This election must surely rank as one of the oddest in Australian electoral history. Starting as a phony war, continuing as a surreal non-event, plagued by leaks and non-sequitters and now, brim-filled with ex-leaders various interventions, it seems that the unpredictability of events and the potential for voter-volatility may only heighten in the final two weeks.
Andrew Peacock, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Mark Latham, John Howard and Kevin Rudd are all players in this campaign so far, to lesser or greater degrees. The former PM Rudd looms like the elephant in the tally room, though he may have made his peace with the new PM now. Mr Fraser thinks the Coalition is not ready for office (he did resign from the Liberal Party recently). Bob Hawke has swanned in with warnings about the Tories, as he likes to call them. Mark Latham has monstered into the campaign like a, well, village idiot, actually. And John Howard I would just like to forget about, period.
Generally, they have been distractions from the real issues, issues which are buried beneath the aforementioned nonsense (see para 1). So, distractions within distractions.
Meanwhile, the Government has clawed back to be just in front in the polls, and well ahead, still, in the betting odds. Eleven days to go now, in an election that is truly going down to the wire.
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