Will John Howard and Peter Costello really be sharing the campaigning duties once the PM makes his trip to Yarralumla? In recent decades, treasurers have been wheeled out during campaigns mostly to do battle on issues within their portfolios. Keating’s exposure of a double counting error in the Coalition’s 1987 tax policy is a memorable example.

We are living, though, in extraordinary times. The polls have been pointing to a Labor landslide, yet both parties know that there are record numbers of unaligned, late-deciding voters out there who may yet vote for the government if Rudd slips up.

The Coalition was already hinting that Labor’s team of trade union hacks was going to feature heavily in their advertising. Comparing and contrasting the front-benches is a logical next step, even if the PM did seem to run out of solid cabinet performers when asked about the comparison last week.

A good campaign is a responsive one, so the fact that most of the ideas under development feature the Howard-Rudd contest may not be the Coalition’s biggest problem. As the quick change to the Liberal’s internet home page, and Labor’s ad in response to Howard’s retirement plans showed, campaign advertising tends to be cheap and nasty, designed to respond to just such a change in strategy.

But let’s not fall into the trap of assuming that Howard means what he says, when in fact his announcement of the “team” approach was a short-term ruse to prevent any more destabilising leaks from the Costello camp. Once the campaign is underway, Costello will have little choice but to acquiesce to whatever strategy Howard adopts.

There is another reason for the purported team effort, though. Howard will have to spend lots of time in Bennelong if he wants to avoid the Stanley Melbourne Bruce effect. There may be some value in having senior ministers do the marginal seat visits that the leaders normally undertake.

A bigger problem for the team theme is that the focus on the party leader is only partly a function of the megalomaniacal tendencies of our political leaders. It is also a response to the demands of television, in particular the need for a familiar face to deliver a pithy comment on whatever it is that is dominating the news cycle.

Journalists may only pay attention to Costello and other ministers to the extent that he says anything different from Howard. Indeed, they have a duty to ask Costello every time he pops up during the campaign just how his premiership would differ from that of Howard. For Costello to receive prominent coverage, Howard would have to remain silent on the issues of the day. Given that he will be out and about in his own seat, that’s difficult to imagine.