KEY POINTS:
The talk on the airwaves in Sydney this morning is about the appearance of John Howard and his treasurer, Peter Costello. on the current affairs show Today Tonight to talk about their "marriage."
It ended up sounding a little smutty.
The double-act was primarily designed to bolster confidence in Costello as much as showing that the pair have a strong working relationship.
Costello is being demonised by Labor as who'll the voters will get as Prime Minister if they vote Liberal, with Howard having agreed to go at some point next term - it has now been stretched out to two years away.
It didn't work and it shouldn't have happened. What it did do was draw attention to the fact that they needed to do it. There has been more commentary around them having to "resort" to the move than to what they said.
As they chatted about the marriage - yes, they kept using the word - in which John appreciated Peter's intelligence and Peters appreciated John's work ethic, Costello ended the fairy tale saying that, of course, real marriages have certain other attractions (he didn't mean getting his shirts ironed), whereupon Howard said that's right, attractions that were hard to match (I think he did mean getting his shirts ironed).
The Australian newspaper this morning leads with a Howard's warning against the Greens, invoking the language of "evil."
"Beware Labor-Greens axis:PM" says the headline, which is a little reminiscent of the counter-productive attacks by Jenny Shipley campaigning in Coromandel in 1999.
But is also carries its latest Newspoll survey which puts Labor ahead of the Coalition, 54 per cent to 46 per cent. The poll was taken last weekend. But it is the marginal seats that matter and could make all the difference on Saturday.
Before leaving for here at the weekend, a reasonably clued up Labour operative in New Zealand warned me that people were getting carried away by the polls: the scenario not to discount was that Labor doesn't quite make it over the line, Howard loses Bennelong, and that the Coalition is returned under Costello.
A couple of newspapers yesterday carried the same scenario - though the polls across marginal seats would suggest Rudd will get over the line in them.
I caught up last night with TVNZ's political editor Guyon Espiner and Chris Niesche, deputy news editor on the Australian Financial Review. Until recently he was Business Editor of the New Zealand Herald.
There we were sitting at an outdoor in downtown Sydney about 50m from George Street and you wouldn't know there was an election.
Not a bumper sticker, not a billboard, not a poster in sight. It's pretty much the same for all of inner Sydney. But then if you were a party in Oz, why would you waste your money on seats that are safe, of any hue. All the money is poured into the marginals.
Election advertising comes to a complete halt at midnight tomorrow night.
