Oz Politics Blog

Yesterday was the first full day of the 2007 election campaign, since the election date was announced. Each morning duing the campaign I plan to capture the key issues and announcements from the day before. This is my day one report.

The big announcement of the day was the Coalition’s $34 billion over three years in tax cuts (commencing on 1 July 2008).

The Government released its Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook 2007-08 (MYEFO). It revealed there is at least another $4 billion in unannounced expenditure measures. Also, even with the $34 billion in tax cuts, the MYEFO predicted a fiscal budget surplus of some $64 billion over four years (2007-08 through to 2010-11).

The ABC’s Four Corners program explored alleged links between the Exclusive Brethren church and the Liberal Party.

The Liberal, Nationals and Labor election web-sites are up. Labor also has Kevin 07. At this early hour none of the sites has much from yesterday to report.

Malcolm Mackerras predicted that Labor would win the 2007 election with 89 seats. According to Mackerras, the Liberals would win 48 seats, the Nationals 11, and there would be two independents.

Parliament was prorogued at midday yesterday. (Hat tip to SJ)

Antony Green mapped out the election hotspots on the 7.30 Report. I met Antony last week and saw the graphics for the ABC’s proposed election telecast. Very noice!

This morning, the Australian had a nice wall-chart of electorates going into the 2007 election.

The Age had an amusing video clip, Rappin’ Rudd v Hip-hop Howard.

And from last year’s Canadian election, “The Sex Party [a political party that promotes sexual freedom] is upset that Canada Post refused to distribute a flyer during the 2006 federal election that outlined the group’s philosophy, after deeming some its contents to be pornographic.”

Sorry about that … but the feeds database has now been repaired.

Today’s Australian has the latest Newspoll. This result is very much like many before it.

A Galaxy poll of four Queensland marginal seats in today’s Courier Mail painted a different story (well a less dramatic Labor win if the results are applied nationally).

While voters in the four marginal seats of Bonner, Moreton, Longman and Herbert had a strong opinion of Mr Rudd’s performance, Labor was holding only a slim 2 per cent lead on the two-party preferred vote.

This translates to a healthy swing of 5.6 per cent towards Labor since the 2004 election, but it is dramatically less than the 9 per cent swing to Labor suggested in last month’s national Galaxy poll.

The usual opinion poll graphs are here. I updated some 40 graphs this morning. You may need to hit the refresh or reload button on your browser to see the latest graphs.

If you have changed address since the last election the chances are that you have been removed from the electoral roll and you will need to re-enrol. Obviously, if you turned 18 years since the last election, you wont be on the roll and you will need to enrol before you can vote.

If you’re not enrolled you only have until 8pm on Wednesday 17th October to fill in and return your form to the Australian Electoral Commission. If you leave it later than Wednesday, you won’t be able to vote.

You can verify your enrolment here.

If you need to enrol or re-enrol, get the appropriate form from here and follow the instructions.

11am: The Prime Minister is currently meeting with the Governor-General.

Update 12 noon: The election has been formally announced for 24 November 2007.

Further update: Parliament will be prorogued at noon on Monday 15 October (ie, Parliament will go into recess, and the sittings previously scheduled for this week will not occur). The House of Representatives will be dissolved at noon on Wednesday 17 October 2007.

The normal business of government will continue until the House of Representatives is dissolved on Wednesday, after which the Caretaker Conventions will come into effect.

According to the Australian Electoral Commission, the key dates are: