From the ABC

Bob Ellis.

According to Newspoll five hundred thousand Australians changed their vote from Labor to Liberal last week. Do you know any of these people? Funny, that.

They did it in the week John Howard lost the Great Debate, mistook the year 2016 for 1916, was revealed to have refused to sign Kyoto though Malcolm Turnbull begged him to, was found to be way behind in six swinging seats in New South Wales including his own, forbade the Worm and was bitten by it, begged banks not to put up interest rates for the sixth time since he promised they'd stay at 'record lows', said he never said that, then heard his own voice saying it.

It was the worst week, most pundits agreed, of his long career. And after all this, five hundred thousand Australians moved their vote from preferred Labor to preferred Liberal. The way you do. Statistically, if we each know a hundred people, we should each know five or six of these overnight vote switchers. Do you know even one? Me neither. Funny, that.

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Gus: in circles I move in, Labor or Liberal, most people tell me they're "a bit" (euphemism for a lot) jaded with John Howard... They're sick of his many crafted bad flips and the porkies about about his wares, mostly designed to hurt people while "chantecleering" a surplus... The economy? Mostly good luck that many underlying sins are hidden from full-frontal view, such as the trade deficit... When People stay somewhat non-committal it could be because there's a Howard minister present, gracing the launch of an envelope with a Federal presence in the room.

But the main song is that it's time for change... and Costello is not it, except for a very few die-hard Libs. Mind you, some people have reservations about Rudd. He's slick, polished and a bit too "Christian". Too "conservative". But they should not worry too much. His performance really wormed John Howard during the debate.

John Howard is trying to make stick some Johnnee's falsehood on Rudd... Hopefully, it won't work. But we know John Howard — Mr 22 per cent interest rates — who was the worst treasurer Australia ever had, according to Mr Costello (my view as well), after which Labor under Bob and Paul had to clean up, during an unstable, bloated and risky entrepreneurial period of international finances, culminating in the 1987 crash.

Even the mighty Greenspan, the chief of the US Federal Reserve Bank, admired the way Hawke (really Keating's finances management) and Keating operating through the flak, created a strong economic base for Australia, despite the yapping of little Johnnee to the contrary.

Johnnee, having cultivated the media to eventually describe Keating as "arrogant" (what a lot of hypocritical bull), inherited a breeze of a job. But he squeezed the juice out of it. Us, I mean... Yes, greed under Howard has become THE virtue, at all cost...

But if it was only for John Howard having supported Bushit to go to war in Iraq, it would be enough to kick him out... Even his Minister for cute planes and bombs, Nelson, let the cat out of the bag: the war was about OIL (confirmed by Greenspan — he would know). Unforgivable: around 1 million dead, 2.5 million refugees and a population living mostly in squalor... Furthermore "the Job is not done" and US troops are likely to stay there "doing the job" for another 25 years minimum, while a-pumping. Rotten.

Kick Howard out. 

13.46: So who won? The worms, and I think it went to Rudd by an ego. Rudd gets a score of 7; Abbott 3.

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See toon at top and use your vivid imagination to replace Rattus with Abbott... Like his master, Abbott is rotten to the non-core of his non-policies...

more about the worm at the ABC...

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Given the experience of his mentor, it's surprising then how Mr Abbott played this debate.

He used his opening statement to attack his opponent.

He repeated the phrases "broken promises", "old promises" "can't trust", all the while the worm moving south.

The 100 so-called undecided voters who Channel 9 chose to control the worm didn't like the negativity, meaning Mr Abbott ceded the "positive" moral high ground entirely to Kevin Rudd.

The rest of the debate played out in a similar fashion.

Mr Rudd held tight to his successful formula focusing on "country hospitals," "rich or poor", "mums and dads" and even "join with us in the positive."

The worm loved it. Several times it went off the scale for Mr Rudd. Not once did it reach such heights for Mr Abbott.

Some Labor insiders thought Mr Rudd was "crazy brave" to take on this debate.

But the worm has spoken, the gamble paid off.