Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the cut in official rates would be welcomed by Australian households that were now battling high mortgage rates and petrol prices. “This will provide some relief, some modest relief, but there is much more to be done helping families deal with cost of living,” Mr Rudd said.

Bill Clinton’s speech showed the fundamental difference between the two parties. Democrats say and, as far as I can tell, really believe that working Americans are getting a raw deal; Republicans, despite occasional attempts to sound sympathetic, basically believe that people have nothing to complain about.

This is an unacceptable situation that penetrates to a pivotal issue in politics: Rudd’s ability to win enough goodwill from state governments to make viable his economic and social reform agenda. The time for a national industrial relations system arrived some years ago. It has been championed by everyone from Gough Whitlam to John Howard and, in 2007, Rudd and Gillard.

Environmentalists point to the high voter concern about global warming and support for programs that will deliver abatement. However, recent polling shows that while 72 per cent of people supported the introduction of an emissions trading scheme, half of those polled admit they do not know what emissions trading is.

The Rudd Government faces a dilemma with no escape: it must either alienate the green lobby and climate-change believers to whom it has pandered, or proceed without sufficient support from corporate Australia in the teeth of warnings about corporate financial risk. The second option is unthinkable.

The economy — not national security — is shaping up as the far greater concern this year, and the poll shows that Senator Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, was trusted more by voters to handle this issue. Sixty-five percent of those surveyed said they were confident that Mr. Obama would make the right decisions on the economy, compared with 54 percent who expressed confidence that Senator McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, would.

It would appear that some RBA board members were concerned that, while inflation remained high, the risk of a wages breakout was still prominent. There were two main arguments that the board grappled with: one, naturally, was the weakening growth prospects and the likelihood of a very weak set of national accounts.

The Reserve Bank board was told that the next set of economic growth numbers for the June quarter, published early next month, would be weak and show the economy’s slowdown could become too rapid. “On these considerations, a case could be made for an early reduction in the cash rate,” its monthly statement said.

But while polls continue to show that the public, by a large margin, trusts Democrats more than Republicans to handle the economy, recent polling shows that Barack Obama has at best a small edge over John McCain on the issue — four points in a recent Time magazine poll, and he is one point behind according to Rasmussen Reports.

Lining up the support of CEOs and their small-business brethren offers both candidates a chance to bolster their economic credentials while sending voters the message that they’re ready to be the nation’s chief executive. The courtship goes both ways. For executives, a smooth working relationship with the White House is essential.