• The Coalition’s campaign unit is finally up and running but still no match for the Labor machine. Transcripts are taking far longer to hit inboxes — there are some Liberal campaign transcripts still outstanding from yesterday afternoon, for example. The suspicion remains that the Liberals are under-resourced and out-gunned.
  • It’s only the first week but the Coalition’s stand-out performer is (I know this will shock you) Andrew Robb. He has been ubiquitous and on-point right from the kick-off. Yesterday he adroitly handled Labor claims that the education rebate had not been properly costed — “Hawker Britton 101” was a nice line. Joe Hockey, apart from his stoush with Kerry O’Brien, has been keeping a lower profile. In the good old days of Keating and Costello, treasurers and their opposite numbers were front-and-centre in campaigns. The Liberals are saying the shadow treasurer has been used in campaigning below the national media radar. That used to be called being kept out of sight. Will voters eventually notice that the shadow finance spokesman is doing all the economic work instead of the shadow treasurer?
  • The media obsess about Kevin Rudd and then use their obsessing about it as evidence that Rudd is “distracting” from the Labor campaign. Better yet, they do it on a day when neither leader campaigns. Classic media-is-always-right reporting. Labor can partly blame itself for deliberately pursuing a strategy of making the campaign as dull as possible in the hope it can sit on its lead til 21 August.
  • It wouldn’t be a Crikey election without serial candidate Stephen Mayne throwing his hat in the ring. Mayne, who broke Australia’s longest election drought since the Communist Party in 2008 when he was elected to Manningham Council, will stand for the Senate in Victoria on a no-pokies and (big thumbs up) pro-immigration platform.
  • The first key moment of the campaign for Labor will be voter reaction to the climate change policy Labor will unveil later today. A number of reports in both News Limited and Fairfax papers indicate the path to a carbon price will involve a “citizens’ assembly” to consider the issue. Labor’s cynical hardheads better hope voters don’t see this for what it is — the substitution of “consensus” and convenient delay for leadership. The Daily Telegraph has already — rightly — given it a serve. There’s every chance the Government will find a way to have an even worse climate change policy than the Liberals, a truly impressive feat.
  • The other component of the Labor announcement, for which there is no detail yet available, is its spending on energy efficiency and renewables. There is $650 million available for such measures — the funding left over, in accrual accounting terms, from the shelving of the CPRS, which despite being a “great big new tax”, was a giant, pollution-supporting hit to the Budget in its early stages. This enables some big ticket announcements that will give the impression of climate action — but nothing more than that. Will Labor roll them out all at once or dribble them out for maximum impact, in order to create the impression they’re actually doing something?