The togs of war

REASONS floated for Julia Gillard's decision to call an August election range from opportunism to a desire for her own mandate (as opposed to a man date, which she already has).

REASONS floated for Julia Gillard's decision to call an August election range from opportunism to a desire for her own mandate (as opposed to a man date, which she already has). But Strewth suspects a more humane motive behind a winter campaign: to reduce the chances of Speedo-clad protesters dogging Tony Abbott. This would, after all, be the least she could do for her old sparring partner from Today. It may have been all for nothing, with Philip Boncardo appearing at the Iron Monk's press conference in western Sydney in nought but a pair of a budgie smugglers and a placard emblazoned with the ambiguous imperative, "Stop Abbott cuts". So how does one wear Speedos in winter without freezing off one's freckle? "Just find a sunny spot and stand in it," Boncardo tells Strewth, with the caveat that the decision regarding location rests ultimately with a higher power: the Australian Federal Police. "The AFP kept me at a safe distance from Tony. They could have put me in the shade, but they put me on the sunny side of the street; they were really nice about it."

Mother Gillard

FAMILY First leader Steve Fielding was quick to pass judgment on Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan's sprog-smooch-a-thon yesterday: "Sure, kissing babies looks good for the cameras but sadly it's just a case of more spin than substance from Labor." Call us squeamish, but there's something about bringing kissing babies and substance together in one sentence that makes us squirm. Still, the babies didn't look particularly troubled as the duo slipped into Mother Gillard and Uncle Wayne mode. If nothing else, this photo is a wonderful image for the leader and deputy leader of a party that wants to keep the population down.

Griffith, taketh away

THE cruellest non-answer came when Gillard was asked if she planned to help out her predecessor Kevin Rudd (who surely has an interesting interpretation of Gillard's claim this is a "knife-edge" election) by campaigning in his seat of Griffith. Gillard replied, "I will as Prime Minister go where I'm needed to campaign for Labor right around the country." We suspect this means she'll just keep moving forward, unless it's Griffith that lies directly before her.

Forward emotion

IN the meantime, the Iron Monk is sounding unhinged by the mental water torture of moving forward, labelling it a "mindless mantra", which is touchingly droll coming from Mr Great Big New Tax. In the meantime, Strewth has been pondering the niggling familiarity of "moving forward". Then it struck us. It was a phrase beloved of Soviet communists and their client governments, all moving forward to the victory of communism. But for all the exclamation marks, it always sounded like an incremental motion; not for them the great leap forward of China's commies, so this surely counts as another of the ALP's acts of repudiation of the Rudd legacy. Curiously, as we had this thought, a Labor campaign email popped into our inbox. Microsoft Outlook insists on giving a preview in the bottom of our screen, in which any graphics are rendered as text. This is how it appeared: "07-logo-red-square."

Austen audit

THERE was a happy period yesterday when a link on the Liberals' website that promised to download the party's "action contract" instead delivered an error message that began with the regretful "It appears the page you are looking for has gone", before moving on to the more existential: "Wait, why am I here?" The actual contract was as elusive as the brand new Liberal candidates for the western Sydney seats of Parramatta and Greenway. Unlike the candidates, though, the contract eventually surfaced. Meanwhile, one of Tony Abbott's opponents in his seat of Warringah, Australian Sex Party candidate Austen Tayshus, was having cyber troubles of his own, when his website disappeared into the ether. As Tayshus explains, that wasn't the limit to the fun and games: "Last Thursday I had a Godwin Grech-type character call me from the tax office and tell me that over the next five weeks of the election campaign and for no particular reason, I am to be audited. I currently have an agreed arrangement with the tax office which has been signed off on by both of us so I don't know what has caused this to change."

Standing order

SURELY the best ad so far in the campaign is Wilson Tuckey's, a clean, surgical strike that features five people airing sentiments that range from the sobering. such as "Wilson is an honest bloke and he says what most of us are thinking", to the incontestable, "He's not your average politician". And as for the great man himself, don't expect anything even remotely resembling that "moving forward" malarkey. Take it away, Iron Bar: "I'm Wilson Tuckey, the sitting member who stands up for you."