KEY POINTS:
Labor leader Kevin Rudd yesterday took the battle for the November 24 election to John Howard's heartland, attacking him as a profligate leader trying to buy votes with massive spending that would drive interest rates higher.
During his campaign launch in Brisbane Rudd announced new education spending plans costing A$1.7 billion, contrasting this bill to the A$9.4 billion in promises rolled out by Howard in the same venue on Monday.
"I have no intention of repeating Mr Howard's irresponsible spending spree," he told an audience of party faithful that included former Prime Ministers Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.
"I will say it loud and clear. This sort of reckless spending must stop."
Diminishing Howard's economic management is a key strategy for Rudd, who has cast himself completely as an economic conservative, to help dispel ghosts of earlier Labor administrations and to erode the one real strength the Government has retained in the campaign.
Labor's promises total about A$50 billion, A$14 billion below those of Howard's Government.
The latest Reuters poll of polls, released yesterday, shows that with 10 days to go Rudd continues to hold a 10.5 per cent lead over Howard, sufficient for a landslide victory if repeated in a uniform nation swing on polling day.
The poll of poll analyses the three main opinion polls tracking the campaign.
An indication of the gloom overtaking the Government behind the brave face of its campaigning leaders was given by Coalition Senator Barnaby Joyce, who told Sky News that the consistency of the polls was destroying confidence.
"There is a sense of depression about it," he said. "If the polls are the reality we're not going to lose - we're going to get annihilated."
Howard has been pushed further on to his back foot by Labor warnings that if re-elected Howard would not be around to ensure his policies were implemented, given his promise to hand power to heir-apparent, Treasurer Peter Costello.
In a bid to instil some certainty into the planned leadership transition, Howard has now said he would not remain in office for more than two years, and could step down within 18 months of his re-election.
He is also struggling to regain his economic ascendancy, following warnings from the Reserve Bank and leading economists that massive Government spending of the kind promised during the campaign would add new pressures to inflation and force interest rates up again.
Yesterday analysis by Melbourne's Age newspaper further showed that Howard's campaign promises would lead to his breaking an earlier pledge to continue delivering annual budget surpluses of at least 1 per cent of gross domestic product.
"The 2008-09 (budget) bottom line has now been ripped back to a maximum of A$10.4 billion - an amount that would be equivalent to 0.87 per cent of Australia's GDP," the newspaper said.
Howard fought back, telling ABC radio yesterday: "The genie is not out of the bottle. These promises are all carefully planned and fully affordable."
But Rudd delivered other telling blows yesterday, attacking the unpopular WorkChoices industrial laws as an affront to the Australia value of the fair go, and picturing Howard as an ageing and out-of-touch leader bereft of ideas, afraid of technology and about to quit. He said Australia wanted and needed new leadership, announcing a A$1 billion programme to link all schools to high-speed broadband networks and provide all students in years nine to 12 with a computer.
A further A$500 million would be spent to create 450,000 new training places to address the nation's growing skills shortage, and A$200 million on scholarships to double graduate places to 88,000, lift the number of undergraduates and focus on key areas such as nursing, teaching, medicine, mathematics and science. Labor would also set up a A$175 million fellowship fund to lure the nation's "best and brightest" expatriate researchers back to Australia.
Rudd repeated his attack on Howard's refusal to ratify the Kyoto protocols.
He also promised to pull Australia's combat troops out of Iraq: "It's time for them to come home."
