Gillard and Labor up their coverage

Julia Gillard received significantly more coverage across all media over the past week, an unusual situation during a campaign, reinforcing that its been all about the ALP for the last week, with the Opposition being able to pretty much stand back and let it happen, bar the odd bit of policy tinkering while no-one much is watching.

Combine the volumes of Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd and you’ve got about the same amount of coverage as the rest of the Top 20 put together, as most of the focus stayed on anything other than policy. Now that the Government have decided (obviously keeping their powder dry until after the RBA decision) that its all about the economy, lets see if they can 1) stay focused 2) get the voters focused on it. Both are looking like massive tasks.

Lindsay Tanner the main mover, finally announcing he’s not the rat in the ranks, while the other Minister highly at risk from the Greens and staying to fight, Tanya Plibersek, got some national profile from some ALP housing policy announcements.

Christopher Pyne, another MP you would have thought would be spending every waking hour pounding the streets of his extremely marginal electorate, was also out and about in a fair bit of national media during the week. Is he comfortable his side of Adelaide won’t vote for the lass from neighbouring Unley?

The focus has indeed ticked a little bit more towards economic matters on talkback, but by far the focus remains Rudd, the personality of the leaders and what their ears look like. Maybe you don’t need to be young to be shallow?

Ms Fraser-Kirk’s announcement made the timing of Tony Abbott’s rather unfortunately phrased questioning of the PMs consistency all the worse, but we probably all know what he was trying to say. Meanwhile stand by for a relatively rapid settlement.