Well, in today’s crikey, Charles Richardson opines that the masses have already chosen Kevin Rudd as the next prime minister in his article titled “Thanks for the Budget, but we’ve already made up our minds”
He proposes that the lack of bounce in the opinion polls shows that the average voter, whilst applicative of the budget, has not influenced their voting intentions.
This poses two problems for the current government:
This does not necessarily translate into “Vote for Rudd”. However, Rudd seems to feed on this with the push on education, for instance.
One thing that strikes me, is that people will crucify a government in bad times for stuffing the economy up. In good times it is not enough just to sustain the status quo, you must do some “nation building”, which of course goes against the coalition’s mantra of “leave it up to the private sector”. At this point, anyone with a plan for a sustainable future could possibly win government, and the Howard mob doesn’t seem to have a plan to fix the average australian’s problems.