When a party rattles the cup for campaign donations the first rule is simplicity itself: don't vex potential donors with spam emails. There's also a second rule: Don't mistakenly ask reporters for money, as it gifts them an easier story than reporting on your assaults on Labor policies

All those photo ops and shopping-mall walks -- when they aren't cancelled, that is -- what do our leaders hope they will achieve? Basically, to win the hearts, minds and votes of the very few Australians who have not yet decided which party they least detest

Bob Brown in his op-shop pants wouldn't recognise the latest crop of candidates, with their fashion-label shirts, horn-rimmed specs, even a bow tie for Heaven's sake! Fortunately, there are still a few who uphold the tradition of weird names, gender fluidity and unadorned ratbaggery

The long march toward July 2 staggers onward amid such limp and insipid performances on the stump that even Twitter's obsessive commentators are tuning out and turning off. But not to worry, there's a bigger story: global warming will kill us all

According to Bill Shorten, both major parties are as one on turning back boats and offshore detention. But just listen to Tanya Plibersek and Sophie Ismail, the Latte Belt contender seeking to oust The Greens' Adam Bandt.  They aren't anywhere near so definite

It's not as if the PM lacks the wit to put his case, yet it is the agile Bill Shorten who is making the running. If Malcolm Turnbull is husbanding energy and response until later in this most exciting time to have an election, he could do better in the meantime than sonorous profundities

Long regarded, especially by himself, as the smartest man in any room (not to mention city, continent and universe), could it be that the Prime Minister has yet to grasp that merely putting himself on display might not be quite enough to win voters' hearts? A mastery of budget details would probably help

It would be nice to know what, somewhere between the Lee Rhiannon's communist roots and Sarah Hanson-Young's blubbering incoherence, the Greens actually believe. Sadly, we can't count on a sympathetic press or preference-hungry politicians to reveal the empty, anarchic truth

As the man who OK'd the 'Where the Bloody Hell Are You" ad campaign, the Treasurer knows something about best-plans' tendency to go astray. In lifting the $80,000 tax threshold he may well have directed resentful low- to middle-income earners to Labor