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CANBERRA - And now, at last, it's up to the people.
After six weeks of intense campaigning, on top of an interminable faux campaign, everyone should have seen and heard more than they want of John Howard and Kevin Rudd.
But how many have really watched and listened
to a campaign that's been as strong on images and bribes as policies?
One Canberra family invited a senior political journalist to a birthday party on Saturday night.
She couldn't come, it was election night. Sorry, the hosts hadn't thought of that.
This was in the capital, which is supposed to be the best-educated and most politically aware city in the country.
So you wonder how much of Howard's relentless warnings about the economy and baleful trade union influence and Rudd's relentless talk of new leadership and his innumerable plans have just wafted into the ether.
As ever, the election has been largely a battle of the leaders and a battle of bribes.
Everyone must know Howard. He's been prime minister for 11 and-a-half years, a heck of a long time. Only Sir Robert Menzies has gone longer.
His longevity is his strength and his weakness.
It's enabled him to talk of the economic good times so many have enjoyed during his long watch, even if the steady rise in interest rates has taken some gloss off the boasting.
And it's allowed him to warn that Rudd and his team don't have the experience to deal with the tougher times that lie ahead, while conveniently forgetting that his lot were no more experienced when they took over in 1996.
On the other hand, there seem to be plenty of people who have nothing against Howard and have done quite well under him, but who are sick of him and would like a change.
Fresh-faced Rudd, nearly 20 years younger, seems a decent alternative.
The Labor leader has exploited this mercilessly. He's talked ad nauseam about his plans and new leadership. Howard, he's emphasised, has only retirement plans. Listening to him, you'd think another three years of the coalition would have Australia disappearing down the plug hole.
Rudd has made a huge deal of Peter Costello replacing Howard during the next term and there are signs it's working.
This is a little odd, for there's nothing so terrible about Howard retiring around his 70th birthday, having made his intentions clear before the preceding election.
At the start, Labor warned the coalition would mount the mother of all scare campaigns.
It has, largely through those images of bellowing, bullying union bosses that have invaded all our living rooms.
It's doubtful, however, if it's any more massive than the campaign that destroyed Mark Latham three years ago.
Not that Labor has been guiltless. Just listen to the terrible things Costello would do to industrial relations once he takes over.
To a considerable degree, this has been a me-too campaign, particularly on economic management.
Rudd, too, is a fiscal conservative - meaning he says he'll keep the budget in surplus and not fool with the Reserve Bank's independence. To some extent this has neutralised the great advantage Howard had in 2004.
But when it comes to wooing the electorate, both have been fiscal spendthrifts. Between them, they've promised well over $100 billion - not counting all the "regional rorts" money, most of which magically found its way to coalition seats, that the auditor-general condemned.
There are differences, of course - on industrial relations, although Labor's dismantling of Work Choices would be gradual and partial; on health, though greatly complicated by the roles of the states.
Also on education, even though Labor's vision of digital schools sounds like cargo cult and neither is grappling with the core problem of teaching standards.
The same can be said on climate change, although much of the debate remains over whether or not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, when the real question is what happens next?
Other issues haven't emerged. Scarcely a word on Iraq, defence and foreign affairs more generally, immigration or national security.
Rudd may have a boyish smile, munch ear wax and be mobbed by squealing school girls, but he's run a ruthlessly tight and disciplined campaign.
When his foreign affairs spokesman Robert McClelland injected a rare bit of intellectual honesty by arguing that opposition to capital punishment should extend beyond Australians and include the Bali bombers, he was immediately stomped on.
The main contest may be between two inexhaustible leaders, but it's also 150 separate fights, most nationally invisible.
The most diverting is Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull's once-safe seat of Wentworth.
A cricket team of candidates includes Labor's George Newhouse, whose nomination may not be valid, and his curvaceous former girlfriend Danielle Ecuyer.
The main issue seems to be a pulp mill a thousand kilometres away in Tasmania.
Another is Bennelong, where Howard is fighting to make sure Labor's Maxine McKew doesn't make him the first prime minister to lose his seat since 1929.
The polls, which have been remarkably consistent for a long time, suggest Labor will win comfortably.
Yet it has to win 16 seats, a big ask. Rudd may be right when he says whoever wins, it'll be by a nose.
Whoever wins, he'll reap the rewards of an endless, endlessly repetitive, campaign which really started when Rudd became leader just over a year ago.
Since then, everything has seemed to be distorted by the prism of the election.
The biggest lesson is that Australia needs four-year terms so governments can spend more time governing.
- AAP
