Abbott’s campaign gains a certain smugness

A certain smugness. Maybe it’s just relief at no longer looking as if they are facing the near annihilation that the pollsters were indicating last year, but there does seem to be a certain smugness creeping into the attitude of the Coalition with two weeks to go in this election campaign. It is a dangerous thing to happen and the opposition leader Tony Abbott is more to blame than anyone. He just cannot bring himself to consistently play the role of the battling underdog. Even if he occasionally remembers to say it his body language is increasingly that of a man who fancies he will soon be prime minister.

Maybe some real debate. They will be appearing one after the other and not alongside each other, but perhaps that means that the forum being planned by The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday in Sydney will actually result in some real debate. Goodness knows we could do with it. Anyway, my congratulations to the Tele for trying.

Some troubling figures. I wonder if figures like these will cause the Coalition to reconsider its policy of ending economic stimulus spending ASAP if it wins office on August 21? The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported this morning that Australian housing finance commitments for owner-occupied housing fell 3.9% in June, almost twice the market forecast of 2.0%. The Advantage Job Index fell by 1.3% in July with the worst-hit sectors being human resources, which fell 10.42%, and building and construction, down 9.4%. Hardly figures describing a boom time and enough to make you wonder what unemployment would be without the continuing public housing and school building components of the Labor stimulus package.

The Bureau’s figures show that in seasonally adjusted terms we have to go back to 2001 to find fewer dwellings financed.

The hunt is on. It is being billed as the world’s greatest frog hunt and the Australian gastric brooding frog, last seen back in 1985, is on the most wanted list. Conservation International is organising the search and says scientists are optimistic about the prospect of at least one rediscovery. The recent find in the southern Tablelands of NSW of the yellow-spotted bell frog after not being seen for 30 years has clearly given them hope.

The keen interest in the gastric brooding frogs of Australia comes partly from their raising tadpoles in their stomachs, which is something unique in the animal world. The production of stomach acid is turned off and the BBC reports medical researchers hoped that understanding how the frogs did it could lead to new treatments for stomach ulcers. But disappearance of the species in 1985 — probably another victim of chytridiomycosis — put paid to such notions.

(From the Conservation International website.)

Did David Cameron need to dock his tails? It’s good to see that class is alive and well as a political issue in modern Britain, but this piece from London’s Daily Telegraph does tell us something about political campaigning too. Public image is everything and to hell with a sister’s wedding.

The Prime Minister’s decision not to wear a morning suit at his sister’s wedding stemmed from an unfortunate incident involving plus-fours and a photographer, says Nigel Farndale…

Cameron learnt his lesson the hard way after posing for a photograph at a shooting party in 1998. Though he wasn’t actually carrying a 12-bore, he was wearing plus fours. The photograph re-emerged in 2007, causing him considerable embarrassment. It’s understandable, this nervousness about the long lens. When his sister decided to get married in April, days away from the General Election, she put her older brother in an invidious position. It went without saying that the dress code would be morning coats, but there would have been a feeding frenzy among the tabloids for an image of Dave in tails. So he had to opt for a lounge suit, and was the only man at the wedding wearing one.