KEY POINTS:
There was something of Banquo's ghost at the National Press Club in Canberra on Thursday. Prime Minister John Howard could see the spectre, determined as he was to be king again. Most of those at the lunch could only see a dead man talking.
Eleven months of exhaustive and detailed polling - producing consistent results until the final hours of the campaign for today's election - have predicted that Australia's second-longest serving prime minister is about to meet his political maker.
The two latest polls confirmed the trend.
It is true that with Howard, blend of Houdini and Lazarus that he is, nothing is for certain.
His undisputed skill and run of outstanding good fortune aside, Australia in political terms is a divided country: a large number of safe seats that will not change hands, and a decisive handful of volatile electorates whose fortunes lie with relatively small numbers of voters who may not make up their minds until they walk into the ballot boxes.
But there is a mood for change. For many years, longer than tens of thousands of young voters can remember, Australia has been living the golden years of unbroken prosperity. Even among those who can remember former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating's infamous recession that the nation "had to have", the fat years have bred complacency.
The affluence that nourished Howard may now kill him. Australians feel safe enough for change, and have been comforted by a Labor Opposition that under leader Kevin Rudd has compressed the divide between the two parties to an almost indiscernible smudge.
On those small spikes that protrude, popular sympathy tends to rest with Rudd: ratification of the Kyoto protocols on climate change; withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq; WorkChoices industrial laws and the restoration of workers' lost rights and conditions.
The band of fear is now narrowly focused. Howard has tried to direct it to Rudd and the ghosts of Labor past. Rudd, more successfully, has turned it to the question of succession in the Liberal leadership.
Howard is pinning his hopes on a wave of last-minute terror in the marginal seats, reviving memories of economic mismanagement by previous Labor Governments, of 18 per cent interest rates and double-digit unemployment, and of union power. He warns of the dangers of placing Australia in the hands of a learn-as-you-go Cabinet, 70 per cent of whose ministers will be former senior unionists.
Rudd's line of attack is far more simple. Howard is an aging, arrogant dinosaur who has lost touch with ordinary Australians, without plans or a vision for the future other than comfortable retirement as soon as he can decently hand power to Treasurer Peter Costello.
It is a compelling argument. Why should you place trust in the promises of a prime minister who will not be there to see them through?
Thus Costello has become in many ways the real fulcrum of the election. Elect Rudd and you get Rudd, who intends being there for the long haul and will be held accountable within three years. Elect Howard, and you get Costello.
Costello is in turn central to the pivotal issue of industrial relations and the unpopular WorkChoices laws which will play a major role in deciding whether the Government stays or goes. Polls show that most Australians dislike and distrust Costello, and that they want to see the back of WorkChoices which he was a passionate advocate and key architect of. He has said on more than one occasion that the laws were an invaluable step forward, but that more work remains to be done on them.
Rudd has played on fears that victory for the Government today will be seen by Howard and Costello as a mandate for WorkChoices and the final stripping of workers' remaining rights and protection. The Liberal leaders have tried to still fears by promising they have found the "right balance" and that there will be no second wave of industrial reform.
But at the same time they have refused to release submissions to Cabinet from the prime ministers' department, outlining options for further measures. Howard says the options were considered two years ago and rejected, and there is no secret agenda. Rudd just needs to ask: can you believe these people, who kept their WorkChoices agenda secret until they won the last election?
Howard himself said, as Keating did before him, that when a government changes, so does the country. He did not have in mind the change from a Howard Government to one led by Costello, but many others do.
During his final Press Club lunch, he was quizzed on this point. What differences would there be between a Howard administration and a Costello Government?
Howard's answer casts Costello as a policy clone whose differences will be those of nuance rather than diverge from the true path. The things in which the Treasurer fundamentally believes are the policies that have been put in place over the past 11 years and that have been promoted during the past six weeks of campaigning.
Howard knows this because the pair have long been joined at the political hip - they have had the longest political partnership in Australian history. They have worked intimately, and not even the inevitable differences of opinion have pulled them apart.
Costello would follow a broad continuity of the policies of the past four terms, although "there would be differences in style because he's a different man", just as there were differences in style but not substance between Keating and his predecessor, Bob Hawke.
Rudd thinks differently and has put his case at every opportunity. By 2010 Howard will be gone and no longer accountable for broken promises, so why elect him?
There was no doubt, Rudd said, Costello would take WorkChoices further.
SO Australian voters have their first basic question - who do you fear most, Rudd or Costello?
The second is: who is better equipped to take Australia into a dynamic and uncertain future?
The great divide in this campaign has been between the past and the future. Howard has depended heavily on his record. Rudd has portrayed himself as the voice of youth, vigour and vision, with ambitions to be the "education prime minister" who gave the nation high-speed broadband and every senior secondary student a computer, who re-skilled Australia for world technological leadership.
Howard has given his priorities for the first year of a fifth term as maintenance of a strong economy, keeping Australia secure, implementing his election promises, trying to make federal management of the threatened Murray-Darling river system a reality, and achieving constitutional recognition for indigenous Australians.
Rudd listed the priorities for his first 100 days as ratification of the Kyoto protocols, establishing the basis for interim targets for a greenhouse gas emissions trading system and setting a mandatory renewable energy target, launching a new high-speed broadband network and a programme to put computers into all schools, and the overhauling of Australia's crisis-ridden hospital system.
Howard says his Government is one of skill and experience. Rudd says it as lodged in the past and bankrupt of ideas. Costello may be only 50, the same age as Rudd, but he has been greyed by his years with Howard.
This basic, stark, leadership divide embraces the central issues swirling in the heads of voters: economic and job security; hospitals, aged care, the environment and water supplies, Iraq, housing, roads, the national skills deficit, education and trades training, technology and innovation But in most of these the policies of Howard and Rudd blur into one. Preferences will be formed on broad perceptions rather than detailed analysis, weighted inevitably by long-standing biases. Although the pool of swinging voters has grown markedly, and far fewer votes are decided by views inherited from parents, polls for many years have shown consistent trends, albeit modified by Rudd's ascension to Labor leadership last December.
Howard is seen as the better economic manager, but Rudd's carefully crafted image as an economic conservative has closed the gap and helped soothe the doubts of the fearful.
Howard is regarded more highly in national security, but Rudd is a long-standing and fervent supporter of the alliance with the US - except for Iraq, a view shared by most Australians. For all this, and taking into account the vastly different circumstances, memories remain strong of 1993 and the resounding defeat of the-then Liberal Opposition by the very unpopular Keating. Until the day of the election, polls predicted a Liberal landslide. On the day, fears of the Liberals' promised GST stampeded voters back to Labor.
There is nothing of that nature today, but polls tracking voting intentions in the 20 or so marginal seats that will decide the outcome of the election suggest a far smaller, and quite vulnerable, Labor majority.
Rudd needs a net 16 extra seats to win. Howard can collect 48 per cent of the national vote and still snatch victory if those votes fall in a sufficient number of marginal seats.
Most polls predict Rudd will cross the line by what he predicts will be "a nose". But for voters, the deciding question will be: which monster under the bed most gives you the willies?
Doing the numbers
Polls on the eve of today's election point to a new Labor Government, but disagree on the scale of leader Kevin Rudd's victory.
The best prospect for Prime Minister John Howard is the "half a chance, tops" from Galaxy, and Morgan's assessment that despite a razor's-edge finish, he will hold his Sydney seat of Bennelong.
ACNeilsen yesterday reported Labor would go into the election with a huge, nationwide, two-party preferred lead of 57 per cent to 43 per cent. This represents a 10 per cent swing to Labor since the 2004 election, more than twice what Rudd needs to collect the 16 extra seats he needs for victory.
The latest Morgan poll, released yesterday, was more conservative, reporting a slight narrowing of Labor's lead - but still showing a two-party preferred advantage of 54.5 per cent to the Government's 45.5 per cent.
In 22 key marginal seats, however, the nationwide swing to Labor of 7.2 per cent has been reduced to 5.2 per cent, with the Government more than halving the two-party preferred gap in these seats to 3 per cent.
Pollster Roy Morgan said even with the likely loss of a Labor seat in Western Australia, Rudd seemed likely to gain between 14 and 20 seats, plus the potential of some safer Liberal seats outside their 22 most marginal.
Galaxy gave Labor a nationwide two-party preferred lead of 57 per cent to 43 per cent and, while believing Rudd would squeak home, predicted a nail-biting late finish to counting tonight.
