Labor takes heart from the Liberals’ attempt at ambush marketing. The poster is a sign the Prime Minister’s marginal and ethnically diverse electorate of Bennelong, in Sydney’s north, will be closely fought.

“Right across Australia there is a mood for change,” Mr [Kevin Rudd] said. “They have seen this Government going a bridge too far: on industrial relations, on Iraq.”

“I can win this election,” she said. “That is not an arrogant statement. I am not alone. This is a target marginal seat. Having such senior Labor figures here — we’ve never had the Labor leader open the campaign in Bennelong before, for example — shows the Labor Party is taking this seat very seriously.

A BEVY of Labor heavyweights from Kevin Rudd to national president John Faulkner had to walk past a massive poster of John Howard to get to yesterday’s campaign launch for star recruit Maxine McKew.

The almost 2m-high poster has been staring at Ms McKew from a vacant shopfront ever since she opened her office in the northwest Sydney shopping precinct of Eastwood last month.

Labor takes heart from the Liberals’ attempt at ambush marketing. The poster is a sign the Prime Minister’s marginal and ethnically diverse electorate of Bennelong, in Sydney’s north, will be closely fought.

“Maxine is running a proactive campaign and clearly the Prime Minister is worried,” a Labor spokesman said yesterday.

An ebullient Ms McKew grinned and gripped her way through her packed office yesterday, thanking everyone from her campaign workers to the many supporters who had shown up. These included MSG, the mainly Chinese Maxine Support Group, representing the largest immigrant group in the electorate.

A day earlier, the census had revealed that Bennelong was the only Liberal-held seat in the top 20 by proportion of people who speak languages other than English at home. Bennelong’s non-English speakers account for 36.3per cent of the electorate — more than double the national average of 15.8 per cent.

More than half of the electorate (58.8 per cent) was either born overseas or has an immigrant parent, compared with an Australia- wide 40.5 per cent.

The Mandarin-speaking Opposition Leader declared the Bennelong office and campaign open and praised Ms McKew for her courage in taking on the nation’s second-longest-serving leader in a seat he has held since 1974.

“Right across Australia there is a mood for change,” Mr Rudd said. “They have seen this Government going a bridge too far: on industrial relations, on Iraq.”

He said the campaign to oust the Howard Government would take place on every street and in every suburb of the nation.

Ms McKew said the changing nature of the electorate meant she had a strong chance of winning Bennelong.

A swing of just 4 per cent, or about 3000 votes, would see her oust the Prime Minister.

“I can win this election,” she said. “That is not an arrogant statement. I am not alone. This is a target marginal seat. Having such senior Labor figures here — we’ve never had the Labor leader open the campaign in Bennelong before, for example — shows the Labor Party is taking this seat very seriously.

“I am greatly encouraged.”