The Punch

Tony Abbott is nearly at the end of his marathon through-the-night last ditch election blitz, but it’s Julia Gillard who’s sounding a little sleep deprived.

The Prime Minister woke to a Newspoll this morning that has her primary vote at a perilous 35 per cent, and as the day has worn on her dire warnings about the potential of an Abbott win have grown more shrill. (And they’ve even rolled out John “The Faulkinator” Faulkner - see above video)

As Laurie Oakes pointed out on Twitter this afternoon: “Julia Gillard says if Tony Abbott becomes PM on Sunday, will be WorkChoices on Monday. Exaggeration born of desperation, methinks.”

Continue reading "The final countdown: is Gillard panicking?" »

By all accounts this election has been really boring and as a photographer I wanted to do something different to get people interested again. I wanted to shoot it in a different way than the way we always cover elections in newspapers.

If I can borrow a phrase from this election campaign, I wanted to be seen to be “moving forward” with technology and doing something new and fresh. So when I got the call up to shoot the final week of the election last week with Prime Minister Julia Gillard I decided to shoot everything on the iPhone.

A simple no frills camera (weighing no more than a can of coke) with a fixed lens, and using the Hipstamatic app bought for $2.49.

Continue reading "An inside view of the last days of the Gillard campaign" »

Whoever loses tomorrow, one thing is certain – this election will not be a victory for any major political party’s true believers. Coalition and Labor partisans have spent the last month gulping down political-DNA-corroding Kool-Aid in their increasingly desperate attempts to pimp themselves out to disengaged bogans address the legitimate concerns of those salt-of-the-earth, hearts-of-gold, marginal-seat-dwelling, mainstream Australians who embody all that is pure and noble in this great nation.

How many inner-city ALP activists letterboxing on cold winter nights have been haunted by that image of the PM and Member for Lindsay scanning the horizon on a navy vessel off Darwin, looking as if they might at any moment rush to a gun turret to strafe an incoming boat packed to the gunwales with queue-jumping reffos? And how many small-business owners brooding about a recalcitrant employee have spluttered on their Penfolds Grange at a Liberal fundraising dinner, pondering how the party of capital lost its bottle when it came to smashing the unions?

But let’s also spare a thought for the Greens’ disillusioned libertarian voters. It was always a somewhat awkward embrace, but for years those bridling at the interference of church and state into who they marry, what they watch, how they choose to get intoxicated, or when they die felt the Greens had their backs.

Continue reading "Slim pickings for libertarians" »

It’s the last day before we go to the polls and this election couldn’t be closer.

We’re all a bit tired, especially if you’re job was to follow Tony Abbott through the night, but it’s the Friday Fight Club finale.

Punch on and tell us what you thought of the campaign and how things are going to go tomorrow.

In keeping with our long-standing Punch hunch - that this election is going to come down to a coin toss and one which disturbingly may involve Bob Katter - today’s Newspoll has the major parties at 50-50.

Use this piece to say whatever you like about the election - all our other stuff comes further down anyway - our seat wrap, Lucy’s analysis of your reader comments, a look at today’s editorials and the latest betting.

Apart from where to get a good pie in Braidwood, how to woo a room full of pensioners if you look like you’re 14 years old, and that tropical diseases are an issue for voters in FNQ – the Punch’s five-week adventure through some of the campaign’s most hotly contested seats has thrown up some consistent themes.

The ten Labor-held seats the Punch spent time in during this election campaign weren’t necessarily the most marginal. We just thought they were the most interesting.

Factors that decide what happens in seats like the following are many. But troublingly for the Coalition, the one thing we found almost everywhere was a niggling sense among voters Tony Abbott is just not how they imagined the Prime Minister.

Continue reading "The seats: what The Punch learned on the campaign trail" »

If Election 2010 has confirmed anything for us it’s that you Punchers love a good political stoush.

You’ve been loud, passionate, well-informed and with a great sense of humour to boot, so thanks for your input over the past five weeks.

We’ve spent a bit of time listening to what you had to say, so here’s our take on the campaign according to our readers:

Continue reading "The readers: What you’ve said about Election 2010" »

The three biggest-selling metropolitan dailies in Australia - in descending order, Melbourne’s Herald-Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Brisbane’s Courier Mail - have used today’s traditional election-eve editorials to urge their readers to back the Coalition and turf out the Gillard Labor Government. The national broadsheet The Australian has also backed the Coalition, as has The West Australian.

The Adelaide Advertiser has broken ranks with its fellow News Limited dailies and backed Labor, as did Australia’s biggest-selling newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph, in its editorial last week. The two biggest Fairfax papers - The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age - have also backed the ALP. However the Fairfax papers have fewer readers in the swinging seats which decide governments so their final say on the vote has less influence.

The election eve editorial is a long-standing but controversial feature of newspapers, with the rationale going that if it’s good enough for voters to be forced to make up their minds on polling day, newspapers which devote their very existence to chronicling the events of the day should also put up their hand and offer a balanced and thoughtful take as to their allegiance. But many readers regard editorials as an impertinence and as confirmation of bias.

Continue reading "The editorials: biggest newspapers back Coalition" »

From a look at the betting markets, punters seem to have lined up with pundits to call this week a nil-all draw.

While the campaign descended into a Fromelles-style bloodbath, the negativity of both sides also stagnated the head-to-head betting market and we’ll go to the polls with Labor paying $1.28 to win, and the Coalition pegged at $3.60.

You’ll remember that last week saw Julia Gillard’s campaign finally stem the haemorrhaging that saw her odds on next PM drift out to $1.62, which was as bad as they got under Rudd. Once Sportingbet took over $400,000 on Labor in a week including a bet of $200,000, they were always going to head into the election as favourites.

Continue reading "The punters: Labor to win, with a major loss of skin" »

Note: Labor MP Richard Marles and Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella are among our favourite contributors to The Punch, and we have asked them to write a piece every Friday during this five-week election campaign giving their take on events.

There was one aspect of this final week of campaigning that really summed up Labor. Labor’s launch on Monday was cynically late for a start. But it was Julia Gillard’s address to the party faithful that really symbolised the depths to which Labor’s spin machine will go.
Her minders briefed assembled journalists that Julia would be speaking “off the cuff and from the heart”. They talked up the spontaneous nature of the address as evidence of their leaders drive and passion as well as her leadership ability. Julia raised her palms as she walked out – no notes in hand – and embraced Bob Hawke.

Continue reading "Liberal diary: “Foolya Joolia” not all she seems" »