‘Mr Rabbit' pops up in Aussie election

Surreal shades of "Alice in Wonderland" crept into Australia's election campaign on Friday when Prime Minister Julia Gillard was forced to deny that "Mr Rabbit" had appeared on the hustings.

The nation's first woman leader, who is seeking election in her own right on August 21, was asked in a radio interview to answer charges that she was deliberately calling her opponent Tony Abbott "Mr Rabbit" instead of Mr Abbott.

But Gillard appeared genuinely baffled when asked to answer some listeners' claims she was making a point of running the 'r' of "mr" into the 'a' of Abbott to give her rival a humorous new moniker.

"Mr Rabbit? What do you mean?" asked the leader who has in the past been criticised for her broad Australian style of speech.

When she was told that talkback radio listeners were speculating about her pronunciation of her conservative rival's name, she said: "I wasn't conscious of that at all.

"If I am doing it, I'm not intending to," she said adding very slowly and carefully that she would try to be more precise in the future.

Gillard, who came to power in a Labor Party coup six weeks ago, is seeking to keep Liberal leader Abbott out of power in the election in two weeks’ time.

In a campaign that features two candidates from opposite sides of the political spectrum offering broadly similar agendas, local media has frequently been forced to focus on minutiae and small details of the battle.

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