Middleground

All the available public spaces including Twitter asked citizens to take sides.

But what about all those in the middle who did not want to take sides? Did not want to align with one or the other?

The majority of those who occupy the middle ground in their everyday socioeconomic lives are now confused about where to go.

They were abandoned by the Liberal National coalition and by the Labor right.

They are now afraid to move too far to the left to embrace the new Labor Greens coalition with its radical notions. Their fear is not unfounded. Common sense tells them that.

They are afraid to embrace Tony Abbott's stark right-of-centre muscularity because not all of them are muscular and not all of them have the capacity to take it on the chin when things get tough. Socioeconomic things.

Neither the Labor Greens political public relations strategy on a clean energy future nor that of the Liberal National coalition on a carbon tax were well-thought through for the longer term.

Now the dust has settle Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard are doing one-eighties. In looking back to the destruction of the centre all they see is the great gaping maw that needs filling.

Ms Gillard sees structural change through the abandonment of anti-bauxite mining policy creating the right atmosphere for her to retake the centre.

Mr Abbott sees a continuation of a promise to abandon legislation on a range of issues as the trigger for the centre to creep towards the right, without knowing it's moving.

Both strategies are flawed and both continue to look to the short term without contemplating the future socioeconomic well-being of the country post-2013.

Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard would do well to think about four rhetorical practices that Leon Mayhew identified while he was watching a presidential campaign in the eighties.