KEY POINTS:
Opposition leader Kevin Rudd yesterday thrust aside the long series of polls predicting a Labor landslide in Saturday's election, instead forecasting that victory would be won "by a nose".
Ignoring Government jibes at his "arrogant smirk", Rudd told the National Press Club in his final blast of the campaign that the closing days of the campaign would be tough, ugly and nasty.
"I mean it," he said. "It's going to be trench warfare until Saturday."
Rudd's view is shared by polls made in the individual marginal seats that will decide the outcome of the election, pointing to narrow Labor leads that could yet be lost to swinging voters at the last moment.
Labor is also facing danger from the west, where Prime Minister John Howard's popularity in the mining boom state of Western Australia appears to be increasing and could cost Rudd the election if he does not pick up sufficient eastern seats to provide the extra 16 he needs to win power.
A further warning of the mood in the west was delivered by a Morgan poll as Rudd prepared to attack Howard in his Canberra speech, warning not only of a tired and out-of-touch Government, but also that the Prime Minister's only plan was to retire and hand over to Treasurer Peter Costello.
The special telephone poll on Tuesday night showed a further swing in five key WA marginals, with Morgan predicting Liberal victory in the Perth seats of Hasluck and Stirling, and possibly former Labor leader Kim Beazley's old seat of Swan.
Howard has been heavily using WA to attack Rudd's economic credentials and Labor's intentions to dump the industrial laws that have helped boost pay and conditions in the state's skills-starved mining sector.
Howard has also hammered Rudd for his belief that Australia's economic planners need to look beyond the resources boom and its inevitable end.
Howard yesterday outlined his five priorities for a fifth term.
Growing the economy and pushing unemployment lower was his number one. Second was to maintain the nation's security, third to implement the coalition's election promises. At number four Howard put tackling climate change and Australia's water crisis, and at number five was Aboriginal reconciliation.
Rudd said yesterday that Howard's economic strategy consisted of hoping that the mining boom would last forever, despite Costello's warning last year that the boom had effectively come to an end.
He said Howard had governed through easy times in a decade marked by opportunities squandered.
"I would have given my eye teeth to have been part of a government at a time when Australia has been so richly blessed by the global resources boom."
He said there had only been two such booms in Australia's recorded economic history, with mining adding 8 per cent to gross national income.
And he said a vote for Howard was wasted: "By 2010 Mr Howard will be gone, he will not be held to account, so what's the point in re-electing him?"
'ERE WE GO AGAIN
Announcing a policy yesterday Kevin Rudd said:
"It's not something we've pulled out of our ... "
He paused.
"I almost said it was not something I'd pulled out of my ear ... "
He was recalling his recent earwax embarrassment when a video surfaced on YouTube showing him picking his ear and then tasting the wax.
"Oh dear," he said, realising the whole sticky business was about to get a fresh airing, as the audience laughed.
