There's A Hole In The Bucket, Dear Johnny, Dear Johnny..

Not just one leak, either, but seemingly a bunch of leaks forming a steady trickle of unpleasant truths. Yesterday's SMH leak of Liberal Party poll data was just an appetiser. Today there's even more:

The documents, which were obtained by the Herald, reveal plans for the campaign are well advanced, with the survey groups shown scripts of four test advertisements: "Journey", "New Ways", "Independent Research" and "Unions".

"Unions does a good job of creating the threat and undermining support for the unions' position," the research says. "In spite of the claims that they don't like negativity, this ad works."

"New Ways" is "the stand-out of the positive ads", which prompted those surveyed to envisage such scenarios as "bosses and staff enjoying a drink".

Remember that Helen Coonan has launched a leak investigation into her own department. Alan Ramsay first noticed the problem a few weeks back:

The issue: Howard's proposed advertising campaign on what his Government intends doing about global warming. Howard dissembled outrageously. Yet Labor had caught him. It has a mole somewhere in the chain. It knows exactly what the Government is doing, almost step by step. Howard has not looked so threadbare, so less like a Prime Minister in control, since he got there 11 years ago.

The iceberg is getting nearer.

If Howard's own people are so sick of him that they would rather stick a knife in his back, let the truth be told, and regain a measure of self-respect, who are we to stop them? We could soon be approaching a situation similar to the current Bush GOP's "rats from a sinking ship" debacle, where top Libs start giving up the next election as lost, and actively distancing themselves fromt their Lame Duck leader. Watch how much leaks will come out THEN!

More popcorn, please!?!


UPDATE: Howard is clearly sticking with his favourite fear-mongering modus operandi and going in hard with the very negative "Unions" campaign:

"They are salivating at the prospect of a Labor victory," he told Sky News.

"You heard Mr McDonald talking about people working at Hungry Jacks, I mean what he's really saying is 'if Rudd wins, we'll be back in town, we'll be running the country again, and we'll make sure you don't have a job'," he said.