KEY POINTS:
In the months before Prime Minister John Howard announced Australia's November 24 election, Labor's new 50-year-old leader, Kevin Rudd, was introducing himself to the nation as the man of the future.
Australia was heading to a fork in the road, he repeated at every opportunity, offering a real choice between a tired, out-of-touch Government and a new Labor administration that would be an "alternative, not an echo".
But as the election campaign enters its final fortnight, the Government's take on Rudd is reverberating across the electorate: "Me-too, me-too, me-too".
Simply, Rudd now has a real problem. He has taken a bipartisan approach on so many issues, accepted Government policies and decisions where he sees merit or advantage, and matched campaign promises so closely, that there is a real risk voters will see no difference and thus no compelling reason to change.
The points of real divergence have contracted to a narrow wedge that includes economic credibility, industrial relations, the environment, and the war in Iraq.
There is good sense in shifting Labor to the centre and blurring distinctions. Australians are conservative voters with long memories, and Howard is a past master at stirring their fears by driving wedges into the Opposition's vulnerable points.
He did this spectacularly in 2001 when the Norwegian freighter Tampa sailed into that year's election with its added human cargo of asylum seekers plucked from a sinking boat. Howard's exploitation of the ensuing political and diplomatic crisis sunk then-Labor Leader Kim Beazley.
In the last election he did the same to Beazley's successor Mark Latham, who tried to bolster his green votes by announcing more restrictive forest policies. Feeling local anger, Howard flew to Tasmania , promising to continue existing logging policies. He was rewarded by national coverage of smiling unionists packed around him, promising support that guaranteed the Government two key marginal seats.
And voters retain clear and bitter memories of the 1990s downturn that Labor Treasurer Paul Keating described as "the recession we had to have", and of interest rates that under his management soared to 18 per cent.
That is why the Reserve Bank's decision to lift the official rate again this week by 25 basis points to an 11-year high of 6.75 per cent is so important to both sides.
For Howard it is the chance to emphasise the strength and growth of the economy under his watch, to remind voters of Labor's record, and to warn that only the Government has the skills to steer the economy through troubled waters ahead.
For Rudd, it has provided a golden opportunity to depict Howard as a man who cannot be trusted - given his promise to keep interest rates at record lows - and as a leader who failed to implement policies that would have kept inflation in check, avoiding the need for higher rates.
In this debate, again, Rudd has stuck to the centre. It worked for Tony Blair in Britain when he rammed his Labour bulldozer down the middle of the road to his 1997 landslide.
It worked also for former United States President Bill Clinton, who used the same blurring technique to minimise vulnerabilities and allow him to push his youth as an electoral asset - as Rudd is now doing.
In effect, with both sides racing side-by-side down the centre, focus falls increasingly on perceptions of the leaders - a strategy not without risk for either side.
These risks are, for Rudd, highest in perceptions of economic management. He and Labor continue to trail Howard in this crucial arena, hobbled by the 11 golden years of unbroken growth, prosperity and jobs-for-all that have marked the prime minister's four terms.
Rudd has tried, with some success, to narrow this gap. He depicts himself as an economic conservative, a "Labor moderniser" who has banished the socialist ghosts and plans an education and broadband revolution to create the skills Australia's future economy will need.
Protectionism and tariff walls are out. Rudd is now a free trader who believes in the market and who sees the role of government as restricted to its proper regulation, and to ensure the provision of infrastructure and essential public services such as education. Budget surpluses are a given.
"I'm from that school of economic belief that says that markets are a great determinant of the best and most efficient allocation of resources," he told international cable TV business channel CNBC this week.
Earlier, he had told a press conference: "Our budget orthodoxy is identical to the Government's on this and there is no sliver of light between us."
His Shadow Treasurer, fellow Queenslander Wayne Swan, has been hammering the theme that while Howard may prophesy an economic and industrial Armageddon if Labor wins, economic policy and management will be tight and efficient.
THE major point of difference, and one of the defining divergences of the campaign, is industrial law and the role of unions. Howard says a Labor Government, with its heavy weighting of former union officials in Cabinet, will restore oppressive union rule and destroy the reforms that he says have created employment, improved wages, and underpinned stable economic growth.
Swan says nonsense. While Labor will dump the workplace agreements of Howard's unpopular WorkChoices law, and restore most of the lost protections and conditions, a tight hand will be kept on unions, and wages rises will be linked to productivity in new enterprise bargaining arrangements.
Pattern bargaining, under which wage rises in one company can be used in a wage case against another, will be outlawed. "Thuggish" union behaviour will not be tolerated.
In contrast to Howard's recent unilateral decisions, such as the A$10 billion ($12 billion) federal takeover of the management of the Murray-Darling river system, Labor promises scrutiny by the Treasury.
Similarly, in answer to Howard's claims that Labor would chain the economy in regulation, Rudd has vowed to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy, cut red tape, and direct the savings to the delivery of services.
As with the economy, the crucial arena of the environment has a fairly short list of headline differences, and a great deal of similarities - but it is those headline divergences that create important branding differences for Labor.
They revolve around the Government's refusal to ratify the Kyoto protocols on climate change and approaches to the replacement treaty that will set new global goals, targets for the reduction of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions and for the amount of electricity produced by renewable energy sources, and Howard's advocacy of nuclear power.
Rudd has also hammered home what he calls Australia's housing affordability crisis. While Labor is promising hundreds of millions of dollars to help first-home buyers and provide new low-income housing, Howard has yet to acknowledge the problem - which of course would be an acceptance of failure, especially with the latest interest rate rise and his slogan that "working families have never had it so good".
The other major point of divergence is the war in Iraq, and even there Rudd is taking a measured tone. In contrast to his doomed predecessor Latham, Rudd intends a phased withdrawal of Australia's 400-odd combat troops in consultation with the US. Other, smaller, units - including spy aircraft and troops in specialist roles - will remain.
In foreign policy, Rudd's approach mirrors that of the Government in all areas save Iraq. He is a fervent supporter of the US alliance and of involvement in Afghanistan, holds almost identical views in the Middle East, is a little more focused on the South Pacific, and will continue with Howard's massive, multi-billion-dollar military buildup - although he will review the decision to re-equip the Air Force with US joint strike fighters, and will produce a new defence white paper.
Similarly, since the campaign began Rudd has been matching Howard's funding promises in areas such as tax cuts, roads, health and a score of others - as has Howard in return.
So there is Kevin in the middle with (relative) youth on his side and a small handful of real differences. But the problem of standing in the centre of the road is that you risk being run down because you do not stand out against the background.
