Spot the difference

Tony Abbott isn’t on the nose with voters — he just hasn’t given them a compelling reason to elect a coalition government yet. That’s the verdict of Glenn Milne, trying to divine the tea leaves as presented by opinion pollsters. In that sense, there’s bad news for both major parties. For Labor, there is an alarming lack of enthusiasm within the community for Julia Gillard. In this story, if Labor is returned to power (as currently seems likely), it will be down to a lack of any appealing alternative — not out of satisfaction with the job the government has done in its first term. This will place tremendous pressure on a second term Labor administration. For the Liberals, the challenge is to capture the electorate’s attention with a groundbreaking policy that will swing votes. That’s easier said than done. Such policies tend to be risky bets — while they can win votes, they can also lose plenty as well. What’s clear is that the current approach of trying to avoid any meaningful policy differences with Labor will not be enough to make Abbott the next Prime Minister. With less than four weeks until polling day, there’s still much work to be done by both sides.