KEY POINTS:
Kevin Rudd and his wife Therese Rein have just left the National Press Club in Canberra (out the back door) where he has given one of the most important speeches of his career with just two full days to go until election day.
The coverage from the Labor leader's speech, and from John Howard's same time, same place tomorrow, is bound to influence many voters.
The stand-out theme of Rudd's speech was leadership, leadership, and leadership.
Rudd mentioned it 18 times - slightly fewer than Helen Clark mentioned it in her speech to the Labour conference earlier this month.
He would have done himself no harm to have mentioned it more.
He has John Howard over a barrel on the issue. If elections are about nothing else they are about leadership. Howard is crippled on it and Rudd is exploiting it to the maximum.
One of his good lines: "Mr Howard is asking the Australian people to elect him on Saturday so he can retire." He also hammered the theme of Treasurer Peter Costello being handed the mantle "without ever having to face the Australian people".
It is the first time I have seen Rudd in the flesh. He is good, clean, nice, natty, controlled, impeccably dressed, smiles well, and is very smooth. Perhaps a little too smooth. He has no rough edges, unlike Therese who seems to ooze character enough for both of them.
It is difficult to imagine Rudd doing or saying anything that will polarise people.
One of the best questions came from Michelle Grattan of The Age who asked how he was going to manage his consultative relationship with the Australian Council of Trade Unions.
He avoided it by saying he really hadn't thought of it. "I'm sure we'll chat from time to time as is appropriate," Rudd said. Another journalist told him he was sure the ACTU had thought a good about it and gave Rudd the opportunity to endorse the union movement.
Rudd did so without using the word "union" once.
If there is one other thing this election is about it is about the hated labour law reforms, Workchoice, on the one hand, and hated unions on the other.
Rudd has been handed a gift from heaven in the final week - a hidden agenda, or a hidden former agenda. As the Herald's full-time Canberra correspondent Greg Ansley pointed out in his coverage this morning the refusal of an official information request on a cabinet paper containing further policy, albeit rejected, in workplace reform has given Rudd powerful ammunition.
The most thoughtful question today was about addressing attacks on civil liberties vs national security concerns sensitivities in the face of terrorism.
Rudd gave the essential hardline response to any hardline threat but acknowledged that achieving the balance was a challenge and repeated his call for a judicial inquiry into the Hanif affair - the Brisbane doctor who got his marching orders.
Rudd repeated his view that whatever the win on Saturday, it will be by "a nose."
All leaders will say that in order to motive those who might think it's in the bag already.
He also recited history - Labor has won an election from Opposition only twice since the Second World War.
PS: I think Rudd was ushered out the back door to avoid being filmed with a person in a sheep costume out front protesting against live sheep exports.
