Liberal: 2
Labor: 2
Undecided: 1

I tried to find an old man or woman to guage their Medicare Gold opinion, but, although I am by nature a cruel man, the only available specimens were just too frail to frighten.

My analysis:

• The two leaning Liberal were a Toorak lady who talks and an aging homosexual.
• The two leaning to Labor were a young woman in university and an Asian lady who works at the noodle shop.
• The undecided was a woman in her late thirties who works at the newsagent.

Conclusion: The fence sitters will decide this cliff hanger. Maybe we'll have a hung parliament.

What a shame Melbourne's Herald Sun never sees fit to reproduce Mark Knight's cartoons online. Today's was a doozy. The first panel shows two Tasmanian loggers frothing at the mouth with the caption: "We're angry...we're loud...we're union and we're..." The second panel shows them lovingly embracing John Howard, with the caption: "In wuv wiv Johnny Howard."

It's taken eight and a half years, but at last the working class has found its true home with John Howard's Illiberal Party. I've never met a working class bloke (and that includes my father) who didn't stand for everything John Howard stands for: racism, sexism, intolerance, exclusion. Only they are too dumb to remember that John's party has devoted its existence to excluding them.

Yes, my father was working class. He hated the lot. He hated every foreigner on earth, even if they were white. He hated all religions but his own. He hated the arts and, by extension, homosexuals. He accused me of being a fag when I sent him a postcard featuring Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. God and Adam are naked, but worse, their fingers are touching. So much for Pop Hark's only begotten son. Like most rednecks, he hated everything that moves. It's a wonder I survived.

The trouble for Australia is that there may not be enough people with their heads attached to counter The Hobgoblin and his credo of hate and selfishness. A letter from Donna Cohen in The Age today sums up the horror many of us feel at the prospect of another Coalition victory.

I have tried to understand why the prospect of a Coalition victory on Saturday fills me with such despair. Basically, it comes down to this: if the Coalition is re-elected, then all the vile behaviour of the Howard Government over the past three years is somehow vindicated. It turns out that it's OK to lie, dissemble and duck responsibility, to incarcerate children, vilify asylum seekers and take part in an illegal war.

All these things are OK because interest rates are lower today than they were a few years ago. Is that all that our society stands for? That it really doesn't matter if ethical principles have been abandoned provided the economy is growing? What does it mean to be a financially prosperous country if we are morally bankrupt? Come on Australia. Think beyond your hip pocket and through your vote tell all politicians that we accept nothing less than truthful, responsible, accountable, ethical government.

On Saturday, I will be at my polling station to hand out leaflets aligning John Howard and Adolph Hitler in their caging of children. I will ask approaching voters the question, "Voting Liberal?" If they answer yes, I'll give 'em one. I'm hoping to change a few votes. My wife is hoping I don't get my lights punched out.

Just before the last election in 2001, in response to a column on refugees, I was flooded with letters from all over the country. From people enraged by the response of both parties to the poor wretches fleeing the tyrannies of Iraq and Afghanistan. Many switched to the Greens.

Clearly refugees can no longer be used as hostages for Howard's political purposes. Asylum-seekers are not being energetically demonised this time around -- and there are fewer attempts at deception -- though the very timing of the election prevented a more forensic examination of Howard's "children overboard" claims by the Senate. These days, the PM is as anxious as Latham to underplay the plight -- even the existence -- of refugees.

As Carmen Lawrence, Tanya Plibersek, Lindsay Tanner and others have argued, there's still room for improvement in Labor's policies. Still, Latham has guaranteed that on election, his government would move to ensure the closure of the Nauru camp -- and that children and their families will be removed from detention. A review will start of anyone detained for more than 90 days, and a better process will move thousands of refugees on temporary protection visas to permanent protection. It's not often that you can point to 10,000 people whose misery will end if there's a change of government. On this issue, this time, we can.

JOHN HOWARD: "By the Year 2000 I would like to see an Australian nation that feels comfortable and relaxed about three things: I would like to see them comfortable and relaxed about their history; I would like to see them comfortable and relaxed ... about the present, and I'd also like to see them comfortable and relaxed about the future."

The choice between candidates is becoming increasingly stark. The way a jubilant and confident Mark Latham carried on in Adelaide made John Howard look even more like a grumpy old man about to receive his gold watch on Saturday night. Latham appears to have fully regained his panache. Meanwhile, Howard, who continues to defy the evolutionary imperative, is holding on to a lead in the polls by virtue, it must be assumed, of a demographic that has one foot in the grave.

The polls have him behind. The weight of punters' dosh is on the Coalition. The overwhelming expectation in the community is for Saturday's poll to deliver a fourth election victory to John Howard.

Yet if all this is meant to depress Mark Latham, it's patently not working. The Labor leader was at his infectious best yesterday, ignoring the doomsayers, making light of front pages trumpeting anger at Tasmanian forest policy and compering a two-hour forum with the aplomb of a TV game show host.

[When questioned] why Labor had chosen a Muslim candidate, Ed Husic, to run in the Sydney seat of Greenway with its high ­ and increasing ­ proportion of Christian constituents, Latham bristled with discomfort and his heartfelt lecture on tolerance and selecting people on their merits brought the house down.

The best indication Latham is thoroughly enjoying himself is his fondness for his own jokes. The delayed chuckle after a deftly delivered bon mot has become a campaign standard; if the election isn't captivating the entire nation, it's certainly keeping Latham entertained.

Here is more proof that Liberal Party members up for re-election are taking voters for granted. "We're your natural rulers, so we'll just hang out at The Club and await your votes."

It has made news in the local papers only, but one of the stories of this election has been the reluctance of Liberal candidates in the tight marginal seat tussles in Victoria to show up to candidate forums.

Jesus crept 'n' Moses wept, but that's what Christianity has come to. Of course the bloke who spouted this gospel according to nutters was a mere campaign volunteer, but hey, he didn't volunteer for any of the other parties, did he? The following is reprinted from today's Herald Sun:

The religious party Family First has disciplined a campaign volunteer for saying lesbians should be burned to death.

Family First spokesman Mark Badham said the volunteer had been disciplined after answering yes to a question from a Greens supporter about whether Family First supported lesbians being burned to death.

"Dale Shuttleworth (a candidate in Dickson, Brisbane) contacted the volunteer, chastised him and disciplined him and we've moved on," Mr Badham said.

The man has been banned from any more volunteer duties with Family First.

"I'm voting Liberal because I'm conservative."

(I don't subscribe to the Anti-Christ phenomenon, but it does have a certain euphony.) Family First's pledge to turn each and every Australian into a cardboard cutout based on a one dimensional likeness of Jerry Falwell has given John Howard yet another wedge to shove up Labor's arse. The PM will be loving the Child Porn scandal, 'cause it gives him a chance to portray those Labor-loving Greens as dope pushing child molesters.

Asked about a statement by Family First's Queensland Senate candidate, John Lewis, that "through the Family First Party we can proclaim that Australia is the great South land of the Holy Spirit", Mr Howard said: "I would rather give my preferences to a party like that than I would to the Greens."

Along with Richard Flanagan (see Sunday 3 October), Robert Manne asserts that "nothing now matters more to Howard than power." That is the core of the man for whom expediency renders all that he says and does as non-core if it interferes with the core goal. The greatest embarrassment for Australia will be in a majority of voters not understanding this.

A close acquaintance of the Prime Minister recently explained to me that Howard is obsessed by his role in history. If he loses this election, he will assume his place alongside Lyons, Fraser and Hawke. If he wins, he will become the second-longest-serving prime minister, trailing behind only Menzies. Nothing now matters more to Howard than power. It is a passion that is almost carnal. He is gripped by fear of failure.

Howard used his second term to bury the Keating cultural legacy. He played an important part in defeating the proposal for a republic. He ended the debate on multiculturalism. He killed off hopes for Aboriginal reconciliation. None of these acts had great electoral salience. The decision Howard took in late August 2001 - to use the navy to repel boats of Muslim asylum seekers - did.

At the height of the Howard ascendancy, public life became debased. Nothing reveals this more clearly than the politics on Iraq. Because Iraq was invaded on the basis of a falsehood, and because the subsequent occupation has wrought terrible catastrophe, Iraq is now the central question threatening the reputations of George Bush and Tony Blair. By contrast, Howard has escaped his responsibility unscathed.

In the November 2001 election, I voted against Howard mainly because of his attitude to reconciliation and his cruelty to refugees. This time, in addition, I will be voting against his Government because of the complicity of the Prime Minister in the invasion of Iraq and the impact of his increasingly authoritarian style of government on Australian public life.

Shouldn't we be asking why pedophilia is such a problem and what causes it? Pedophilia belongs to a class of sexual disorders known as paraphilia. Paraphilia occurs when normal sexual development is thwarted and the sexual urge is transferred to deviant behaviour.

It is no accident that paraphilia is found in greater numbers in sexually repressive environments. The recent scandals involving various churches are a case in point.

Psychologists and sexologists have long known that open, tolerant and mature sex education is the best way to prevent paraphilia. Fear, guilt and shame only feeds it. If you want to protect your children then teach them to be confident in their sexuality. A sexually wise and confident child is less likely to be a victim or grow up to be a perpetrator.

Voters should therefore put Family First last in the coming election. They represent the forces of sexual ignorance and repression. Remember, we once thought the local priest was the epitome of Christian virtue, instead we found a sorry history of confused and damaged sexuality that has hurt thousands of children.

One of Australia's great writers, Richard Flanagan, travelled with the Howard entourage for awhile and wrote these words about the nearly invisible wrecker of Australia's ethos. No one has gotten to the heart--or lack of heart--of Howard's emptiness better.

All I could see was a mundanity so honed it was like staring at polished concrete.

As the best known politician in the country, he has about him a lack of presence so complete that it is almost baffling and can at times appear to amount to a near anonymity.

...what Howard is about [is] power - how he is about power's practice, about its obsessive desire, and how he looks sleek and assured with its invigorating tonic. Power seems to infuse him with energy, allows him to leave puffing journalists and sweating cameramen in his wake every morning, a daily humiliation of the media that one suspects is not without its small pleasure, and power animates his every utterance and action.

Unlike many politicians, Howard gives no evidence of wishing to be loved, and not seeking it, it doesn't manifest itself around him. His place and his success are grounded in something different: At the friendly functions and events staged for him, the faithful like him. Yet like its object, their support and admiration is neither effusive nor demonstrative. As one Liberal supporter put it to me: "You don't cheer your funds manager because he makes money for you."

Elsewhere, people seem to neither like nor despise him. If there is an emotion it is indifference, and one senses that suits Howard, allowing him to get on with the business of power.

I had Howard wrong; I have always had him wrong. Like many - though by no means all - Australians, I always dismissed him as marooned in the past, a captive of outdated prejudices. But he had been to Australia what Rohypnol is to a waiting drink.

It was true that these prosperous, docile and fearful times had been his, but it was harder to believe how much he had shaped a time and a people to his own smallness.