Gillard off the ropes at last

Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Photo / Getty Images

Tapping the real mood of the country is always hard in elections - even with the intensive polling that tracks every blip of the way - but in the past few days a scent of change is in the wind.

Australia launched into the campaign almost four weeks ago with Prime Minister Julia Gillard looking like a winner, and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott bumbling through, his tongue tied by party strategists and gears slipping on the party machine.

For the next two weeks Abbott could barely credit his luck.

While Gillard was thrown into a pit dug by saboteurs from within, her message drowned by the clamour over Cabinet leaks and the omnipresent, doom-laded spectre of deposed predecessor Kevin Rudd, the Coalition could roll out its message in a series of clear, almost unchallenged policies.

Abbott peaked with his impressive performance during the sole leaders' debate, the swing in polls that thrust the Opposition against all early expectations into the lead, and a buoyancy that trumped the transparent, stifling persona Gillard had been schooled to present.

But last weekend changed that.

While Gillard is still struggling in the polls, the national trend is back upwards, and the Prime Minister has repackaged herself in a far stronger, more convincing and personable light.

The nation's punters started pumping money back into Labor after her triumphant appearance on ABC TV's Q&A programme - watched by a record 840,000 viewers - and Gillard has followed with a run of carefully-targeted and articulated policies.

As a new Labor programme for the ailing Murray-Darling River basin was widely welcomed, Abbott fumbled badly on the Coalition's proposal to replace Labor's national broadband network with a cut-rate scheme that was panned by the communications industry.

Worse for Abbott, he did not attend the launch of what is shaping as one of the most important issues of the campaign, and failed to explain it in an embarrassing series of interviews.

Admitting that he was not a "tech-head" and "no Bill Gates", Abbott told one interviewer: "Just because you don't know exactly how every last detail of the motor car works, it doesn't mean you can't drive it effectively."

But with a series of damaging Labor ads using quotes from former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello to portray him as an economic incompetent, Abbott is in danger of falling victim to changing perceptions in the suburbs.

While voters might not bother with the detail, they expect their leaders to.