Failing the "fair dinkum" test Chris Kenny on Labor's problem with the "fair dinkum" test: We should not forget that at the last election Gillard attempted to neutralise the border protection issue by promising the East Timor solution, to neutralise climate change by ruling out a carbon tax and by promising a gradual, consensual approach to a possible emissions trading scheme, and to neutralise economic concerns by guaranteeing a return to surplus by 2013... Now Rudd is attempting to neutralise the asylum-seeker issue with Papua New Guinea and Nauru solutions, neutralise the carbon tax by accelerating the switch to an emissions trading scheme and, again, is pledging a return to surplus in three years... There is a pattern here. Add to that the 2007 campaign, when Rudd promised to stop the "reckless spending," take a "meat axe" to the public service and turn back the boats - and did none of the above. Kenny: On border protection, climate change policy and economic management, it has never carried out in government what it promised during the campaign... (T) his history identifies a core challenge for media scrutiny in this campaign - don't focus on Labor's promises, focus on its record... This will be the underlying doubt in the electorate: We hear what you are saying but will you do it? This is the hurdle Labor will have to get over with mainstream voters. Is Rudd's Twitter campaign making it harder for him to pass the "fair dinkum" test: "Bloody legend, Tony shat himself when he saw thid (sic)," master-magic posted. "F . . k yeh kev," wrote chelseapenkk. The reality is we don't know how these tweeters will vote or even if they are old enough to head to the polls on September 7. And it seems unlikely the image will have any cut-through in the marginal seats of western Sydney or southeast Queensland that Labor so desperately needs to win if it is to retain government. ALP research based on focus groups suggest voters - rather than Twitter followers - don't like Mr Rudd's "selfie" obsession much at all.