Australia's election campaign reaches half-way
Let's update that old line about the constants of life - that the only inevitable things are death and taxes. At the exact mid-point of Australia's election campaign, a few other things are inescapable in the modern political life - the inevitability of promises, promises, promises...the central role of television in shaping images and sending messages, and finally, the role of rolling opinion polls in both calling the race and shaping the way the race is conducted.

And in this current race, it's amazing how the polls have not really shifted and what that means for the campaign. Because if you believe what the polls are telling us, then the government led by John Howard - in office for 11 and a half years - is facing annihilation.

That word "annihilation" was introduced into the arena earlier this year by Mr Howard himself, when he told his Party room, that if the polls are right, then that's what they face. According to the dictionary - it means to destroy completely, to defeat totally.

It's quite a fate confronting the winner of the past four elections, the second longest serving Prime Minister in Australian history. But the polls say Mr Howard is actually the underdog. The betting market, the bookmakers, give him only a 30 percent chance of winning.

That's because the polls have hardly moved. From the start of the year to the day Mr Howard launched the campaign, the average of Australia's four main opinion surveys had the Labor Opposition with 57 percent of the total vote, the Government Coalition on 43 percent.

And in the three weeks since the campaign started, the average of the polls has moved only two percent in favour of the government. That figure still looks like an annihilation.

The pundits are pondering why it should be. Australia has a booming economy, the lowest jobless rate in more than 30 years, and a record 15-year-run of economic growth. It doesn't get much better than this.

Maybe the voters are just tired of Mr Howard and Labor's Kevin Rudd is a fresh, new younger face. The government has been able to frame the last two election campaigns on issues of the economy and security in the age of terrorism. This time, though, Labor has been able to fight more of the campaign on its preferred topics - education and health. And perhaps Mr Howard has damaged his relationship with the voters through the profound changes - the government calls them reforms - the changes to industrial relations law. Labor says the government decisively tipped the balance of power between workers and employers, to give the bosses much more power.

Mr Howard was able to legislate those changes when the government unexpectedly gained control of the upper house of Parliament, the Senate, in the last election. Now famously, when he won office the first time in 1996, Mr Howard promised to make Australians "relaxed and comfortable".

The changes to industrial law may be seen as the opposite of that promise.

Or maybe that's all to deep, and perhaps Australians just think its time for a change.

Having seen Mr Howard emerge victorious so many times before, the Parliamentary press gallery here in Canberra is far from writing-off the Prime Minister. But to hold that view you either don't believe the polls, or expect them to move dramatically in the next three weeks.

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