It’s touch and go in Tassie

Touch and go in Tassie. If the Greens in Tasmania get anything like the 25% that Newspoll predicts this morning then Labor everywhere has plenty to worry about. A figure this high suggests that there are many voters disillusioned with the move to the centre that has been responsible for the party doing so well in elections over the last 30 years or so. We could expect the Greens to start picking up what traditionally have been safe Labor House of Representative seats with Denison on the top of the list.

Newspoll suggests that neither Labor nor Liberal appeal much to Tasmanians with the support for both of them just over a third. On those figures it is going to be a close run thing as to who becomes Premier with our Crikey Electoral Indicator at noon just giving the nod to Labor.

A late Rann revival. In South Australia the pendulum in the last few days has perhaps swung back in Labor’s favour with an Advertiser poll this morning suggesting that while the government will lose seats to the Liberals it may pick up one from a former member who now sits as an independent.

A cheeky call. For the life of me I do not understand why Kevin Rudd has agreed to debate Tony Abbott three times on television between now and when the nation votes. Sure he made a kind of promise when he was Opposition Leader but this is one promise he should have broken. Putting your opponent on equal footing is the kind of foolhardiness that suggests Labor really is worried that it might be getting into dangerous territory.

The Daily Terror goes make believe. The big news of the day is the Mayan prediction in its Mesoamerican Long Count calendar that our world ends on December 21, 2012. Just look what happens to Sydney:

First the tsunami and then the Opera House left perched on the edge of a giant cliff. And all brought to us this morning by that paper of record the Sydney Daily Telegraph. This is journalism at its very best.

The map is almost bare. At least there will be one issue not on the agenda at this year’s federal election. The nation’s drought has well and truly gone and even the Murray River should have water flowing by polling day.

Put the kids in the brickworks. Next time your kids kick a soccer ball around you can all feel smug that they are no longer putting the boot into something produced with child labour. In the Pakistan city of Sialkot which produces as many as 60 million hand-stitched footballs in a World Cup year western companies have insisted that children no longer be used. But as the German magazine Der Spiegel reports this week, while Western buyers may have a clear conscience, but the children of Sialkot now toil in the local brickworks instead.