PM escapes Canberra to become local hero

WHEN Defence Minister John Faulkner was shaking hands with Barack Obama in Washington, Kevin Rudd was at the bedside of cancer patient Joyce Mulley.

WHEN Defence Minister John Faulkner was shaking hands with Barack Obama at the nuclear security summit in Washington on Tuesday, Kevin Rudd was at the bedside of cancer patient Joyce Mulley at Lismore Base Hospital in northern NSW.

The Prime Minister announced $9.1 million for a local cancer treatment centre, leaving Mrs Mulley delighted. She will not have to travel to Brisbane for treatment.

Nurse unit manager Michael Hallam is happy too. A linear accelerator for cancer care is about to come online in Lismore. The new funding will let the hospital buy an additional machine.

"If there's any downtime for our machines, it won't mean downtime for treatment," he says.

"We should be able to deal with the majority of cancer radiation therapy treatments here."

The Kevin Rudd of old would have normally never missed a chance to meet the President -- or save the world -- but things have changed. Former Labor strategist and chairman of corporate communications firm CPR Adam Kilgour explains.

"Towards the end of the last year, everyone was criticising Kevin for being on a plane overseas all the time. He's done his international diplomacy. Now he's doing the domestic. There's no point in having big policy reform agendas and not getting re-elected."

The Prime Minister has begun his election campaign, cutting out the Canberra press gallery to take his health message directly to voters in a string of crucial marginals around the country.

"The local journos thank us for coming," one of his staff said last week. It was a joke, but an interview with Rockhampton radio on Wednesday caught the tone of the reception Rudd has won while on his travels.

"Central Queensland's wait for the cancer unit is finally over and a lot of people are saying `Hallelujah, it's about time'," 4RO breakfast host Michael Bailey began.

"I've got to tell you, Kevin Rudd, before you came to office I'd been preaching that infrastructure in this country is absolutely, well, was appalling, but (it) looks like you've heeded a lot of people and you're actually putting the infrastructure back into the local communities."

It has been the same at almost every stop on a road trip that began after the National Press Club debate with Tony Abbott on health on March 23 and ended only last night when Rudd returned to Canberra to prepare for Monday's meeting with the premiers.

Forty-eight hours after trouncing Abbott, Rudd was on the other side of the country at an after-hours GP clinic in the West Australian seat of Swan, one of just two electorates Labor lost at the last election.

Six days later he was talking health and hospitals in Geelong, in the seat of Corangamite, wrested from the Liberals by just 0.9 per cent for the first time in more than three-quarters of a century.

He has been to Broken Hill, the first prime minister to visit, old timers say, since John Gorton.

Yesterday he squeezed in stops at hospitals in Sydney and Wollongong.

But his most intensive efforts have been directed at a swath of territory stretching from the NSW central coast to Cairns, the belt that gave Labor a dozen seats at the last election and where redistributions have pushed more well within striking range.

"The Rudd government is aiming to have an increased majority," veteran psephologist Malcolm Mackerras believes. He calls the situation unprecedented.

"Normally the party that comes into government wins the next election, but with a reduced majority. Were that to happen this time, the Rudd government will be seen to have failed and Tony Abbott succeeded."

Rudd has visited more than 20 hospitals, given more than 20 electronic media and more than 25 doorstop interviews and met four premiers along the way.

There has been money for health education in Broken Hill, for after-hours doctors in Cairns, cancer care across Queensland and northern NSW, extra funds for the Mater Hospital in Mackay, clinical training in Gladstone and a GP super-clinic on the NSW central coast.

Much of the activity has targeted Labor marginal seats, but he has also spent time wooing independent Rob Oakeshott, who took the northern NSW seat of Lyne from the Nationals at a by-election in 2008; and putting pressure on the party in former strongholds where their support is ebbing away. The Canberra press gallery has been ignored. Their only members on the trip have been pooled camera crews.

But the national audience has not been ignored. Kilgour points out that Rudd has continued making major health announcements on his tour.

"They've had four discrete announcements with between close to half a billion and billion attached to them, just to let them keep talking about health."

Labor master tactician Bruce Hawker says Rudd is simply getting the message out.