Day 2- Careful with babies, careful with where to put babies

First poll is in; Galaxy has the ALP at 52- LIB 48. A good headline for the Government. Except that, as always, it’s in the detail. Gillard trounces Abbott in preferred PM (58-32), but 57% said that they disapprove of the way Rudd was dealt with. This might be something to watch, or it might be something we end up watching, a handy injection of drama if the story looks a little dull. Will it matter? As Mark Latham said, to know Rudd is to dislike Rudd. Perhaps we’ve forgotten what we thought of him a month ago.


On Insiders Barrie Cassidy gets a lame duck to grill in the form of the Minister for the Comfortable Growth of Elements of the Nation’s Population Over Time Which in Itself is Nothing Anyone Should Be Concerned About Because We Recognise that the Whole Big Australia Thing Was A Mistake, Tony Burke. Burke stumbles through, but Cassidy effectively skewers the silliness of Burke’s new role


BARRIE CASSIDY: … I guess we'll have to live with slogans for the next few weeks. But even your portfolio - sustainable population - that's a concept. It's a slogan, sustainable population.


TONY BURKE: Well it's a job and it's a job I've been given.


Good thing that Tony is being kept busy.


Instead of his weird, glowing, ‘I-am-in-the-glare-of-history-and-I-will-be-remembered-as-the-vision-guy’ statement of believing in a big Australia and making no apology for it on the 7:30 Report way back when, one wonders if we’d be here, discussing this, if Rudd had chosen more workable, less inflammatory language to discuss population growth. If he had said, say 'I believe in applying the best minds in planning and architecture and sustainable growth to best accommodate the changes that will occur to this country over the next 30 years and ensure that these changes make the country a better place', would this be on the table now?


Perhaps the debate is useful in framing the nation’s relationship to sharing their space, to privileging the private block at the expense of the environment and the community and the stuff that can’t be sold in a megamall quite as easily but actually brings meaning.


Gillard announces a 200million 'Regional Plan', which cleverly misses one critcal point- that more would live in these regional centres except for the fact that they don't want to, expertly indicating an awareness of urban planning and quality of life surveys by pledging to ensure that Australia doesn't become congested like areas Europe. Prime Minister, of which European cities do you speak? Those notorious hellholes Barcelona, Paris? Those choking pits of Dickensian horror Milan, Amsterdam, Zurich? What about Copenhagen- the people there seem so poor that they all gad about on bikes! Nary a medium-large family station wagon among them!


ABC news leads with image after image of Gillard snaffling babies (how could she, cries someone, apparently, if we believe Heffernan and one suspects quite a few more- how could she even know how to hold one?) in Queensland. Meanwhile, this guy re-entered Canberra.

Cue the Jaws theme, or an oompa band?

And at the end of the day, as all the tragics settle in for the Hawke melodrama, NineMSN has another poll- Galaxy again (do we often get 2 polls on one day from the same source?). And it says that Labour has some trouble. 50-50 2 party. Newspoll offer their first of the campaign soon after, and they have Labour at 55-45. In the ad break after Hawkie learns of his daughters addiction, I see the 'Action Contract' ad for the first of I assume, many many times. Day 2, Abbott has 50% or 45% 2 party, and a jingle.

Image via Ch 7/News Ltd.