Sinking? Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Photo: Mal Fairclough
Like the ubiquitous quicksand scene from the movies of his youth, the more John Howard struggled in 2007, the faster he sank.
Whether it was his $10-billion plan for the Murray; his softening of WorkChoices; or his spend-a-thon campaign speech, the quicksands of time were moving around him.
Howard had been around too long, but his real problem was that he faced an electoral younger version of himself. With his lay-preacher looks and strangely reassuring ''Brainiac'' style, Kevin Rudd was essentially an updated edition of the old and trusted.
He was John Howard with climate change and the internet thrown in and, as such, a safe bet for Australians who do not plump for change readily.
Since World War II, there have been just six changes of federal government in Australia.
The last thing any opposition leader wants to do then, is make people nervous.
This explains Tony Abbott's attempts to become an even smaller political target as the election approaches as well as Julia Gillard's increasingly bold attempts to draw him out.
She wants voters to conclude that Abbott equals risk. Yet to expose that risk, she is now taking plenty of her own which has seen surprising policy turns.
The new 457 pivot to the right may represent both.
The claims that the temporary skilled-migration scheme was being rorted had scant empirical data when first flagged. It was presented as a solution to a problem the government had previously been silent on.
But Gillard's inner circle believes there was resentment in the outer-suburbs where the party's once great heartland is up for grabs - namely western Sydney and its equivalents.
Gillard now says the temporary skilled-visa program was out of control when Labor came to power and despite significant tightening it is once again being rorted.
Focus-group testing of this ''Aussie'' insularism, has shown the tactic is working - albeit in a section of the electorate. Australians in the outer-suburbs, the great armies of formerly unionised working class voters since reconfigured as aspirationals, independent contractors, and self-employed, believe they ''are'' being shunted backwards by ''foreigners''.
The qualitative research has turned up a powerful frustration conflating Australia's economic success and foreign workers in such laments as ''it is unfair'' and ''it is somebody else's boom''.
The new Gillard message is directed at this resentment.
But it is also intended at flushing out Abbott on the area he wants to traverse least: industrial relations.
By stridently, even gaudily, defending traditional union values, Gillard is goading Abbott. She is daring him to side with the abstract economic virtue of fixing capacity constraints while she validates the lived experience of disgruntled voters.
The same approach informed her announcement this week to strengthen the recognition of penalty rates for casuals.
Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten has had to reassure employers the move does not mean much if anything in material terms, which says it all.
Last week's decision to rush through the media reforms and in so doing, put cross bench MPs offside offers no such upside for the government.
Several Labor figures, including some in Cabinet, believe the case for the changes has not been made, and the approach taken is heavy on risk and light on reward.
With that issue spinning out of control, there is word of Labor MPs prevailing on Gillard directly rather than the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, seeking to offer amendments to secure cross-bench support. However that has been denied and may well be mischief-making by Rudd forces.
The idea of negotiating however, makes eminent sense because defeat of the legislation could bring a faster end for Gillard than even quicksand can deliver.
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