It was a Coalition win again but no thanks to anything the Coalition said or did. Their performances were rather lacking in lustre actually but it's hard to have a losing day when your opponents are fighting among themselves while looking for leakers.
It would have been far worse for Labor than the one point loss that I have on my score card if Julia Gillard had not given such a spirited commentary on the story of what she did and did not say in Cabinet meetings. This she said he said business does not register with casual observers anywhere near as much as it does with journalists and probably the issue has had little or no impact on likely voting behaviour.
What the researchers must be finding that is having an impact is the contradiction between the Coalition criticising Labor for putting a tax on miners while themselves planning a tax rise on all businesses to finance a parental leave proposal. Tony Abbott is desperately looking for a way out of this particular "bit new tax".
