About this time of year, back in 1992, one of the big guns of the Gallery made a remarkable discovery.

They realised Paul Keating and the then GG, Bill Hayden, would be crossing paths on some bush airstrip on a Sunday afternoon. For a few days it became conventional wisdom that an election would be called then.

It was absobloodylutely stupid with hindsight, but that’s how politics works. Particularly when elections are in the air and the Gallery wants a change of government.

Indeed, most of the conventional wisdom from 15 years ago looks bloody stupid nowadays.

The Gallery – with a few notable exceptions – called the Keating/Hewson clash wrong. To cover their a-ses they christened it “the unlosable election” and laid all the blame at Hewson’s feet.

The Gallery are itching for an election and a change of government once again. They’re not the only ones.

Kevin Rudd pointed out to his Caucus colleagues when they met this morning that we were well into the campaign this time in 2004. He said the “decent thing to do” was for the Prime Minister to call the poll. He advised his MPs not to waste time acting as commentators on the Liberal leadership. That’s advice we all should heed.

John Howard has got the government where it is and he will either lead it into opposition or a far more surprising win than Keating’s victory 1993.

We don’t know when he’ll call a poll, so rather than speculating let’s just look at the absolute fundamentals of the Prime Minister’s positions.

Australians don’t like John Howard. They weren’t itching to make him PM in 1996. More of them voted against him in 1998 than for the return of his government. He won respect in 2001 and he was less of a risk in 2004.

Ignore the myths. John Howard has never really connected with Australian voters. He’s been lucky – and had the economy. But the luck seems to have gone and he and his colleagues have failed in their economic pitch. He’s already warned that he has no rabbits to pull out of the hat. That couldn’t have been more starkly demonstrated than on AM yesterday morning.

When he was asked “How do you win the argument for the future, how do you stop people from thinking that you are part of Australia’s past?” he started to reply with “Well, I guess the best way you do that is to demonstrate that your plans for the future are better than the other person’s”.

The interviewer cut in with a “But what are they, Prime Minister?”

He was left flat footed and responded with an “I beg your pardon?” to give himself time to think.

“What are those plans for the future?” the interviewer asked again.

The PM began to reply, then changed tack and said “I don’t have time on a short interview like this to detail all of them.”

Actually, it’s more that he just doesn’t have time – full stop.