Abbott: Oh Br’er Rudd please don’t throw me into the briar election (or out damn spot)

Tony Abbott on AM this morning:

if the Prime Minister wants an early election with his government in this kind of disarray - fair enough. Let's have it.

Yep, you heard it here first: the Government is in disarray. Hmmm… ok then, here’s how many polls since Kevin Rudd became leader of the ALP in 2006 that have had the Liberal-National Party beating the ALP in Two Party Preferred terms:

ZERO.

Here’s the result of the last Newspoll (which was two weeks ago, and for some unknown reason there wasn’t one today, despite everyone including Tony Abbott expecting one):

ALP 56% – LNP 44%

Here’s how many seats that would see the ALP and LNP win if replicated at the next election:

ALP 101; LNP 46 (with the ALP winning 18 more seats than in 2007)

But assuming that was a bit of a rogue poll, here’s how many seats the ALP and LNP would win according to Possum Pollytics’ current average of all recent phone polls:

ALP 98; LNP 49 (with the ALP winning just a mere 15 more seats than it did in 2007)

But let’s be really pessimistic and say the vote at the next election is the same as in 2007; here’s how many seats the ALP and LNP would win:

ALP 88; LNP 59 (due to redistributions the ALP wins 5 more seats than it did in 2007)

Here’s Tony Abbott's response this morning when asked about the Liberal Party's Health policy – the biggest issue in Australian politics by the length of the street:

Well, we will announce our health and hospital policy in good time before the election.

The same can be said about their IR policy, their education policy, their child care policy (oh wait, that’s right they came up with one for that and it got laughed at by all and sundry).

Hands up all those who think the Liberal Party are ready to fight an election right now?

Zero?

The only way Abbott’s calling for an early election makes any sense is that he is hoping to bluff Rudd into not going early, rather like Br’er Rabbit telling the Br’er Fox not to throw him into the briar patch. But let’s be honest even that doesn’t make any sense, because Rudd (and everyone else in the country) knows Abbott does not want an early election, and equally Abbott (and everyone else in the country) knows Rudd does not want an election before July 1 (because if he had a double dissolution before then the Senate would be back date to July 1 2009, meaning another election in only 2 years time).

And both Rudd and Abbott (and everyone else in the county) also knows Rudd wants to wait because he is betting Abbott will shoot himself in the foot the more time he has prior to an election.

So everyone knows Abbott is just being his usual self – full of bluster and without substance, and it is not Joel Chandler Harris, but Shakespeare to whom we turn for an answer to Abbott’s strategy:

Abbott is but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then will be heard no more. He tells a tale (told by an idiot) full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

But if Rudd were one to quote poetry, he wouldn’t use Shakespeare to respond to the question of why he isn’t calling an early election. No, he would quote the Poet Laureate of the ALP: Paul Keating:

“The answer is mate, because I want to do you slowly”