18 July Sydney Morning Herald 

MOVING FORWARD

Labor's campaign slogan comes with an obvious message: it is the party for the future, the one voters should look to for leadership on the big issues such as population and climate change.

It is also a plea to voters to forget the events of less than a month ago when the man they voted for in 2007 was unceremoniously dumped by his party. By asking voters to move forward with her, Julia Gillard is asking people to forget the very recent past and follow her to a new Labor future. She is also firmly painting Tony Abbott as yesterday's man, shackled to the wreckage of Work Choices and unable to look to the future on issues such as climate change (not that Gillard has said anything substantial on this matter yet).

But moving forward sends a slightly mixed message because Gillard doesn't want to sever all ties with the past. The economy is one of Labor's strongest selling points and keeping Australia from financial collapse and continuing low unemployment are all things set in train by the Rudd government. So were policies such as the My School website which Gillard continues to nominate as one of her proudest achievements.

Neither will Gillard stop mentioning Work Choices, the industrial relations policy that was so detested by voters that they elected Labor in order to get rid of it only three years ago.

Abbott was quick to promise the policy was not only dead but cremated and that he would not change the existing industrial relations laws if he was elected (in his first term, at least).

Nevertheless, ''moving forward'' will be heard ad nauseam over the next five weeks in keeping with former party head Tim Gartrell's theory that a message is only just starting to cut through when people are in danger of vomiting when they hear it.

As Abbott pointed out, ''moving forward'' is the ''working families'' of 2010. Abbott will make the argument that Labor has not moved forward, that it is still the same bunch but with a new leader who can't guarantee she will be allowed to stay in the job.

The ghost of Kevin Rudd will be regularly employed by the Coalition because it knows people feel uneasy about the manner in which he was dispatched. This will play well in Queensland, Rudd's home state, and NSW, where voters are used to their state leaders being changed as frequently as socks. These are also the two states where the election will be won or lost.

Labor needs to lose only eight seats nationwide in order to lose the right to form government in its own right. This will be a tight contest fought by two people who, despite their obvious skills and charisma, are untested in leading campaigns.