KEY POINTS:
It's always good to get Mike Williams' take on Australian politics.
There are a handful of people in New Zealand Labour who are incredibly close to their Aussie cousins (the same goes for National and the Liberals) and Mike is one of them. The relationship with Oz was established well before he became party president.
I caught him - on the phone - at Darling Harbour in Sydney this morning having breakfast before he was catching up with John Utting for lunch, from UMR Insight, pollsters for both Australian Labor and New Zealand Labour.
Mike brought Utting out to New Zealand in the 80s to work for the polling firm which Mike founded.
The polls out in Australia this morning are perplexing for everybody over here, a Galaxy poll narrowing Labor's lead to 4 points, 52 to 48. If that is true, that would probably see a return of the Coalition.
But an AC Nielsen poll stretching Labor's lead 57 to 43, which would be a landslide to Labor.
Mike is more inclined to believe the truth is somewhere in the middle and is predicting a Labor win, not a landslide but a little better than just falling over the line.
(The bookies this morning were paying A$1.22 for a Labor win and A$4.35 for the Coalition.)
The newspapers overwhelmingly favour Rudd's Labor.
The Australian has shifted its weight behind a Rudd win, editorially saying: "John Howard and his team have a proven track record but, to us, they have run out of energy. We recognise that no change is free of risk, but we recommend a vote for Kevin Rudd."
The Sydney Morning Herald is headlined "Howard needs a miracle" and is backing Rudd's Labour saying "we can't afford the luxury of a long goodbye."
Its sister paper The Age in Melbourne is also backing Rudd and says "It's time."
Melbourne's Herald Sun says Rudd has not made the case for change.
The Adelaide Advertiser says it is not time for a change.
Sydney's Daily Telegraph has dropped its support of Howard and says it is time for a change.
The Courier Mail in Brisbane, Rudd's home patch (which he always calls Brizzie) is backing its hometown boy with the endorsement "A man for the future."
It has been interesting to watch Howard and Rudd making their last minute pitches on television.
Both are relentlessly pushing their couple of key messages.
Rudd sounds like his lines have been programmed by a market researcher and no doubt they have been as he sees how many times he can say future, positive and leadership in five minutes.
He occasionally hits the bullseye when he talks about how individual households still feel as though they are struggling in the face of endless rhetoric from the Coalition about how well the country is going.
Howard's soundbites will have been equally market tested but with years of experience behind him, he sounds a little less pre-programmed.
His focus was on the influence of unions on Labor and the reworked theme of Paul Keating from 1996: don't change the government if you don't want to change the direction of the government. Howard still has very high approval ratings for his management of the economy, higher than Rudd.
Mike Williams says Howard will have been receiving advice from Crosby Textor on where Labor - which has been leading the Coalition all year - is vulnerable. That is the political consultant company that was demonised in Nicky Hager's book The Hollow Men on the Brash campaign.
I'm not sure whether they are but I'm sure Labor is employing similar consultants.
Williams has known Rudd for a while. He first met him when he was a top official in the office of former Queensland premier Wayne Goss.
You would never have known he was a future Prime Minister, he said.
He was a "pointy-head" policy wonk and worked 24/7 - which distinguished him from Kim Beazley.
Rudd's closest match in New Zealand politics is Helen Clark, we agree.
