November 12 was always going to be a tough day for Kevin Rudd.

With the Liberal Party’s official campaign launch scheduled for lunchtime, most media attention was always going to be focused on John Howard and his address to the nation.

According to journalists on the campaign trail, most newspapers had already committed five pages of coverage to Howard’s event even before it had begun.

Everyone was expecting big spending promises from the Prime Minister, and they certainly weren’t disappointed.

But how could Rudd possibly “cut through” with a message on this day when all attention would be on the Liberals?

He’d certainly have to pull out some big guns. Some real mighty artillery. Some awesome firepower.

And that’s exactly what he did. Literally.

He sent his own media press pack up to Townsville – home to one of the biggest ADF bases in Australia.

Surrounded by soldiers, heavy artillery and various bits of military hardware, Rudd proceeded to outline Labor’s defence policy.

But while the guns next to him were certainly big enough to capture attention, the policy itself ended up being pretty negligible.

He announced that a Labor government would increase defence spending by three per cent every year until 2016. This would have been huge news, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Liberals had already committed to this exact same policy yonks ago.

He also announced a $33 million boost for the health care of families of defence force personnel.

All up, not that big a development. At least not on a national scale.

But then, that wasn’t the point of the exercise. Rudd’s team knew that no matter what announcements they made today, they would always be drowned out by Howard’s speech.

So instead, Rudd focused on imagery. He made sure that, policy announcement or not, he would still make the television news.

How? Simple. He gave the television cameras exactly what they crave the most: a good, old fashioned novelty shot.

So Rudd touched guns. He leaned on artillery. He went into a camouflaged bunker. He even hopped into an armoured personnel carrier and drove around for a while, looking thoroughly uncomfortable the entire time.

There were more novelty shots than you could poke a bayonet at. It was a surefire way for Rudd to make the news.

And it worked. The TV crews loved it.

But, novelty shots aside, there was also another reason why Townville was chosen today.

Townsville constitutes part of the federal seat of Herbert, held by Liberal incumbent Peter Lindsay.

It requires a hefty swing to change hands, and is not considered marginal, but Labor has been gunning at the seat all year.

Rudd obviously believes that Labor holds some traction within the army town, and wanted to show, once again, that Townsville would be important to a future Rudd government.

But the ALP may need to reconsider its briefing on Herbert.

As Rudd greeted soldiers in Townsville, one young soldier murmured to his comrade: “I still like Johnny better”.

Unlike the media, these men were obviously unimpressed with Rudd’s attempts at being a soldier.