With only four more sleeps to go:

• Latika Bourke of Fairfax reports Liberal internal polling shows the government set to be crushed by a 14% swing to Labor, reversing the 57-43 two-party split at the last election and all but doubling Labor’s existing complement of 21 seats out of 59. Among the seats the Liberals are said to be pessimistic about are Joondalup (10.1%), Kalamunda (10.3%) and, remarkably, Jandakot (18.1%). A list of further potential Labor gains includes Darling Range (12.8%), Burns Beach (11.5%) and Riverton (12.7%).

• A report in The West Australian’s weekend edition listed Joondalup, Kalamunda, Bicton (10.6%) and Southern River (11.0%) as the “last-stand battlegrounds for the Barnett government as fears of a double-digit swing to Labor grip the Liberal Party a week from the election”. Belmont (1.2%), Forrestfield (2.2%), Perth (2.8%), Swan Hills (3.9%) and Morley (4.7%) are, naturally, “all but written off”.

• The West Australian reports today that One Nation’s candidate for Scarborough, Margaret Dodd, will take her opposition to the Liberal preference deal to a new pitch by displaying “put the Liberals last” posters at polling booths. The posters feature images of Dodd herself along with Pauline Hanson, who says she is “not happy with this at all”. Dodd says she will announce on Thursday whether she will distribute the 30,000 how-to-vote cards the party has printed for her.

• Flux the System has claimed/admitted responsibility for the twenty-six upper house independent candidates whose preference tickets perfectly accord with the micro-party preference deal that also encompasses Family First, the Liberal Democrats, the Daylight Saving Party and Fluoride Free.

• The Sunday Times’ pre-election editorial concluded: “It’s time for fresh ideas. And new leadership. The Sunday Times supports the election of Mark McGowan and his Labor team.”

• From my paywalled contribution to Crikey yesterday, previewing Pauline Hanson’s whirlwind week-long state visit:

When Hanson came to Perth in late January, news coverage focused on the “rock star” reception she received at suburban shopping malls. This time around, viewers could instead see the very different spectacle of Hanson stammering her way through responses to sharp questions on controversial subjects.

• And from a piece on the Nationals’ proposed mining royalties hike from Friday:

The policy bears all the stylistic hallmarks of party leader Brendon Grylls, whose remarkable electoral achievements over the past decade largely reflect his success in imposing the Royalties for Regions scheme on the Barnett government. This reserves a quarter of the state’s mining royalty revenue for regional projects, and would itself be first for the chop under any rationally ordered scheme to restore the budget to health, if either major party dared countenance it. But whereas Royalties for Regions offers a politically happy confluence of thinly spread pain and thickly concentrated benefit, the loser this time around is the most powerful enemy that anyone in Western Australian politics could contrive to create for themselves.

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