Going in to damage control. There’s nothing like a good old fashioned leak to try and take the heat out of an embarrassing political issue. Hence yesterday, we had the placed story for the Murdoch tabloids on the wonderful new agreement with State Governments which is going to put an end to those horrid public hospital waiting lists. That should put a stop to all that terribly negative criticism about our boy Kevin being all talk and no action when it comes to health.

And the papers largely bought the nonsense too. Sweeping health reforms would cut Victorian hospital emergency waiting times by half, said the Herald Sun in an apparent “Exclusive”.

“Waiting times for patients at Victorian hospital emergency wards would be slashed to four hours as part of sweeping health reforms.

“Victoria is already testing a four-hour target for emergency departments in three Melbourne hospitals.”

In Adelaide The Advertiser really did the spinners proud under a headline “SA leads new push to halve waiting times”. Premier Mike Rann, who faces a tough election fight on March 20, is leading the push for a national four-hour target. Most state governments aim to have patients admitted to a bed within eight hours of being identified as needing one. SA Health, however, has set a target of four hours for 90 per cent of patients.

Premier Rann could not have written that better himself but, then again, there’s not that much difference between him a Federal Labor Government hack.

Only the Sydney Daily Telegraph had the good sense to look behind the spoon feeding to reveal that “NSW hospitals would need thousands more beds if a bold national plan to slash waiting times in emergency departments is to succeed.”

Well I never. Talk about printing the economic text book and calling it news — The Australian this morning under the headline “Fine balance between rates and spending: RBA” quoted Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens telling us there is a trade-off between interest rates and budget spending, with a faster return to budget surplus allowing interest rates to be kept lower for longer.

The really matey scandal. That the Liberals and Nationals are as sycophantic when it comes to appeasing media barons as the Labor Government is shown by the relative silence from the Opposition on the scandalous decision to give the free-to-air television networks a $250 million handout. Quite properly there is plenty of criticism of the Mike Kaiser appointment to a wonderful job for the boy at $450,000 a year, but that amount is almost certainly nothing compared with the success fee that Wayne Goss will probably pocket for his efforts on behalf of the TV industry. This Prime Minister is as grubby as any we have had and Tony Abbott is every bit as weak as past Opposition Leaders when it comes to not having the courage to tackle the media oligopolists.

The start of something real or just a summer time aberration? The last set of figures from Newspoll, Nielsen and Morgan all suggest that things are getting closer in this federal election race. But is it just a little bit of summer madness with the Liberal/National vote soon to decline again? It seems like an appropriate time to get another opinion from readers as to their views. So what do you think the next Newspoll due out next Tuesday, will show?

Enter your best guesses on the entry form here of the primary vote that Newspoll will show for the major parties and others along with your estimate of the two party preferred position and the approval ratings for the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader.

We will reward the winner with a set of magnificent First Dog on the Moon socks with the winner being the person who’s closest to correct. In the event of a tie the first correct entry gets the goodies.

The scoring system is simple. If the Newspoll number is, say, 52 and you predict 52 you score 0; if 53 you get -1, for a 54 -2 etc. When we add up the scores for all the answers the person closest to zero wins.