New-found passion? Take it as red, but …

A welcome bit of passion but … Wonderful to see the redhead firing up a little at her press conference yesterday but it would be nice if the new-found passion extended to a few matters of policy too. All the politicians seem to be getting excited about in this campaign is telling us what they will not be doing rather than what they will be doing.

Still where I started. At the very beginning of this election campaign I speculated that if there were no opinion polls to guide us in a different direction, pundits such as me would be basing their assumptions about who would win the election on economic conditions and on that score would have Labor most likely.

Well since then, opinion polls aplenty have come and gone without doing anything but confuse so I’ll stick with my belief that “It’s the economy, stupid” is still the most important matter. And with the chance of a further interest rate rise having gone with yesterday’s inflation numbers the economic outlook is benign enough to suggest that a majority of people will not be angry enough with this government to actually throw it out.

The market now has no change as an 87% chance

Now this is a knife! No sooner did Labor turn its attention to law and order, promising to crackdown on weapons such as knives and knuckledusters if it wins the next federal election, than Tony Abbott was doing his “I can be tough on crime too” imitation.

Perhaps Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor was really just reacting to a Coalition promise earlier in the week to finance a new array of security cameras in marginal electorates. Whatever the reason, the government planned on toughening weapons controls across the country in a bid to quell crime. “Under the new approach, stricter controls will be imposed on a range of weapons with no legitimate domestic or commercial use in Australia,” he promised. “For example, knuckledusters, certain items adapted for warfare, electronic shock devices and flick knives.”

Don’t you worry about that, responded Opposition leader Tony Abbott this morning. Not only would the Coalition extend the list of banned knives but it would introduce “tougher” uniform penalties for people who carry knives.

But wait. There’s more.

Extra funding for metal detectors would be made available, and — if the Coalition wins the election — there will be a national violent gangs database to track the activities of malicious groups around the country with a similarly named squad, set up under the auspices of the Australian Crime Commission, would be created to lead the fight against violent gangs.