Old PMs try to tip balance in tightening race

CANBERRA: As Australia's old political warhorses charged into the campaign for the August 21 election, the tide continued to turn against Prime Minister Julia Gillard in the key state of Queensland.

The resurrection of ousted predecessor Kevin Rudd as a committed Labor fighter has helped the Government cement over claims of bitter divisions, but his appearance on the campaign trail this weekend may not be all that Gillard might have hoped.

With new polls confirming she is in deep trouble in the volatile marginal seats that are likely to determine the outcome of the election, punters have also started betting heavily against the Government where it hurts most.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, meanwhile, has been joined by former Prime Minister John Howard, dumped both from office and his Sydney seat in the 2007 landslide that propelled Rudd to power, but still a giant among Liberals.

Also in the charge of prime ministers past is Labor legend Bob Hawke, busy working the streets and shopping malls, and the man he expelled in 1983, Liberal Malcolm Fraser.

Fraser's appearance has not been such good news for Abbott: he quit the party last year, and yesterday told ABC radio he did not believe the Coalition was ready to govern.

But Abbott's campaign - already heartened by national polls placing the Coalition either in front or neck-and-neck, and state polls showing a potentially election-winning shift in Queensland and New South Wales - has been given another boost from Morgan's latest findings.

These showed that while nationally Gillard remained nine points ahead of Abbott as preferred prime minister, Abbott outpolled Gillard 49 per cent to 36 per cent in Queensland, and 46 per cent to 45 per cent in NSW.

Despite concerns over proposed mining taxes, Gillard was ahead in Western Australia, and held strong leads in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.

But with a cluster of seats held by the slimmest of margins, Queensland and NSW will make or break the Government, and Rudd's decision to swallow his anger at Gillard's coup and throw his weight fully behind her Government has yet to make inroads there.

"Despite much talk about Rudd's popularity in his home state, that belief is not reflected when electors are actually asked who they prefer," pollster Gary Morgan said. "In Queensland Abbott is clearly preferred as prime minister to [both] Rudd and Gillard."

Punters have also swung behind the Opposition in key Queensland marginals.

Internet betting agency Centrebet said yesterday that a surge of money for Coalition MPs and candidates had given the lie to the belief that Gillard's treatment of Rudd was the main factor hurting Labor in the state.

Centrebet's Neil Evans said Labor was hurting from the exclusion of small and medium-sized miners from negotiations that led to Gillard's deal on a new resources rental tax, the fact that the huge state swing to Labor in 2007 was a protest vote against Howard's 11-year Administration, and because the unpopularity of the State Labor Government was crossing into federal politics.

"Apart from a few delusional supporters, Kevin Rudd's return to the fray might help him, but it won't help [Gillard's] campaign as far as undecided voters go," he said.

Rudd's return has also been attacked by Queensland's major newspaper, Brisbane's Courier Mail, which said the voters who put Labor into power three years ago were now ready to execute it: a "vast majority" of readers writing on the paper's website remained furious at Gillard and her coup.

Gillard yesterday rejected suggestions she had made a back-room deal with Rudd, saying the former Prime Minister had fought all his life for Labor values he did not want to see Abbott trash.

Gillard had further problems yesterday, from a report into the troubled A$16.2 billion ($19.6 billion) school building programme she oversaw as Education Minister under Rudd's economic stimulus programme during the global financial downturn.

The report found that the programme had been plagued by valid concerns about inflated building costs, although mainly through the fault of the state governments implementing them.

Gillard accepted the report, said all its recommendations would be implemented by a re-elected Labor Government, and that she had no regrets.

But in his first appearance in the campaign, Howard said the Government was incompetent at its core, wasted money and falsely claimed credit for saving Australia from the global crisis.

"I'll tell you why Australia emerged stronger from the downturn than any other country in the world. It was because it entered that recession stronger than any other country in the world."