It is hard to imagine anything seriously surprising, any dramatic change of pace, emerging from the election campaign. If the last three years have been like the first three years of the First World War — with continuous mud, shelling, poison gas met by poison gas, unburied bodies, and vast human resources sacrificed for small gains — then now is the time for a final blitzkrieg, with the foot soldiers of both sides regularly going over the top, propaganda sheets running hot off the presses and the generals meditating victory.
It is also hard to imagine a victory to either side that will bring great benefit to Australia. The last weeks have revealed the lengths to which both parties will go to bring misery to vulnerable, unpopular groups of people who call out for help. The PNG solution is trumped by tent cities on Nauru and Manus Island, soon to be overtrumped by further brutalities. The columns of refugees who fled from the battlefields of Europe were usually strafed by only one of the combatants. In Australia both sides fly sorties around the clock.
The treatment of people who seek protection in Australia is not simply one of many election issues. It is a measure of how far each political party will go, how much damage each will be prepared to do to Australia's honour, reputation, economic interests and relationships in order to gain and hold power. Who can doubt that, if it is electorally advantageous to target other such unpopular groups in Australia and people who are unemployed, homeless and belong to minority ethnic or religious groups, our political parties will be prepared to do so?
And who could believe the claims of either party that it will deliver good economic management, when both are willing to spend billions of dollars on measures whose practical effect will be to blight the lives of innocent people and damage Australia's international reputation without gain other than at the ballot box?
An election campaign that has begun with such intense focus on the political interests of both major parties and their leaders will no doubt continue in the same way. It will understandably be about politics as politics, not about politics as the art of good government in the national interest. Policies will be reduced to slogans, deliberation to being on message, character to media persona and wisdom to avoiding gaffes. And one leader will emerge victorious and