About that election date

So, last Sunday Tony Abbott had an event that everyone acknowledged as being exactly like an election campaign launch.  Everyone knows an election has to be held by November at the latest.

This week, Julia Gillard announces the election date, and she's the one some commentators are saying has started the election campaign?

This was certainly the line Chris Uhlmann took, with questions like these in last night's interview with Wayne Swan:

CHRIS UHLMANN: Why you have decided to run the longest election campaign in Australia political history?

CHRIS UHLMANN: Treasurer, this is now a campaign, no matter what you say.

I still say Uhlmann is not very bright and routinely gives soft interviews to Coalition figures and aggressive interviews to Labor figures.  His interview technique rarely adjusts questions much according to the responses.  

I cannot see what the drama is about announcing the election date.   Journalists and political commentators probably find it annoying because it cuts down by about a quarter the normal content of their annual writing in an election year.

It is disturbing that Rudd supporters within Labor are still backgrounding journalists like Uhlmann with their dissatisfaction with virtually anything Gillard done.  Uhlmann noted last night:

So is this a stroke of political genius, or in the words of one disgruntled Labor MP, an "unmitigated disaster of historic proportions".

There is no doubt at all that, in the event of a Labor loss, they will have to take a large amount of the credit.