KEY POINTS:
This is where it starts getting down and dirty. As Australia's two heavyweight contenders start facing off for real ahead of this year's election, the mud, fists and boots are starting to fly in the kind of all-out brawl in which everyone ends up with a black eye.
By the time the poll comes around, it will be last one standing who wins.
This week Prime Minister John Howard squared off with Opposition leader Kevin Rudd, as well as one of his own senators, Bill Heffernan. Rudd slugged back at Howard and his errant Senator, and elbowed his deputy and industrial relations spokeswoman Julian Gillard. Gillard walloped big business, Howard and Heffernan, who also received stinging blows from two senior Liberal frontbenchers. The unions got stuck into big business and vice versa. And it is only May.
But there is no doubt that the stoush over industrial relations that Australia has watched in the past week was a serious opener to a long and bloody campaign in which few holds - and certainly no words - will be barred.
The reason is simple. Opinion polls continue to show the Government is on the ropes, despite some nifty footwork and sharp jabs from Howard that appear to have marginally narrowed the lead Rudd enjoys as preferred prime minister.
Labor, with a continued and comfortable election-winning polls lead, smells blood.
The most recent survey, by Newspoll in the Australian, shows that the primary vote at the 2004 election has been almost perfectly inverted: the Coalition won 46.7 per cent of these votes, but now has 37 per cent; Labor's 2004 primary vote of 37.6 per cent is now 48 per cent.
More important, Newspoll gave Labor 57 per cent of the two party-preferred vote that decides elections under Australia's preferential voting system, against the Government's 43 per cent.
Both sides recognise that industrial relations will be among the central issues when the nation votes. This has been confirmed in polling by Roy Morgan Research and Newspoll, showing that Howard's Work Choices legislation - which removed many of the rights and protections of Australian workers - is not popular and is high on the minds of many voters.
Newspoll's latest survey found that the majority of respondents regarded Work Choices as bad for the economy and damaging to the creation of jobs.
Only 14 per cent said they were better off under Howard.
Labor has promised to rip up Work Choices if it wins power, replacing it with a new set of rules to replace many of the lost conditions and protections.
Gillard has pointed to confidential data showing that 44 per cent of the workplace agreements negotiated under Work Choices have removed the 11 award conditions Howard had promised would be protected. Only 3 to 5 per cent of the workforce is covered by the agreements. Collectives, common law contracts and award agreements cover the rest.
But Rudd does not intend rolling back Howard's laws as far as many Labor supporters want, allowing an ominous grumbling from unions that could undermine the party's carefully constructed visage of unity.
And Gillard, after hearing that corporate Australia was considering campaigning against Labor because of its industrial policy, warned big business to step aside or be "injured".
Howard gleefully joined the headline-making fury as industry leaders responded, reopening all the old Labor-business wounds and exposing the party to claims of economic incompetence.
Economic management remains by far Howard's biggest attraction. Key among Gillard's critics was the mining sector, enjoying a boom that has allowed it to shower its workers with workplace agreements bulging with high wages and generous conditions.
The furious industry and Howard prophesied economic ruin, creating a new round of foreboding headlines.
Rudd and senior Labor figures took Gillard aside for a good talking-to.
Then he and Gillard set off on opposite sides of the continent to woo back mining and other boardrooms with assurances that nothing would be done to harm them, and that they would have an important seat at the table when the fine detail was hammered out after a Labor win ...
In next week's episode: Peter Costello brings down his Budget, and no irresponsible, electioneering lolly scrambles, cross his heart and hope to die.
