One burning question is 'Why does Mr Rudd sound like Ahmadinejad with his rhetoric?'
When Rudd finally is declared PM, how will he behave? What are his policies going to be?
ALP have failed to announce a policy since Paul Keating won on the promise that he wouldn't have a GST. There have been several campaigns since, but each time the ALP have refused to spell out what they want to do with Australian money. If the example of the State governments is a guide, I guess Rudd is promising to tax more and spend more.
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ALP recruit all at sea on AWAs
By Maria Hawthorne
SENIOR Labor figures have defended celebrity candidate Nicole Cornes despite a disastrous radio interview in which she could not explain the party's industrial relations policy.
With a new poll showing she is losing Labor ground in the key Adelaide seat of Boothby, Ms Cornes was repeatedly asked what she meant as she attempted to outline what was wrong with Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs).
"AWAs allow for over $100,000," the newspaper columnist and wife of former Adelaide Crows coach Graham Cornes told ABC Radio.
Asked to explain, she said: "AWAs take away penalty rates ... they don't allow for people to negotiate over $100,000."
Told by the interviewer that Labor believed workers earning under $100,000 per year should be protected in the workplace by a strong safety net, Ms Cornes replied: "They should be."
Deputy Labor leader Julia Gillard defended Ms Cornes, saying anyone could get nervous in an interview.
She said she was confident Ms Cornes understood the policy.
"Every Labor candidate, including Nicole Cornes, passionately believes in fair and balanced industrial relations laws," Ms Gillard told ABC radio.
Labor's campaign spokeswoman, frontbencher Penny Wong, said candidates weren't expected to be able to recite policies, just to understand their impact.
"Frankly, I think today's events are no big deal. It could happen to anyone and it's happened to all of us," Senator Wong said.
"What is important is whether a candidate understands the impact of a policy. Whether they can recite it word for word is not the issue."
A poll in the Adelaide Advertiser today of 649 Boothby voters found that more than one quarter of those who voted Labor in 2004 planned to change their vote this year.
Ms Cornes was particularly unpopular with women, with only one in four saying they would vote for her.
Her primary vote was just 29 per cent, compared with 44 per cent for incumbent Liberal Andrew Southcott.
Ms Cornes said she did not believe the poll.
"I don't think that women don't like me. I don't believe that and I really don't pay attention to polls at all," she said.
"I don't pay attention to the positive polls, and so therefore I don't pay attention to the negative polls."
Dr Southcott said the poll was "interesting information", but he was not taking anything for granted.
But Labor Leader Kevin Rudd said Ms Cornes was doing a terrific job.
"When I've been out with her talking to local families, my experience is that the response to Labor's message, and from Nicole's message on basic things like housing affordability, like Work Choices, the availability of affordable childcare, it's real, it's substantial and there is a very positive response to Labor's message and our plan for the country's future," Mr Rudd said in Adelaide.
The Boothby poll came on top of a Newspoll showing strong support for the Liberal-National Coalition at a state level in Western Australia.
Prime Minister John Howard said the result was encouraging for the Federal Government.
"I think there's a lot of hostility in Western Australia towards the Labor Party's industrial relations approach," he told the Nine Network.
"But I don't read too much into that polling. It's encouraging, but there's a lot of polling and the great bulk of it puts us as the underdog."
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