POLL POSITION: It's the 'real' Julia, stupid

Poll Position brings you the thrills and spills of the federal election campaign, with daily polling updates, until the Australian people have spoken. For full news and commentary coverage, click here.



August 3, 4pm – It's the 'real Julia', stupid

Tony Abbott might have refused a debate on the economy, but Julia Gillard, emboldened by this afternoon's interest rate decision, is already in front of the cameras debating him.

At a media conference in Newcastle today she seemed to oscillate between 'old' and 'real' Julia – questions that could be turned to Labor's management of the economy were full of passion and vehemence, those that couldn't were handled well rehearsed deflections.

One reporter asked her about Tony Abbott's gaffe from earlier in the day – he'd replied to a question on Gillard's debate u-turn by saying: "Are you suggesting to me that when it comes from Julia, no doesn't mean no?"
"Mr Abbott's words are a matter for Mr Abbott,” said Old Julia with cold precision.

Was Lindsay Tanner the source of the leak, as was rumoured earlier today? "I'm not going to be diverted by that,” said 'old' Julia.

But on the question of whether rates would always be lower under Labor, 'real' Julia sallied forth: "I won't say the deceptive and misleading things said by members of the Liberal Party [which has frequently used this slogan] … The RBA is independent of government but there are some things government can do, like investing in the skills and capacity of the Australian economy … by building trade training centres… but building infrastructure like the NBN…” and so on.

Debate or no debate, Labor will not miss an opportunity to bring the discussion back to 'the economy' in next week and a half, and away from Kevin Rudd, the Labor coup, Tim Mathieson and last week's highly damaging cabinet leaks.

August 3, 2.40pm - Breed now or later?

Businesses providing entertainment to 30-somethings – chic restaurants, bars, cinemas and the like – should prepare for a quiet spell next spring if the Coalition wins power.

Early October 2011, you see, is the ideal time to stay home and copulate to take advantage of Tony Abbott's revised paid parental leave scheme, which will see stay-at-home parents paid at the mother's full wage, up to an income cap of $150,000 per annum for up to 26 weeks.

Would-be parents more certain of a Labor win will have already wined, dined and reclined – Labor's scheme starts in 2011. However, all is not lost if Abbott takes his place at the head of the nation's table. He promises to pay Labor's 'minimum wage' benefit until the July 2012 commencement of his own scheme.

As detailed well ahead of the launch in The Australian, the levy imposed to fund the scheme has been cut from 1.7 per cent to 1.5 per cent for large businesses – though SMEs are exempt. The impost takes corporate Australia's company tax under Abbott up to 30.5 per cent, while Labor will take only 29 per cent (unless you're a miner and counting the cost of the MRRT).

This dramatic one-up-manship by the Coaltion will be welcomed by higher-income women, though basic demography says it is lower socioeconomic groups that have more children – and they'll wonder why they're getting so little, relatively, for each one.

But none of this should obscure how far behind we were on this issue until Labor's paid parental leave legislation was passed in June. As Natasha Stott Despoja wrote in February :
"Australia is woefully behind on this issue. We are one of only two OECD countries without some form of paid leave on the birth of a child and around two thirds of Australian women have no access to paid maternity leave.”

That's all changed for the better. The only question remaining for couples is 'when?'


August 3, 2.35pm - Julia ducks a missile

"… all writing is a campaign against cliche. Not just cliches of the pen but cliches of the mind and cliches of the heart” - Martin Amis, The War Against Clich

Following Amis' argument, Poll Position refuses to write the words that perch on commentators' lips across the nation this afternoon, following the RBA's decision to leave interest rates on hold at 4.5 per cent. Unlike John Howard in 2007, Gillard gets to emit a long sigh of relief that rates weren't increased just weeks from the poll.

So, Julia Gillard has ducked a missile. She's evaded an angry beast. She's side-stepped a land mine… oh, very well, she's 'dodged a bullet'. You can't say I didn't try.


August 3, 10.30am - Cracks in Gillard's 'strong economy'

Politicians always want to win, though sometimes they should have the good sense to lose. If Business Spectator stalwart Steve Keen is right, this campaign may be just the fight to throw. He's predicting that the RBA will soon be forced to cut rates – while most economists, including Adam Carr today, still predict further tightening.

Keen is predicting 3.5 per cent rates within a year (they are currently 4.5 per cent) which might, to the uninformed political hack, look like good news.

The question both sides should be asking, however, is why the RBA might cut when Labor's boasting of 350,000 jobs created in a year, the dollar and share market are up and CPI is still above the RBA target band of 2 to 3 per cent.

Keen's thesis goes like this: borrowing has slowed markedly in recent months and Australians are 'only' piling on $60 billion in new debt per year. This he says, is just enough to buy the new housing stock coming onto the market – not enough to fund price rises in the still-strongish volumes of existing home sales.

Throw the chance of commodity price weakness into the mix and all the strutting and preening of Labor in the past year starts to look a little thin – yes, we avoided recession when virtually every other developed nation was going backwards, and yes resources- and stimulus-driven employment is strong, but there's an element of unsustainability to both these trends.

The next government could run headlong into the quicksand of falling house prices, a dip in commodity prices and terms of trade (even a temporary fall can hit employment), import-induced inflation, and GDP heading south. This would hit the tax revenues that both parties are using to fund their election promises, but would be amplified for a Labor government relying on MRRT revenues. Those are probably not on Julia Gillard's list of points for the 'debate on the economy' she challenged Tony Abbott to yesterday.

Okay, so that's the 'glass-half-empty' view of the Australian economy – but as house prices data last week and this week showed, both Labor and the Coalition should know that our post-GFC good fortune won't last for ever.


August 3, 8am - Why won't Tony dance?

With every passing hour Julia Gillard looks more like the shy girl at a party, getting increasingly boisterous with each glass of punch. Having politely said 'no' to Tony Abbott when he asked her to dance in two more televised debates, she's now staggered onto the floor to take a swing at him.

Gillard yesterday performed a tactical volte-face by accepting Channel Seven's offer to debate Abbott on Sunday evening: "I'd be happy to be in it. I want it to be about the economy … That's at the centre of this campaign ...”

Abbott's answer? "The Prime Minister repeatedly refused to have the three debates Labor committed to when she was ahead in the polls," he told The Australian. "I don't see why I should abandon plans to visit electorates around Australia because the Prime Minister's campaign is in trouble."

A perfectly fair-minded and logical response, to be sure. But what have fairness or logic got to do with it? By sitting this one out, Abbott will not only look scared on the all-important issue of 'the economy', but at a stroke he has anointed Gillard as the official underdog in this campaign – something to mull over while the 'real Julia' struts her stuff on the floor with, she tells us, new-found disregard for 'safe' moves.


August 3, 7.30am – From blue to green

Good news for the Greens' most likely lower-house contender, seat of Melbourne candidate Adam Bandt – his Liberal opponent in the four-way tussle, has confirmed that his how-to-vote card will list Bandt second. No news yet on who the Australian Sex Party will preference in the seat (or, indeed, who they have selected to run), but as noted previously, if it is not Bandt, the Sex Party could draw protest votes away from the Greens and give them as preferences to a major party (most likely Labor).

As Bandt told Poll Position last week, the significance of winning a House of Reps seat is huge, because it would give the 38-year-old former lawyer the opportunity to give at least the Greens' opinion on every piece of legislation that passed through that house – before his colleagues tore it to shreds in the Senate, that is.


August 3, 7am – Punter's update

As noted previously, the polls and the wagers in this campaign often head in different directions. Yesterday Poll Position wondered if the new Essential poll would shift betting prices overnight, or be dismissed by punters as 'noise'.

The Australian today reports that over the course of the campaign Centrebet has revised its prices for Labor and Coalition wins from $1.20 and $4.70 respectively at the start of the campaign, to $1.54 and $2.40.

Over at Betfair, where punters using the 'betting exchange' collectively set prices in the same way traders set prices on the ASX, odds did indeed shift overnight. From pricing Labor and Coalition wins yesterday at $1.66 and $2.46, the odds have widened again this morning to $1.53/$2.82.

Was this due to the Essential poll? Perhaps. Or maybe punters are just putting 'real' odds on the 'real' Julia.


Read previous Poll Position posts here.