Further comment on pundits.  Over the past weekend media commentators on air and in print were near enough to unanimous that the Labor campaign was  "a farce", a "fiasco", a "circus", and a "disaster".

Result:   the Newspoll (taken 6-8 August 2010) while Julia Gillard was facing hostile questions about her "secret" meeting with Kevin Rudd and confronting Mark Latham, showed a reverse of its findings a week ago.  Newspoll has Labor back in front 52%-48% on two party preferred and even up 2% on primary vote.  Of course some of the franker commentators such as Fran Kelly on ABC Insiders (8 August 2010) concede that National polls are not likely to predict a result that will be decided in key marginals.   

Hence local issues or local self-interest will influence the result more than broad national policies.  On that score don't rely on polls conducted through the Fairfax regional network are unhelpful. 

Since 7 August 2010 readers of the Queanbeyan Age have had the opportunity on line to say whether state issues will influence their federal vote.  So far 42.9% say "Yes" and 57.1% say "No".  The readers of the Cooma Express in Eden Monaro have the same opportunity as do the readers of the Border Morning Mail at Albury, and guess what, as Kevin07 likes to say, the results are exactly the same 42.9% "Yes" and 57.1% "No".  In other words the polls do not show local responses but only an aggregate of all responses received over the newspapers various mastheads.

This is bad news for those looking for local insight.