Well, there you have it. Two days out, and they went and dropped the ball. Tightest run election in years and a key 'balloon' promise is likely to turn a 'millstone'. Nice one team, nice one.
If you've read this blog for more than five minutes (the number of people in the blogsphere who continue to ask if I think that 'Che' is just a cool nickname continues to irk me), you'll know I was in Melbourne for the last Federal Election in Australia.
What that campaign saw was a reasonable effort on the part of the Australian Labor Party to oust a fairly entrenched John Howard.
For all polls, the old saying goes that 'Oppositions don't win elections, Governments lose them'. Over there, a number of mistakes were made which prevented the Opposition from getting up enough momentum to knock Howard off his perch, but the pivotal error was in relation to Forestry policy. It's way down buried in this post here, and a little post-election misery here if you want the outline.
Latham screwed up big-time in the last week of the campaign, by presenting a very good policy, but not having enough time to explain it to the electorate. Howard exploited that mistake, and actually increased his absolute majority.
In a nutshell what has thus far prevented National from looking like winners this coming Saturday is their lack of a head of steam. They looked as though some their policies were just about enough of a wedge to get them close to the Treasury benches, but not quite enough. And stupid, cowardly actions like the Wanaga incident this past week weren't helping.
This morning though? After digesting the likely reaction to the Student Loans scandal, and building on the back of buried blogs containing my reaction to things like the 'mainstreaming' ethos that will undoubtedly infuse the new Government, I'm calling this one for a possibly very slim National majority.
Please prove me wrong.