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POLL POSITION: Rudd bites back

Rob Burgess, Election 2010

Published 9:00 AM, 30 Jul 2010 Last update 12:03 PM, 1 Aug 2010





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 1, 11.15am - Rudd bites back

Kevin Rudd might never wield any serious political power again (despite Wayne Swan's frequent statements to the contrary), but he might be about to get richer.

From his recovery bed in a Brisbane hospital, the deposed PM today said he was 'seeking legal advice' over a damning allegation made in Sydney's Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

The report suggests that Rudd was such a prolific leaker while in opposition that he had effectively become an anti-Labor weapon, wielded by then Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer against Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Laurie Brereton.

At the time of writing, the article in question was still on the Sunday Telegraph site, replete with a image of Kevin Rudd depicted James-Bond-style as 'double agent' Kevin 007.

Yet News Ltd stable-mate The Australian, along with the ABC, is running Downer's denial of the story. Downer said in a statement:

"The interpretation placed on my comments to the Sunday Telegraph is wrong. Kevin Rudd was not used by me or other members of the Liberal Party as a so-called 'double agent' to leak material against other members of the Labor Party."

If Rudd sues for defamation, the maximum payout he could be awarded would be around $280,000 (payouts were capped at $250,000 on January 1, 2007, but are indexed to inflation).

If, however, his lawyers successfully sued for criminal damages, the payout amount is uncapped – but that would require his lawyers to prove something more malicious than the facts of the story would seem to indicate. But don't think Mr Rudd won't ask them to look into it.

August 1, 11am - Did Tony shoot too soon?

Rumour has it that Tony Abbott plans to counter Julia Gillard's charm offensive in Women's Weekly last week - the mag, which has a readership almost one-third the size of the entire female voting public, ran a glowing 13 page special on the PM, glamour-shoot and all. Now Abbott is said to be about to appear in a seven-page special in Men's Health magazine.

Sadly for Abbott, he threw away his chance to cut through to far larger Women's Weekly audience by appearing in that magazine in January. The article featured glamorous photos of Abbott alongside his daughters - but he ruined the effect by discussing their virginity in the accompanying article. The storm of controversy at the time only added to the perception that Tony has a 'woman problem'.

Moreover, Poll Position can't help wondering why Abbott's advisers didn't put off the Women's Weekly special until closer to the likely election date - all a little premature, as the might say at Men's Health.


July 31, 11am - Abbott takes the lead

Wow, that's got to hurt. Labor's week spent on the back foot trying to deflect questions on cabinet leaks looks to have done serious damage in its poll results.

The latest Nielsen poll, published today, shows a dramatic shift in voting intention, with the two-party preferred vote moving from 54/46 in favour of Labor a week ago, to 52/48 in favour of the Coalition.

The negative element of the shift can be seen in a fall in Julia Gillard's preferred prime minister rating, down from 62 per cent to 49 per cent, giving her an 8 point leader over Tony Abbott on 41 per cent.

The positive element should not be discounted, however. As noted yesterday (see below), the Coalition has had a strong week, launching a suite of policies to tempt swing voters in the SME/small contractor sector.

Nonetheless, all the chatter today is of the damage done by the ongoing leaks crisis afflicting Labor.

Yet another leak emerged this morning, with The Australian reporting: sources have told The Weekend Australian that when Ms Gillard was deputy prime minister she regularly failed to attend cabinet's national security committee meetings. Instead, she reportedly sent her former bodyguard and junior staff member Andrew Stark.

The PM has refused to refute the allegation, sticking with her line that she will never breach cabinet confidentiality. Further, the most likely source of the leaks, Kevin Rudd is temporarily off the scene, having been hurried into hospital to have his gall bladder removed (is it any coincidence that it is this organ that stores bile?).

Complicating the picture somewhat is the news that Rudd has issued a statement saying that he is, after all, happy to campaign outside his own electorate a shift from his previous "Griffith only" comments to journalists attempting to quiz him on national affairs.

Finally, while the nation's commentariat is happy to run sheep-like into the "Abbott's ahead" paddock, those with wagers riding on the election result are reserving their judgement. Betfair is reporting that a Labor win is now priced at $1.58, but the Coalition still trails badly at $2.84. That said, the odds have moved a significant distance from last week's prices of $1.28/$4.00 respectively.

July 30, 2.30pm - Labor stomps on Rudd's turf

The plot thickens. Labor has announced that it will hold its official campaign launch in Brisbane on August 16, and Julia Gillard has confirmed that local resident and member for Griffith Kevin Rudd will be invited to appear in a conga-line of past PMs.

This raises some difficult questions. If Rudd refuses to attend – he’s already ruled out campaigning for Labor federally – does that give Gillard the moral pretext for reneging on her pledge to make him a senior minister after the election?

If he does attend, is it because he’s been incentivised with fresh assurances that there’s a top job waiting for him ‘on the other side’? This would seem to be the only incentive required – Rudd does not need the help of the federal campaign to retain Griffith, which he holds with a 12.3 per cent margin.

Moreover, it seems it will be the only favour Gillard asks of Rudd (apart from keeping his mouth shut and any sensitive cabinet information to himself) – Gillard told the ABC in Perth today that neither she, nor the Party, had approached Rudd to campaign with her as had been rumoured earlier in the day.


July 30, 2pm - Change slogan

Business Spectator’s favourite political stirrer, Natasha Stott Despoja, has noticed something awry in the return of Cheryl Kernot from the political wilderness. Kernot, who plans to run for the Senate in NSW has come up with a catchy name for her campaign platform, ‘Change Politics’ – the same slogan Stott Despoja used to take the Democrats into the 2001 election. Watch the ever-youthful Stott Despoja delivering the party line nine years ago.




July 30, 1.30pm - A real lemon

Readers may like to watch the ABC’s Gruen Nation next Wednesday for the experts’ opinion of the new Liberal Party ad, 'Labor Lemons'. In the meantime, hold your sides before watching the Liberal Party subject Kevin, Julia, Penny and Peter to its devastating wit. Kevin O’Lemon. Ha. Aha. Ahahahaha.

Can’t wait for the follow up – Julia Rhubarb.

July 30, 11:30am – Will Labor fall with house prices?

Australian house prices fell 0.7 per cent (seasonally adjusted) in June according to RP Data–Rismark’s Hedonic Home Value Index. That breaks a 17-month growth spurt and will drag down consumer confidence among heavily indebted outer-suburban home-owners.

The big question is whether they’ll blame Labor as they watch their debt-to-equity ratios tip in the wrong direction.

The RBA has led the world with its pre-emptive monetary tightening program – indeed, several developed economies, particularly the US, wish they had further room to ease policy rather than tighten. But this all lends weight to the Coalition’s impossible-to-prove claim that “rates will always be lower under a Coalition government”.

In fact, these numbers leave Labor wide open to attack. Just two days ago, the Australian National Audit Office released a report criticising the government for, among other things, spending the stimulus money too late into the GFC to be of any stimulatory use, and skewing funding in favour of Labor and independent electorates (See POLL POSITION: Statistical porkies, July 28, 8.40am).

So expect the Coalition to come out fighting with “big borrowing and porkbarrelling Labor forced the RBA to push up interest rates” – the obvious cause of buyers’ reluctance to borrow for house purchases.  

Incidentally, though rate hikes are the ‘obvious’ cause of the cooling of the housing market, Steve Keen has argued a number of  times in Business Spectator that the house price turn represents the end of a long-term structural problem with debt (Housing nears the precipice, June 10) – though it's doubtful either side of politics will want to mention that.

Poll Position predicts a Coalition TV ad will be released shortly in which a deep gravelly voice says “…the same people who destroyed the value of your home” – or words to that effect.

July 30, 9am - The Wayne and Joe show

Calling the leaders' debate on Sunday ‘dull’ just doesn't do it justice – it could hardly have been less animated if Gillard and Abbott delivered their lines from inside beige sacks. But take heart – a debate between Wayne Swan and Joe Hockey planned for the National Press Club on August 9 should provide a few more sparks.

Both speakers are no doubt booked in for the pre-debate Party lobotomies that are supposed to prevent them saying anything off-script – but the truth is there’s no holding these two guys down.

We might not get an update on Paris Hilton’s sexual activity from Hockey, or see Swan break down and sob “it was Kevin – Kevin did it!”, but there should be plenty of fireworks over government debt (not really an issue, but eminently sellable as such), the question of whether it was stimulus spending that saved the economy, and whether or not the MRRT will turn Australian into the next Argentina.

So put your favourite bevvie on ice and plump the cushions on the sofa – this one might actually be worth watching.


July 30, 8.30am – Backslapping at Coalition HQ

A little back-slapping would seem justified at Coalition campaign HQ. Two new opinion polls show a marked narrowing of the gap between the Coalition and Labor’s two-party-preferred votes. And while there will be much talk of Labor ‘losing’ voters via its cabinet leaks scandal, there are good reasons to see this as the Coalition actively winning voters over.

The latest Galaxy poll result shows the Labor-Coaltion two-party preferred split has moved to 50/50, from 52/48 at the start of the week. The new Morgan Poll also shows a distinct shift – the two-party preferred Labor/Coalition split has narrowed to 53/47, from 55/45 a week ago.

While much of the media spotlight has been on the leaks issue, many swinging voters in the small contractor/SME sector will have drawn comfort from the Coalition’s small business support package.

The Abbott team has been criticised for increasing the overall business tax burden for large companies (down 1.5 per cent in company tax, but back up 1.7 per cent to fund the Coalition’s parental leave scheme). But SME owners, who are exempt from the parental leave levy, now face company tax of 28.5 per cent under Abbott, compared with 29 per cent under Gillard.

That’s not a huge difference for these ‘engine room of the economy’ voters. But add in plans to improve SME access to finance, the extension of ‘unfair contract’ protection to small businesses (these laws currently only protect consumers), a promise to retain the current tax treatment of ‘personal service’ income, and a host of other promises to cut red tape and encourage SME participation in policy formation, and the package looks like more than enough to shift the polls.


July 30, 7.30am - Rudd's Catch-22

Whether or not Kevin Rudd was the source of this week’s ‘parental leave/pensions’ leak is starting to look irrelevant: either Rudd is the leaker or, if he’s not, pretty much the entire Labor Party wants you to think he is.

Senior ALP sources told Poll Position yesterday that the Party mood was that Rudd must not make it back into cabinet if Gillard wins the election. "He’s too dangerous," said one. "He’d cause havoc if he was given any power after the election."

One former cabinet minister said he’d spoken with many union and ALP leaders in recent days who supported the theory that Rudd was the source of the leak, and said Mark Latham’s vociferous attacks on Rudd were justified. "Latham has said for years that he knows Rudd to be a frequent leaker. He [Latham] might be a bit mad, but he’s not a liar."

Latham stepped up his attack on Rudd late yesterday, telling Sky News that Rudd should come out and admit he was responsible for the leak: “It's the snake's way," he said. "It's unmanly and beneath an Aussie bloke to act this way."

Wayne Swan said on Wednesday night that "there will be a position for [Rudd] as a senior minister if we win the election" and he may sincerely believe that position. Yet elsewhere in the party, there seems barely a shred of support for bringing the former PM back into the fold.

Read previous Poll Position posts here.



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3 Comments


Joseph Ellul wrote:

Leaker or not, Rudd was the only presentable person with enough brains to put the Labor Party in government. The red bears that surrounded him could not hibernate long enough. We had a short winter and once these animals wake up there is no holding back on their appetite. Every single project these bears were given by Kevin was stuffed up. These bears could not even do a circus act and in the end finished by devouring the master inside the cage because they got the whip. Now even the retired bears are coming back in the cage to gnaw at the bones of what is left of the circus master. There is now a female Brutus handling the whip and the honey. Let the show begin.

30 Jul 2010 12:09 PM

Geoff Bolton wrote:

Leaker(s)? What about Kevin's former personal advisors – they lost the most ! (See POLL POSITION: Labor stomps on Rudd's turf, July 30.)

30 Jul 2010 6:06 PM

Walter Williams wrote:

What's new? Politicians leak all the time (See POLL POSITION: Rudd bites back, August 1).

What nonsense it would be if this issue was allowed to decide the election. Why can't we just calmly debate the real issues?

But of course, the media loves a "revealing' headline even if it does seem to be based on nonsense.

2 Aug 2010 9:38 AM



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