In 2004, prime minister John Howard’s personal standing in the electorate had nosedived, in part thanks to the muscular new “cut-through” opposition leader. In particular, lots of voters believed he habitually lied to avoid responsibility, and that you couldn’t trust what he said.

So he reclaimed the word “trust” and turned it into “who do you trust to run the economy?” – interest rates in particular. The rest, as they say …

In 2010, can Kevin Rudd reclaim his Achilles’ heel? Running on ”waffle” doesn’t work, and nor does “this election will be about gutlessness”. Those words are unsalvageable.

But all elections are about the 2004 Howard version of “trust”, whether the word is used or not. And no matter how loathed the incumbent, they all turn on how “safe” the opposition is.

Update: it belatedly occurs that the most applicable version would be “This election will be about courage.” Something like “the courage to stand up for all Australians, against sectional interests [read big miners etc], the courage to keep us out of recession, to change your mind when the facts change …”

Hmm, a bit risky.

Possum makes a fair point (once you get through the singing and dancing and sledging) about the timing of the passing of the CPRS legislation after a joint sitting that would follow a double dissolution. He reckons there wouldn’t be enough time after that to put it into place by 1 July 2011 (the start date in the legislation). He may be right.

Possum also reckons it’s “stupid”, “idiotic”, “lazy” etc to call Kevin Rudd a coward for dropping his beloved “greatest moral challenge of our time”.

But a political coward our Kevin most certainly is.

For one thing, he has known about these timing matters ever since Tony Abbott became leader. And it’s not as if the issue was likely to cost him the election - be it normal or DD. Perhaps Rudd’s overarching gutlessness has been in never having the confidence to try to sell … well, anything to the electorate. Some explaining of the ETS over 2008 and 2009 would have helped.

Rudd is even more politically timid than John Howard - and that’s saying something.*

Possum’s argument that a DD would not be in Labor’s interests is based on Antony Green’s calculations which assume an identical vote to the 2007 election and so are probably a bit pessimistic for the government. Even on those numbers, both the Coalition and Labor do more poorly under a DD than a half-Senate, which is not necessarily a bad net result for Labor. It creates the slim chance that Labor plus independents can form an alternative majority to Labor plus Greens, which would give the government flexibility. And of course the new Senate would take place immediately, not mid 2011. (I’m talking about life in Senate general now, not the ETS.)

But still …

God invented cowardice for a reason. It enables people to fight another day. It may not make for great government, but some people obviously reckon dropping the ETS increases the chances of a Labor victory –  and they may be right.

Australians still want something done about climate change, and the opposition’s general unbelief in and unwillingness to do much about it will still cause it problems.

But politically, Rudd’s addiction to short-termism means lack of investment in his future persona. There will be little to enable voters to say “like him or not, you know where he stands” etc etc. That may well be a first for prime minister, but it’s likely to be a problem at future elections, not this one. And in the long run we are all dead (or off to the UN or wherever.)

* Howard was a serial backflipper, and the fact that his fans have to reach waaay back to 1998 (the GST election) to find an example of his alleged bravery says it all.

Me in Inside Story. Right here.

Antony Green and the mysterious case of the fading curtains

See Antony’s ranking of Queensland state electorate by 1992 daylight saving vote. Huge geographic divide.

Australia in the world: the song remains the same

Apparently Barack Obama will tell Kerry O’Brien tonight about the wonderful, meeting of the minds relationship he has with our PM. Oi oi oi. [Update: here. It's just a snapshot, but that's one pained look on Obama.]

What else is he gonna say - ”your guy is just the leader of a friendly middle-order country; as a person I can take him or leave him”?

Forests were massacred to tell of the “special” Bush-Howard relationship. Only in Australia is this sort of stuff taken at face value.

Malcolm’s Twitter resignation a first?

Malcolm Turnbull announced he is not recontesting Wentworth via Twitter yesterday.

Announcement’s contents hardly a surprise, but medium was possibly a first?

Would not be human if didn’t link to this (and before that this). Let’s watch for a new member for Kingsford-Smith in 2010 .

Tony DeNiro

Rather last week, I know, but me in Inside Story on Tony Abbott - and federal pollies in general – and acting.

Acting piece here.

UK election: hung parliament?

Britain goes to polls on 6 May. As you know, I pooh-pooh hung parliament! talk at any opportunity, but of course in some circumstances it is more likely than others. Under proportional representation, obviously. And any time a large number of independents/third party is expected.

In the United Kingdom about one in ten House of Commons seats are expected to be Liberal-Democrat. That’s roughly equivalent to the last term in South Australia, although “hung parliament!” was over-done last month there too. At the federal level, imagine expecting about 15 independents out of 150.

Anyway, as a non-expert in British elections, but assuming they’re rather similar to ours: Labour has been in power for 13 years, their poll numbers are terrible, opposition leader David Cameron is kind of wimpy and unthreatening and middle of the road and not promising much.

So conditions ripe for change. Most likely outcome is surely a Tory win in own right.

And I finally collect big bucks from a certain Tasmanian.

An unpopular state Labor government survives despite most people voting to eject it. South Australian Labor will only get more unpopular, and all else being equal Kevin Rudd will probably do a bit worse in that state’s portion of his election this year than he would have with a Redmond government. But you can’t really wish ill on your state colleagues, can you?

Increased federal Labor majority

Contrary to folks who seem to think that doing badly at state level augers poorly for a federal party (11 and a half years of Howard government, anyone?), I’m still firm believer in an increased Rudd majority (defined as >83 seats for Labor) this year. Yesterday’s debate did not dispell this: Tony Abbott will be difficult to vote for.

On the other hand, all these unpopular state governments won’t be helping federal Labor.

My bets: next stop Victoria

Things are kind of developing as anticipated here and early here. My feeling that John Brumby is gone in November is firming (don’t you worry about the Reasons, they will appear as the polls narrow and then the Coalition takes the lead). When Centrebet pays out on SA, I’ll be throwing it on the Victorian Coalition (already down to $3.75), with a view to probably once again hedging/laying off before election day.

In November 2008, in the Australian, Tom gave the nation a solemn assurance. He wrote that John Howard, unlike Paul Keating, would be a silent ex-PM, content in retirement. He would not feel the need to regularly pontificate on political events.

If Howard privately observes the future political scene with disgust, frustration and the latent yearning of a former campaigner, it’s a fair bet he won’t air his views publicly … Relevance Deprivation Syndrome, the term coined by Gareth Evans shortly after his retirement in 1999*, is not likely to afflict our second longest-serving prime minister.”

We have the greatest respect for Mr Switzer and it gives us no pleasure to declare him a liar. But on this issue, a liar he was. For it has turned out that Mr Howard, like his predecessor, kept his head down for a while but then found the temptation too much. He now puts his two cents in regularly, on just about everything under the sun: stimulus spending, boat people, relations with China – you name it, he talks about it.

This week we got another spray about what the Rudd government is doing wrong (answer: everything), including this self-third-personing formulation:

I think a lot of people are now saying, `OK, you’ve had two years, you’ve spent a lot of Howard’s money — well it’s not Howard’s money, it’s our money Howard saved for you. What else have you done?’”

Seventeen months ago we, like millions of Australians, took Tom Switzer at his word. We were wrong to do so.

Mr Switzer must now apologise to the country for his misleading 2008 statements. [Tongue removed from cheek.]

*Actually coined in 1996.

For example, Bob Carr’s biographer Andrew West believed his guy was the best politician in the country; I had a different opinion.

(I reckon the only one out of the box was Peter Beattie.)

Anyway, last week’s Galaxy poll in South Australia (see Pollbludger) really shows the Mike Rann gloss is no more. (Newspoll wasn’t great for him either, but it was presumably taken over three months and asked “if an election was held today” rather than “who will you vote for on Saturday 20 March?”)

The headline 51 to 49 2pp is, as you know, estimated from the primary votes, and with such low total major party primaries (78%) there’s lots of leeway there. (Same applies to Newspoll.)

But Labor is in trouble, for sure, and it’s not really correct that the Libs will need 53% to govern in their own right as Dennis Atkins asserted on Insiders. That’s taking pendulums too literally.

All of December and early January’s predictions anticipations still stand (including the increased federal Labor majority, despite continuing prime ministerial dysfunction – most recent exhibit being the Kristina Keneally encounter).