Christian Kerr writes:

An Australian abroad – Simon Jackman at Stanford’s Department of Political Science – offers some views of his own on the Prime Minister’s future and the seat of Bennelong:

Malcolm Mackerras has been on this one for a while: that Bennelong is increasingly a marginal seat and if it looks sufficiently dodgy, Howard will resign, rather than risk the ignominy of losing his seat. Malcolm’s latest serve on this appeared in Crikey on May 22, 2006…

My own take is that if Howard really needed or wanted to shift seats, he could. Fancy the Liberal Party tossing Menzies overboard if Kooyong had become drifted into electoral marginality, say, 10 years into his tenure as prime minister (circa 1960). Not likely.

Well, if the boundaries go wrong for the PM, there’s a lifeboat standing by. Right next to Bennelong is Mitchell, held by Alan Cadman for more than 30 years.

It’s almost as if he’s been covering for his friend the PM.