OZ election .com

Yikes!

With opinion polls already swinging widely in Labor’s favour at this weekend’s election, the last thing John Howard, Costello and co needed today was a scandal - unless it was aimed in the other direction. A scathing scandal is what they received, however, and all on the most significant of Howard’s final days of campaigning.

The new Kelly Gang may just have pounded a final nail in Howard’s political coffin, through the distribution of an ignorant and hateful piece of political propaganda into mailboxes of residences within a hard-fought western Sydney seat. Jackie Kelly currently holds the seat of Lindsay on behalf of the Liberal Party. Her husband was one of a small group of Liberal campaigners who are believed to have hand delivered a pamphlet portaining to link the district’s Labor candidate with Muslim terrorists, in a desperate attemp to swing undecided voters in the region towards supporting Liberal newcomer Karen Chijoff.

Only time will tell as to whether their expression of ignorance will tap into an undercurrent of suspicion and fear and therefore work in the Liberal Party’s favour, or whether this action - publicly denouced in strong terms by both Rudd and Howard - will serve to create a backlash against the ultra-conservatism projected by Liberal Party supporters in Lindsay.

What do you think? Has this tipped the scales irreversibly in Labor’s favour, or could this flyer serve to stir up enough fearful sentiment as to anti-intuitively work to assist Karen Chijoff?