Parsimony rules over pork barrel politics

CANBERRA - Australia's election campaign is rapidly being defined by how tough, lean and stingy its leaders can show themselves to be.

Far from the good old days of electoral lolly scrambles, where money was hurled to voters by the bucketload, this time around it is almost like snatching candy from the baby.

Parsimony rules.

While Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been doling out relatively niggardly promises - so far at least - for housing and youth training.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott's policy axe yesterday hewed a planned A$1.2 billion ($1.42 billion) from federal spending under a Coalition Government.

Abbott's cuts targeted a number of Labor's climate change and infrastructure initiatives, Australia's bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council and the community Cabinet meetings held regularly around Australia.

He said that although savings identified by the Coalition now totalled almost A$46 billion ($54.52 billion), the Government was still spending wildly.

"Over the course of this campaign, debt will increase by A$3.5 billion because of the spending spree of the [former Prime Minister Kevin] Rudd Government," Abbott said.

Abbott, who has also promised policies that would push down interest rates, may be given a boost by the Reserve Bank's next meeting, which will consider the case for another rate rise.

On the other hand, Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens yesterday polished the Government's economic credentials by telling a Sydney luncheon that the nation had been spared both the worst of the global financial crisis and the prospect of higher taxes faced by many other developed countries.

"These are factors that support our native optimism, at least about economic conditions," he said.

But both sides turned cream puff when it came to the sole televised debate Gillard has agreed to before the August 21 election: its timing was brought forward an hour so it did not clash with Channel Ten's top-rating MasterChef cooking show.

On the B-team, Treasurer Wayne Swan has refused to debate Opposition counterpart Joe Hockey at all, prompting the shadow minister to accuse him of cowardice and to compare Swan's budgetary style to American celebrity Paris Hilton's celibacy.

With just a few days down, Gillard appears to be holding the lead.

A new Essential Poll has repeated the earlier findings of Newspoll and Morgan, giving the Government a 55 per cent to 45 per cent winning advantage in the two-party preferred vote.

Essential also showed Gillard well ahead as preferred prime minister, at 50 per cent to Abbott's 27 per cent, with both male and female voters preferring the Labor leader.

Abbott is also fighting a widening media portrayal of a leader in trouble.

Reports yesterday pointed to the absence of the leader from Liberal candidates' pamphlets and other election material, and from the internet homepages of some contesting crucial marginal seats.

"There is a big baulk factor with Tony," one unnamed Liberal MP told the Australian.

Abbott yesterday brushed aside the omissions, telling Seven Network that election material would change as the campaign progressed and that, in any case, he was not an egomaniac.

"I don't expect every Liberal's material to basically be wall-to-wall photos of Tony Abbott," he said.

But Abbott's first days have been marred by confusion and contradiction over industrial laws and the WorkChoices legislation that played a significant role in throwing the Coalition from power in 2007.

Abbott first promised not to change Labor's reforms for the first term of a Coalition Government, then accepted there could be some "tweaking" and perhaps even greater changes later, and finally pledging never to resurrect any part of WorkChoices, ever.

Although Abbott said he could never guarantee that a Coalition Government in the distant future would not have other ideas, the skirmish has allowed the Government and unions to continue a telling barrage.

Abbott has also shifted ground on climate change, amending his earlier determination never to set a price on carbon with a more pragmatic view that in the event of an "unlikely" global agreement, a Coalition Government "would have to adjust to it".

Nor did a visit to a Melbourne greengrocer yesterday go all that well.

After Abbott left, owner Hayden Tran told reporters he had illegally entered Australia by boat and that he thought the present tough line on asylum seekers was a bit harsh.

Not that Gillard has been having it all her own way.

She was in Sydney to push her policy of "sustainable" population growth, when the Victorian Electrical Trades Union announced its decision to end its decades-old affiliation with Labor.

"Many decisions by Labor in Government are not delivering for workers and their families," secretary Dean Mighell said.