anything notable you’re receiving in your mailbox, and what you think it means. By all means scan stuff in, and link, should you wish.

I’m not really one for parties as such (if defined as a stack of people crammed into a kitchen and on a verandah or drinks with colleagues at a dreary suit bar) but I have been going to more gigs recently… last night Mr Mark and I caught The View From Madeleine’s Couch at The Press Club. Great OzBrazilian jazz, and I can recommend gin, lime and soda for those sultry and humid Brisbanian summer nights!

Live @ The Press Club, Brisbane