Small room politics
Labor officially launched its campaign in a small-ish conference room in Brisbane, which looked like it normally played host to actuarial seminars or perhaps time-share, holiday rental marketing drives.
We have heard a lot about small targeting campaigning - a minimalist form of politics which does not give your opponent much to aim at. Today we saw small conference room politics, which does not give your supporters much room in which to sit. I mention it not only because of my preoccupation with trivialities, but because it speaks of the control-freakery of modern campaigning. If you keep an event small, you can exert more control.
For Labor, the era of big launch venues is clearly over.
But Julia Gillard came with what she believed was an expansive vision of a modernised Australia, which she delivered, fluently, without an autocue. Talking to Labor insiders afterwards, the plan was to show she is a politician of conviction, and can speak on her own behalf. She was trying to present herself as a forward-thinking leader, with a plan for the future, who is up against a conservative leader whom she wants to portray as being rooted firmly in the past. It was classic future against the past positioning. She was basically saying there is only one leader with an optimistic vision in this race.
For her, the provision of faster broadband speeds has become the emblematic issue in the race. Her main policy announcement was a plan to improve the provision of healthcare in rural and regional Australia by increasing the amount of video conferencing and online consultation. It is all centred on the delivery of the National Broadband Network.
As she reached her conclusion, she evoked the memory of the post-war Labor Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, who spoke of "the light on the hill," and then ventriloquised Barack Obama. "Yes we can," the great rallying cry of the 2008 American presidential election, became "Yes, we can."
At the Liberal launch, we suggested that it still requires a great leap of imagination to see Tony Abbott as a plausible Australian prime minister. Perhaps many will require the same leap to see Julia Gillard in the same light as Barack Obama.
Before Gillard spoke, one of Labor's top strategists spoke of one of the central problems of its campaign: the party keeps on winning two consecutive days but is struggling to put together three on the trot. Nobody has yet built up unstoppable momentum.
So the polls remain in flux, with a major poll on Monday showing Labor with an election-winning lead. But there was another major poll over the weekend which showed the Liberals ahead. This election will ultimately come down to 20 battleground seats, half of them in Queensland, of which more later in the week.
There was an awkwardness about this campaign launch, which was obviously because of the presence of Kevin Rudd. He was seated at the end of the fifth row, and while Julia Gillard paid him tribute he was not invited to speak.
The joke in the press room was that the choice of a small venue for the speech reflected the fact it was being delivered in Kevin Rudd's backyard - the former prime minister's parliamentary constituency is just up the road from here - and Julia Gillard is having a hard time with Queenslanders.
Call it what you may; The Queensland factor or the Rudd Effect. But it could still decide this race.
I'm 
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