Labor plays local cards as election fate lies in margins

A southerly wind whips down from the peaks of the Snowy Mountains, slicing through the main street of Cooma where John Boyd is huddled in his sheepskin jacket, hands in pockets.

A loud bang, and the sandwich board spruiking local Labor candidate Mike Kelly hits the footpath.

Boyd stands the board upright, looks at the ink-black clouds on the horizon, and says: "That's one big storm on the way." Another gust, and Kelly is on the ground again.

Boyd is working downtown Cooma for Labor and hopes this is no omen.

In the only poll so far, Kelly led his rival, Liberal David Gazard, 61 per cent to 39 per cent in the two-party preferred vote for the bellweather seat of Eden-Monaro.

The feedback Boyd has been getting on the streets has been encouraging, too, but he has watched the national polls tightening and shakes his head over the local result: "That's too good to be true."

Eden-Monaro is being closely watched by both Government and Opposition in a battle for power that is centred firmly in a relative handful of marginal seats. This vast electorate, wrapping around Canberra from coast to alps, has been a litmus test for every federal election since 1972, falling to whichever party has won power.

It sprawls across almost 30,000sq km of New South Wales, embracing about 20 main towns, beef, dairy and sheep farms, forests, state and national parks, snowfields, and beach resorts. It has large tourism, fishing and logging industries, conflicting environmental and anti-green lobbies and a big grey population - more than half of its voters were born before 1960.

Kelly, a former Army colonel and war crimes prosecutor who gained national fame by exposing the bribes the Australian Wheat Board paid to late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, won the seat in 2007 with a margin of just 2.3 per cent.

The Liberals' Gazard worked for former prime minister John Howard and his treasurer, Peter Costello. No one else is likely to get a look in.

In Cooma, Mark Fraser doesn't know yet who he'll vote for but wants whoever it is to do something about local hospitals and to send asylum seekers back to their own countries. National Parks worker Meg Coleman worries about population, lack of jobs in the area and climate change.

Undecided Britt Roijer, who runs a leather shop on the high plateau between Cooma and the coast, is concerned by pressures on small business, the cost of living, jobs and lack of health care: "Nobody has any really concrete policies. They seem to be really wishy washy."

Further north, in Batemans Bay, tree-lopper Tony Hughes will probably vote Greens because he is worried about the environment.

But he is also concerned by a lack of doctors and dentists - with a minimum waiting list of 12 months for basic care - and at the cost of living: "It's getting to the stage where those on the bottom end of the line struggle from week to week."

The main candidates have identified their priorities as health, education and infrastructure and, within a week of Prime Minister Julia Gillard calling the election, had big guns on their side: Treasurer Wayne Swan and Health Minister Nicola Roxon for Kelly, and Shadow Immigration Minister Scott Morrison for Gazard.

On their tables were local carrots - a new swimming pool and gym for the farming district of Bombala, a GP Superclinic for the ski resort of Jindabyne, a defence call centre for Cooma and local health programmes.

This is the micro-campaigning that could hold the key to the election.

Parties are mixing the brand power and local knowledge of long-standing candidates with carefully targeted funding in their most sensitive seats, powering up new players with a blend of locally angled national policies and fixing agendas tied to intensive polling, focus groups and demographics.

The fragility of Government was demonstrated this week in an analysis of state voting intentions by Newspoll, which showed clear borders for the parties - Coalition ascendancy in Queensland and Western Australia, Labor superiority in Victoria and South Australia, and neck-and-neck in NSW, especially in Sydney's volatile western suburbs.

On these voting patterns, if realised, potentially devastating Labor losses in NSW and Queensland could give Australia its first hung parliament in 70 years - or an Abbott government. But redistributions since 2007 mean that six Liberal seats are now notionally Labor and two new seats notionally Liberal.

Newspoll further revealed that men, older voters and those outside major cities have swung to the Coalition, women have increased their support for both sides and voters aged 35 to 49 have shifted towards Labor.

In this election campaign strategies have identified pockets of disadvantage, including seats containing high numbers young families under serious cost-of-living pressures, areas of high youth unemployment - often linked to large migrant communities - and others with soon-to-be-retiring baby boomers and the aged.

In western Sydney and Brisbane, close political attention has been paid to concerns about population growth, transport and other infrastructure. In large, diverse electorates such as Eden-Monaro, community and regional development initiatives target country towns to balance an overwhelmingly Coalition farm vote.

In two weeks' time, the party that has played this best will win.