Who won the news cycle? Dogs and Magpies to the rescue

There was finally something for Julia Gillard to smile about.

For a Victorian there is nothing more important at a winter weekend than victory for your footy team and the Western Bulldogs delivered on Sunday. And while she might not have actually played full forward, Ms Gillard was able to share in the reflected glory of Barry Hall.

And as for the real Julia, those fashionable outfits were left in the cupboard as she brought out her jeans and the red, white and blue scarf to join in the ceremonial singing of Sons of the West:

Sons of the west
Red white and blue
We come out snarling
Bulldogs through and through
Bulldogs bite and bulldogs roar
We give our very best
But you can’t beat the boys of the bulldog breed
We’re the boys of the mighty west.

Get used to the words because the Bulldog sentiments tally with her promise to cast aside the campaign bosses who make campaigning “too managed and too tightly scripted” and presumably Barry Hall has given her some advice on how to bring pack the political biff.

The PM’s pin-up boy shows how to make a political point

Sure enough she needs to do something different.

As a rough rule the ABC and the commercial television networks tend to give each side equal time on their news bulletins which is why the parties work so hard at devising photogenic events that will tell a story they want told. Which is all very good in theory but it only works if there is virtually no alternative to showing the day’s party line. Unfortunately for Julia Gillard, the Labor leader, Kevin Rudd has been a major distraction on many days last week that the journalists find far more interesting than anything she has to say.

On Friday at the start of the campaign day it was not anything that Kevin was quoted as saying but a story in the Sydney Morning Herald saying he had to been asked to take a more important role in a wavering campaign. Not as vicious a background briefing as the one earlier in the week but Ms Gillard felt obliged to comment that she knew nothing of it.

Then, after being rushed off to hospital for a gall bladder operation, Mr Rudd, through his spokesman, struck again with some words that made Ms Gillard look a bit stupid. Yes, when Kevin got out of the hospital he was looking forward to campaigning outside his own electorate to help his colleagues get a Gillard government elected. Pretty small beer of a story under normal conditions but sufficient to take away that valuable television time from the things Labor had hoped to be seen talking about.

The upshot was another clear campaigning win for the Coalition and with Saturday morning’s newspapers featuring an opinion poll showing that Labor was now behind, the Crikey Election Indicator moved again in the Coalition’s favour.

Campaign day Saturday saw Labor’s first bit of good news for ages — Collingwood trounced Carlton and went to the top of the AFL ladder. If only the Magpies can keep on winning until election day there might yet be a swing to the Government in Victoria come election day. And if that’s all a bit confusing to you then have a look at my piece earlier this month on the very latest research on voting behaviour showing that a win by a high attendance or championship football team on the eve of a political election results in the incumbent party gaining an additional 2.42 percentage points and 2.30 percentage points respectively.

Not that a solitary football game victory was enough to stem the tide for Labor. Yet again it was a campaign victory for the Coalition and yet again Kevin Rudd diverted attention from whatever Julia Gillard was talking about.

And so to Sunday which I scored a campaigning draw. Labor still had the dead weight of Kevin Rudd in hospital hanging around its neck. Alexander Downer’s intervention with some Rudd criticisms did take away the impact of a re-announcement of a proposal to increase superannuation payments for the masses and the introduction of a low fee super option, but the former Foreign Minister made it easy to paint the Liberal campaign as getting dirty by playing the man.