Australian newspapers last week published a poll showing the federal opposition Coalition Parties’ popularity running ahead of the governing Labor Party by 53 percent to 47 percent.

Most Government ministers promptly issued statements — all tending all to use the same phrases, almost as if somebody’s flock of talking parrots had turned out to make the responses.

All the government seems to want to talk about is what a terrible fellow Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, is — the last thing they wish to discuss is their own recent record.

So next week,  Australia’s National Union of Students will launch a campaign entitled “Abbott’s Heaven, Your Hell”, featuring feminists cauterising Mr Abbott’s alleged anti-women and anti-youth attitudes.

Clever name-callings like “Autocratic Abbott” and “Abbott the Mad Monk” will also be used.

Plus blasts from the past, featuring some of Mr Abbott’s more famous alleged boo-boos . . . .

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Like his 2003 support for raising the age at which parents may access information about their child’s healthcare from 12 to 14. Mr Abbott said that perhaps it should be 16.

Modern research suggests that, in fact, he was right — 16 might even be too young.

A study at Dartmouth University, USA, followed a sample of freshman students through their first college year, comparing their brain function and imaging with that of a control group of students aged 25 to 35. *

Significant differences were found, specifically in brain regions linked to integrating emotion and cognition.

The researchers commented as follows: “The brain of an 18-year old freshman is still far from resembling the brain of someone in their mid-twenties . . . . When do we reach adulthood? It might be much later than we traditionally think.”

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Mr Abbott knows all this from common sense observation. So do most parents.

If some experts do not, then they are wrong.

The Labor Party seems to have it wrong.

The Greens definitely, as always, have it wrong.

 *  Source: “Anatomical Changes in the Emerging Adult Brain”, online edition of the journal, Human Brain Mapping, at www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2006/02/06.html