PM hoping for late launch momentum

Prime Minister Julia Gillard is hoping a campaign launch just five days before
voters go to the polls will give Labor's bid for re-election a last-minute boost.
The spectre of Labor's leadership ghosts, however, could haunt Ms Gillard on Monday
as she makes her pitch at the party's formal campaign launch in Brisbane - the home
town of her overthrown predecessor Kevin Rudd.
On the eve of the launch, the prime minister is to front a studio audience on the
Seven Network's Sunday Night program.
Mr Rudd will also turn up on the same early evening show, in an interview about his
dumping as prime minister in June.
An hour later, another former Labor leader, Mark Latham, will appear on the Nine
Network's Sixty Minutes program as a guest reporter covering the election.
Asked if Mr Latham would be welcome at the Labor launch, Ms Gillard declined to say
if he would be given accreditation.
"Genuine reporters are welcome," she told reporters in Melbourne.
The prime minister conceded the ALP brand had been damaged by "disappointment" over
Labor's record at state level.
"I understand that in some parts of the nation there is disappointment with the
performance of state Labor governments," she told the Nine Network, saying she hoped
voters would distinguish between state and federal issues.
With little to offer in the way of policy announcements on Sunday, the two major
party leaders traded demands about how they might face each other in another public
match-up before polling day on August 21.
Ms Gillard wants a formal debate about the economy, but Opposition Leader Tony
Abbott is demanding another town hall-style forum where the audience gets to ask the
questions.
Labor has agreed to another forum, but only if the first half of the event is about
the economy, followed by questions from the floor.
Mr Abbott seemed to take that compromise proposal as a refusal.
"Well, is she rejecting my offer?" Mr Abbott said repeatedly to reporters on the NSW
central coast.
The prime minister also challenged Mr Abbott to join her in the Seven Network studio
on Sunday evening.
But the opposition leader wants a re-run of the forum held last week at the Rooty
Hill RSL in western Sydney, where the leaders appeared separately and took questions
from the audience.
He will field questions from an audience on Monday night as the sole guest on ABC
Television's Q and A program.
Away from the verbal contest, both sides of politics have had to answer questions
about violence in local campaigns.
Labor's candidate for the marginal central Queensland seat of Dawson, Mike Brunker,
was involved in a punch-up at the Bowen race track on Saturday.
On the coalition side, a campaigner for the Liberal National Party's 20-year-old
Brisbane candidate, Wyatt Roy, was filmed hitting a young Labor supporter in the
face after he held up a giant L sign.
With less than a week to go, opinion polls are divided about who will emerge
victorious.
Newspoll and Nielsen surveys published on Saturday were predicting a Labor win.
But a Galaxy poll of 4000 voters in 20 marginal seats, published in News Ltd papers
on Sunday, had the two-party preferred vote at 51 to 49 in favour of the coalition.
Two poll analysts, including the ABC's Antony Green, have challenged these results
saying the methodology was flawed.
Betting agency Centrebet still sees a hung parliament as a more likely possibility
than Mr Abbott becoming prime minister.
Before the big day, the leaders of the two major parties and the Greens will address
the National Press Club in Canberra on consecutive days.
Mr Abbott goes first on Tuesday, followed by Greens Leader Bob Brown on Wednesday,
while Ms Gillard will have her say on Thursday.