13 August 2013 MEDIA WRAP

Editorial, AFR

Mr Rudd is a skilled campaigner but after six years of leadership turmoil, policy back flips and a budget stuck in deficit, he is struggling to persuade voters not only that there is plan but that he is the best choice to deliver it.... Labor's scare campaign (on the GST) on this front is sounding increasingly shrill and its own track record on tax reform is abysmal in any case.....All of those broken promises to get the budget back into surplus are hanging around like Banquo's ghost.

Jennifer Hewitt, AFR

...while sophisticated manufacturing jobs form a valuable underpinning to any economy, creating the right environment to allow those sorts of jobs and businesses to flourish is harder to deliver than to promise. It's harder still when the government's agenda has simultaneously been focused on reregulating the labour market. Not to mention effectively blocking tax arrangements for new technology businesses wanting to employ people using flexible conditions such as employee share options

Yet the government's main focus has been to pour many billions of dollars into "skills and training", another concept that sounds great in principle and is popular with the union movement.  Unfortunately, much of that investment has produced extremely poor results – Labor's initial $2 billion flagship training scheme - the Productivity Placement Program - had to be belatedly rejigged (retrained), for example, after it became obvious it was only delivering low-level, short-term and cut-price courses that didn't skill people for much of anything -

Geoff Kitney, AFR

But this campaign has reached the point where Rudd needs to start giving his Labor supporters reasons to share the belief that drives him. They didn't get it from the leaders' debate. The legacy of a troubled past six years handicapped him to the point that Tony Abbott was able to deny Rudd any chance of using the debate to regain lost momentum.

AFR Headline

Investigation urged over boat advertising blitz.

Nick Xenophon quoted in AFR

“The ads are directed towards people smugglers yet they're appearing in Australian newspapers.... I didn't realise The Adelaide Advertiser had such a huge home delivery run in the outer suburbs of Jakarta”

Heath Aston, The Age

But with Labor’s campaign stuck in second gear, the question of the PM’s own future job prospects loomed over the event. Will Mr Rudd require some workplace retraining post September 7?

Patrick Lion, The Advertiser

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd broke the rules 104 times during the leaders' debate. It has emerged that Mr Rudd was blatantly consulting his cheat sheets one second into the broadcast - well before he was required to speak .

Peter Van Onselen, The Australian

Rudd's rating remains in negative territory at minus nine, which is too low for him to be considered a serious asset to Labor's campaign.

Daily Telegraph p3 headline

Rudd’s airport backflip... Cold one day, hot the next.  Kevin Rudd has back flipped on a second Sydney airport, conceding yesterday the city was Australia’s gateway less than a day after dismissing the need for another hub.

Daily Telegraph, Editorial

Rudd’s a dud on second airport.

Editorial, The Australian

Former ALP president Warren Mundine has had the courage to put the progress of Aboriginal people ahead of politics by agreeing to work with Tony Abbott on a program that favours practical steps ahead of grand symbolic gestures on the road to reconciliation.

Alexander Downer, AFR

Had Labor stuck with Julia Gillard they would certainly have lost the election. But by reinstating Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister the party has revealed itself as cynical and power hungry.