There’s a reason God invented the small target strategy: it works. This was true with opposition leader John Howard in 1996, and while Bob Hawke inherited a bunch of policies when he took the leadership in February 1983, he then spent five weeks promising to not so much as loosen his tie before first holding a summit about it.

And it’s obvious Kevin Rudd believes in the wisdom of making himself as inoffensive as possible.

But you can have too much of a good thing. Is Monday’s Tasmanian foray an example of this?

There was a time when riding roughshod over Taswegians was considered smart politics. See, again, 1983, when Labor promised to use The Constitution to stop the Franklin Dam and every mainland state swung to Hawke. Tasmania went drastically the other way, but it only had five seats — ooh, we’re so scared (said Labor).

Similarly, throughout the ‘80s Labor’s finance minister Peter Walsh repeatedly bemoaned the political opportunism of selling out timber workers to “trendies” in eastern Melbourne and Sydney.

But now it’s become bad politics as well. Why?

One reason is simply that Labor is in opposition, and oppositions have to be extra careful with everything they propose, more so than in past decades, and much more than governments. See the introductory line, above.

But it’s also a result of our flimsy analytical skills. We observe a party lose an election, and therefore decree everything they did to be a mistake. In the case of 2004, this included the alleged “disaster” of Medicare Gold (apparently Australians hate the idea of publicly-funded, non-means tested healthcare), the schools policy and, of course, pre-election Thursday’s Tasmanian forest policy.

The several hundred forest workers cheering the PM made great evening news pictures, but the schism between the ALP and much of its blue-collar base is hardly new; indeed you could argue it underpinned the party’s unprecedented electoral success in the 1980s and 90s.

There is in fact no substantial evidence to suggest the 2004 forest policy made a difference in any seat in the country apart from Braddon (Tas), and certainly published national opinion polls did not move towards the government in the final week before polling day.

On the other hand, it probably didn’t win Labor many votes either.

And if it’s small target you’re after, it’s better to be safe than sorry. A few plane tickets down south is a small price to pay for insurance.