KEY POINTS:
It couldn't get much worse for the Liberals two days out from the Australian election.
An attempted slur on Labor by a few Liberal bigots in Lindsay has boomeranged on the entire Liberal party in the last two days of the campaign.
I'm not sure that they are critical days any more. It feels like Labor by a country mile.
The local Liberals were playing to elector bigotry by distributing bogus leaflets claiming Labor had forgiven the Bali bombers and it suggested Labor supported the building of a mosque in the area.
The letter was said to be from the Islamic Australia Federation - a bogus group - and misspells Allah Akba [God is Great!]
The build-up to John Howard's speech in a few hours at the National Press Club, where I am at present, been eclipsed by coverage of the story. For him it is a major embarrassment and distraction in the desperate dying days of his campaign.
The bogus leaflets were being distributed by Gary Clark, the husband of Jackie Kelly, a New Zealand born Liberal MP who is retiring but has been a bit of a Howard favourite. There will be an expectation for him express the disgust that much of the country feels.
Kelly was born in Upper Hutt in 1964. She was Minister for Sport and Tourism and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Sydney Olympics from 1998-2001, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister from 2001-04.
Her husband is not a member of the party but two other members have been expelled, one of them a member of the Liberal state executive. She is disgraced by association.
Sydney's Daily Telegraph broke the story with a full page spread "Libs busted!" and a picture of Kelly's husband hiding his face from the photographer behind one of the leaflets.
"Shameful race tactics exposed in key seat," was the sub-heading.
Kelly herself has just been interviewed on channel Nine's Today show and finds the whole thing a little amusing. She suggested it had been cooked up by a bunch of blokes who had a silly idea of what was funny when they had too much to drink. She called it a "tasteless prank." Her story is that it had been the final act in a war with Labor's own "goon squad" who harassed Liberal campaigners.
Gary, she said, was not really "in the dogbox."
Commentator Laurie Oakes then came on from Canberra gob-smacked not only by the "disgusting" bogus leafleting and the inherent insult to the people of Lindsay but to Kelly's unbelievable attitude.
There is no downside for Labor. There is no need for Labor to say a thing.
The actions speak volumes already: dirty, ugly and desperate.
Listening to the radio in the cab on the way here, there's a possie of reporters camped outside Kelly's place in Sydney. Every TV and radio and news bulletin is leading with it.
Perhaps the only upside for the Liberals is that they have something or someone to blame for a loss.
I have, however, just been given a reality check by a Canberra cabbie. He is convinced the Liberals are going to win "though I 'm the only person in Australia that thinks that." His reasoning? Labor has to win 16 seats. And while Howard was a "little liar," he said, "we don't know what sort of liar Rudd will be." He has voted Labor all his life and is voting Liberal this time. I sure do know how to pick them (the cabbies).
