• Julia Gillard has to aggressively confront the leaking of alleged Cabinet confidences to Channel Nine and the Sydney Morning Herald (the word “alleged” is appropriate because the content is contested and, if correct, without context). It may play out like the first Rudd-related leak did, as a story of fascination to Canberra and no one else. But the only previous major Cabinet leaks under this Government were made by a rogue Treasury official using coordination comments, the attachment to Cabinet submissions detailing departmental positions. The current leak is not of documentation, but of statements during Cabinet discussions. These are highly unlikely to have come from any officials, which narrows it down to the Ministers who participated in the discussion and, perhaps, their staff, if they were present for the meeting, or they were told later about the discussions that had occurred.
  • And that’s before you even get to the basic problem that forces loyal to Kevin Rudd, if not the former leader himself, are seeking to wreck Labor’s election chances. This isn’t merely about embarrassing Gillard. There is no cui bono question to pursue. It’s about mutually-assured destruction. It will be considered an unforgivable act of bastardry within Labor. Then again, what did they think would happen when they removed Rudd?
  • Ironies, if perhaps only of the Morrissettian variety: four weeks ago, the problem was apparently a control freak who allowed no debate or proper Cabinet process and whose political judgement was askew. Now the problem is apparently there was too much debate in Cabinet and politicians considered policies from a political angle. The media is always right. And hark back to 2007 – there was a Cabinet leak in that campaign too, about Malcolm Turnbull’s efforts to convince John Howard to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Who leaked that? I can feel a comparative biography coming on.
  • Labor went to considerable effort to sell its $277m investment in suicide yesterday. John Brogden bravely agreed to participate and talk about the issue. The result was predictable: a hammering by sectoral experts complaining that it wasn’t enough. There has never been a health expert born who didn’t think governments scandalously underfunded their speciality. Meantime, the media lapped up images of Tony Abbott gutting a fish.
  • Campaign momentum has now shifted the Liberals’ way after a slow start and some good fortune courtesy of Labor divisions. Can they capitalise on it and build a primary vote lead on Labor? For Labor, we’ll now get to see how their emergency response capability fares, after they spent the first week of the campaign in cruise control. None too well, I predict.
  • They do things differently in the Greens. Today Bob Brown will travel to Orange where he will joining Peter Darley of the NSW Farmers’ Association to attend a tree-planting ceremony in memory of much-admired Calare independent MP Peter Andren. Andren’s death in 2007 saw tributes of the kind that the vast majority of politicians could only dream about.