Tim Malone.id.au

John Howard has made the announcement this morning for an election to be held on the 24th November – allowing himself a 6 week campaign period to try to claw his way back in the polls. Despite the bad outlook at the moment, he said a couple of hours ago in a press conference from his private courtyard at Parliament House that he will not give a “nanosecond’s thought” to opinion polls in the next six weeks.

Samuel Gordon-Stewart (a friend of mine and independent candidate for the seat Fraser in North Canberra) and I were following Howard this morning in an attempt to report on what we could. My footage from Government House can be seen below, and Samuel has footage also. Unfortunately without media passes we were not able to see anything at Parliament House – we were able to get up to the beginning of the minister entrance tunnels at the back of the House, from where we could see Howard’s stand at the back of the courtyard, but after five minutes there – and ten minutes before the press conference started – Protective Services officers advised us that their bosses had decided we weren’t allowed to stay.

Howard entered Government House almost right on 11am to applause by many people lining Dunrossil Drive. There was a media contingent, citizen reporters like Samuel and myself, protesters (the Greens), and interested bystanders. It happened very quickly – Howard was inside for about 15-20 minutes before leaving as quickly as he arrived. We were hoping he would announce the election date outside afterwards in a short impromptu news conference, but unfortunately tradition prevailed (as we knew it most likely would).

Here’s my footage:

I also made a cameo appearance live on Sky News as I crossed the road just as the gates opened for Howard to come back out:

(full video available here)

As I write this now Kevin Rudd’s press conference in Brisbane is being broadcast live. I won’t write in any more detail about the press conferences because you can find all those details in the mainstream media. What I will recap though are the important dates (thanks to Samuel):

Monday, October 15: Scheduled Parliament sitting suspended from midday
Wednesday, October 17: House of Representatives to be dissolved at midday
Issue of writs, commanding the Australian Electoral Commission to conduct the election
Monday, October 22: Close of electoral rolls
Thursday, November 1: Close of candidate nominations
Saturday, November 24: Election day

If you haven’t yet enrolled you have almost no time to do it. So get on to it, now!