Well, the election is on for November 24, and unless John Howard somehow pulls a rabbit out of his hat, he is headed for a substantial loss.

Not surprisingly, Piers Akerman in the Sunday Telegraph is leading the cheer squad for Howard.  Hardly surprising, but today’s column hardly pulls any punches. According to Piers, Rudd is unfit to be prime minister due to several flaws of character, namely “an unalloyed ruthlessness, a lack of his loyalty to anything but his own short-term political ambitions and his projection of a carefully constructed image that has little or nothing to do with Rudd the man”.  Further, “Everything he does, every word he utters, comes from a person who is totally absorbed in his mission to get ahead no matter what the cost and no matter who has to be jettisoned in the process.”.

Ok, what do we make of a man desperately clinging to power, unable to face up to the need for a transition in his own party, willing to do or say anything for political gain, making random policy announcements and throwing taxpayers’ money around like there’s no tomorrow.  Not to mention the man who has presided over the most blatant abuse of government advertising for party political purposes that Australia has ever seen.

News Limited seems to be trying its hardest to cheer the government on …this last week they’ve had the amazing Vote-a-matic on their site.  Then trumpeted that the results of this show that Australians back the PM on the issues – the message underlying that presumably being that we should vote on substance rather than personality and other criteria, and that inevitably means we should vote for the government.  Slight problem though is that the survey used to generate this result was ridiculously shallow, the choices given in many questions were absolutely banal, and the whole thing completely lacked credibility or any rigour.

While on electioneering matters, it didn’t take long to see my first ad of the campaign (that is, one paid for by the Liberal Party, not a Liberal Party ad paid for by taxpayers … been seeing those for months).  I think it was during the news tonight, and featured Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan with their L plates.  Negative campaigning very quick off the blocks this election.