Both sides of politics know that Australian voters traditionally care more about sport than politics and do not focus on the election until it turns into the home straight. Football final fever has been gripping the country which suits Howard fine. He knows that if people do not have time to consider the election choices until the last week, they are more likely to retain the status quo. While the first four weeks of the campaign have revealed little new about the policies of Howard and Latham, one factor that stands out is the conservative government's hypocrisy on funding election promises.

One of Howard's main themes during the campaign is the alleged risk of changing from the incumbent to the relatively inexperienced Labour team. He says interest rates would rise if Latham won the election. What he forgets to add is that the nation's Reserve Bank says that interest rates will have to rise marginally to keep a cap on the strong economy, no matter which side wins the election. Howard says Latham is undisciplined and inexperienced and would make a mess of the economy.

The Prime Minister also insists that the Labour Party has to show where the money is coming from for its election promises. Therefore, to avoid the claim that he is economically irresponsible, Latham has been making some tough decisions. He has identified $4 billion in government programmes that could be scrapped or redirected, some at the cost of jobs to the trade unions, his traditional supporters. This is the money he would use for his programmes if he was elected. However on Sunday Howard brazenly announced another $6 billion worth of promises at his formal campaign launch. If he is re-elected, the money would come from the Budget surplus. But he has already announced another $6.5 billion worth of new programmes since the Budget was handed down in May. Therefore he is doing what he claims the Labor Party would do -- running down the budget surplus and increasing the risk of interest rate rise, while turning a blind eye to this contradiction in his campaign.

The second bout of hypocrisy emerged on the weekend when both sides of politics indulged in negative advertising. Howard went so far as to say Latham was so inexperienced he should wear the 'L' plate worn by learner drivers. Labour is now replying with biting, negative ads, despite having said previously he would never match the Liberal Party's penchant for negativity.

However the Labour Party advertisements are hard-hitting and strike at Howard's credibility. The extremely personal advertisements feature a picture of the Prime Minister, a montage of headlines and a voice-over that says, "Have you noticed that when there's a crisis, a mistake, a backflip, misleading information, missing information, a blunder, an inquiry, a failure, an oversight or a cover-up - John Howard is never to blame?"

The 2001 election campaign featured a shameful cover-up and lying by the government about asylum seekers supposedly throwing their children into the sea to blackmail their way into Australia. While there is little sympathy in Australia for boat people, there was widespread anger at being lied to and the row became known as the 'children overboard' affair. The Australian media now refers to 'truth overboard' in relation to Howard's arguments that he used about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq.

This week, as the election campaign reaches a crescendo, more than 400 senior academics including 160 professors from every public university in the country have condemned the 'dishonesty and duplicity' of the Howard government. Their unprecedented intervention in federal politics singles out the government's behaviour over Iraq. They said the war had catastrophic consequences for Iraqis and had made the world far less safe from the violence of terrorism. This dramatic public statement is a turning point for the academics and could show a shift in public sentiment against the eight and a half year reign of the conservative Howard government.