The West and the rest
Labor's Louise Pratt and the Coalition's Kelly O'Dwyer discuss the battle for Western Sydney... and Western Australia.
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Sixty-four years after Ben Chifley offered his Light on the Hill, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has delivered her Light on Rooty Hill.
It proved a little more modest than Chifley's 1949 lantern, which he defined as ''working for the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand''.
Preaching to the converted: Prime Minister Julia Gillard meets supporters Photo: Andrew Meares
Ms Gillard's 2013 version, delivered in western Sydney on Sunday, began with what she would not promise. ''We won't promise the sun, the moon and the stars - we won't fill every pothole or catch every crook,'' she told an auditorium of the hopeful. ''But I am determined to deliver five things to make your life easier and improve your future.
''We will support your job and put Aussie workers first.''
Yes, and she'd deliver high-speed broadband, world-leading education, disability insurance ''and we will help you manage the pressures of modern family life and modern society''.
The 1000 or so Labor supporters nearly cheered the roof off the University of Western Sydney's auditorium. Potholes, clearly, weren't of concern - even if Gough Whitlam had won the west 40 years ago by promising a sewer. No. Aussies would get jobs before foreigners.
The betterment of mankind, not just here but anywhere? Not a word of it. This was about the betterment of the western suburbs of Sydney, which holds within its sprawl of 1.6 million people the fate of the federal government.
The Prime Minister has set herself up at a hotel in Rooty Hill for five days, attempting to defibrillate what pollsters claim is a barely-beating heartland for Labor.
Here, pretty clearly, was the real start of Australia's long, long 2013 election campaign.
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