By Sid Astbury/Sydney

Fear of a ballot-box bloodbath coaxed the Labor Party into ditching dreary Julia Gillard and reinstalling whirligig Kevin Rudd as leader and prime minister.
But the boost that June’s leadership switch gave Labor in the opinion polls is wearing off as the September 7 parliamentary election approaches.
Tony Abbott’s conservatives have won back their big lead. The incumbent is again the underdog and the momentum is with the challenger.
The latest opinion poll, commissioned from Galaxy by the Daily Telegraph, showed Labor support down two points to 38% with Abbott’s Liberal-led coalition up one point to 45%. Around one third of respondents marked Rudd down for “his record in government” from 2007 to 2010.
“The first week of the election campaign has not gone to plan for Kevin Rudd or the Labor Party,” Galaxy’s David Briggs told the Sydney newspaper.
Two independents, and probably a third, are leaving politics and certain to lose their seats to the conservatives. For Rudd to hold office and head a majority government, he needs to win five seats.
The five-year power struggle within Labor, its broken promises on returning the budget to surplus and on stopping asylum-seeker boats arriving, make even holding steady a huge challenge.
Rudd went from the nation’s most popular prime minister ever to its most aggrieved backbencher within just two years. Abbott is busy reminding people how it was, in Gillard’s words, “a good government lost its way” and a first-term prime minister had to be dumped.
Abbott’s task is to disabuse voters of the notion that the recycled Rudd is a changed person and that this time round he will consult colleagues rather than abuse them, slow his frenetic pace and take more time over decisions.
Rudd acted quickly to make Labor more electable. He accelerated the transition from a carbon tax to a carbon-trading scheme, promising households that this would cut their power bills.
He also changed course to stem the flow of mostly Middle Eastern immigrants coming via Indonesia on fishing boats.
“From now on, any asylum-seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as a refugee,” Rudd declared last month. “If they’re found to be genuine refugees, they’ll be resettled in Papua New Guinea.”
Stopping the boats is a key election issue. Rudd’s toughest task could be to convince enough people that he can be trusted to accomplish it.
Few doubt that Abbott, 55, lacks the mettle to take on Indonesia-based people smugglers. He was in a previous conservative government that put them out of business.
Abbott helped break Rudd in his first term and did much of the spadework for Gillard’s removal.
His caution and pragmatism make him unexciting. He is lacking in warmth and geniality.
But he goes into the campaign with 75 of the 150 seats already in the bag. A couple more would give him an absolutely majority.
In June it looked so bad for Labor that analysts talked of just 35 seats after the election. Rudd’s resurrection has altered that scenario. His personal popularity has put Labor in with a chance.
Coping with Rudd’s rock-star appeal is a dilemma for Abbott.
“How do you react to an opponent with almost erotic personal electoral appeal?” wrote Australian Catholic University academic and political pundit Greg Craven.
“And how do you do it when the dull maths of seats and swings still suggests you probably will win?” - DPA