Nicola Lamb: Yes we will ... or maybe not

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's awkward attempt to tap Barack Obama with her "yes, we will" refrain at Labor's launch on Monday seemed to sum up the sorry smallness of this election campaign.

"Yes, we will move forward with confidence and optimism ... yes, we will transform our education system ... yes, we will work together."

It's only a few years since the American President's "yes we can" slogan bubbled around the world. This week, it boomeranged back as a hollow, mechanical echo.

With a slight twist, and from Gillard's mouth, it had all the fizz of a month-old bottle of warm Coke. With her unflappable persona and bone-dry tones she could easily have been vowing to bring a plate, do the mopping up and put out the washing.

On the same day, her rival Tony Abbott was channelling Canute in saying he would personally decide by phone whether to turn back waves of asylum seeker boats.

We might envy our big cousins' ability to survive a global recession without dipping their toes in the red. But from this side of the Ditch it doesn't appear Labor has received much credit for it.

It has been an inward-eyed campaign, dominated by cost-of-living concerns, the desire to hold on to Australia's prosperity and keep refugees from the nation's shores. It's a major slide from Kevin Rudd's optimism of 2007. Labor has had time to disappoint since it gained power, shelving its climate change approach and allowing the constant trickle of leaky boats. The party feels the backlash from unpopular incumbent Labor state governments.

Although the scramble for votes and seats has stayed close, Abbott has failed to convincingly close his poll gap in likeability as preferred leader.

Steel Sister Gillard, for all her differences of gender and/or beliefs, has the same steady, careful efficiency about her Australians have become used to seeing in their prime ministers for more than a decade.

When Gillard wraps her larynx around her "moving forward" line, the reassuring pace suggested has all the urgency of a koala thinking about climbing that nearby branch. Abbott is a throwback to a more colourful era. The former trainee priest, Rhodes scholar and boxer is someone who will do and say the unexpected, take chances and could push the country in a different direction.

Just how much change do Australians want so soon after they kicked out an entrenched regime? Will they be content to stay the current course or be prepared to take a leap of faith in the Mad Monk?