This, we were assured before Julia Gillard climbed to the stage to deliver her speech to officially launch the government's plea for re-election, was the real Julia, unplugged.

There would be no auto cue. No written speech, either.

She would rely on nothing but a few dot points, her press secretaries solemnly assured the media gathered in the wings at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre. Within seconds, hardened hacks were tweeting this development.

The point, of course, was that a week before in the same place, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott had used during his campaign launch an auto cue, a device his mentor John Howard used to describe disparagingly as "wing mirrors".

Gillard's minders wanted to convey the message that she was braver, more spontaneous and capable of speaking directly to the electors without the limiting filter of a speech carefully prepared for her.

Ah, but the distance between myth and reality, as ever during election campaigns, proved as wide as Lake Eyre in flood.

As Ms Gillard took the stage, a thick sheaf of typed papers was discreetly placed upon the podium by a stagehand crouching almost out of sight. A video camera and The Sydney Morning Herald's chief photographer, Andrew Meares, captured the moment when the staffer slipped the papers into place.

When Ms Gillard had finished speaking, the audience - agog at her ability to deliver an unscripted address (indeed, Ms Gillard herself described it as "from the heart") - Meares turned his camera on the papers lying strewn upon the lectern.

Even a cursory glance showed it was a written speech. A closer inspection showed it was the very speech she had delivered, word for word.

It was a near faultless speech, barely a stumble - and the PM hardly glanced at her notes, giving the impression she has a near-photographic memory.

But so much for Julia unplugged. A case, you might think, of too much spin. No one would have cared a fig if she had read the whole thing...if only we hadn't been hoodwinked into believing this was a free-form plea from her soul.