FEW election campaigns have produced such a dispirited response from voters as the one that is concluding today. In the five weeks since Prime Minister Julia Gillard asked the Governor-General to dissolve Australia's 42nd Parliament and issue writs for an election of the House of Representatives and half the Senate, neither Labor nor the Coalition has managed to inspire those who must choose between them tomorrow. How different is the national mood now from what it was three years ago, in November 2007, when Kevin Rudd led Labor into office, ending nearly 12 years of conservative rule under John Howard. Then, the future seemed bright with possibility as the new government embraced policies that changed the nation: signing the Kyoto protocol on global warming, apologising to the stolen generations, ending the so-called Pacific solution to boat arrivals. The opposition, too, seemed to embrace the new mood, at first tentatively under Brendan Nelson, then more assuredly under Malcolm Turnbull - though the discontents that would see Tony Abbott replace him as Opposition Leader last December quickly became apparent.
What ended this sense that the nation was focused on the future? The global financial crisis cannot be blamed, for Australia emerged from it earlier, and stronger, than almost any other developed economy. Nor should the failure of the Copenhagen conference on climate change be made a culprit. The notion that Australia should respond to other nations' unwillingness to tackle what Mr Rudd called the greatest moral challenge of our time by doing nothing itself was a counsel of despair; politicians embraced it out of timidity or exhaustion, not necessity. Finally, the reappearance on the horizon of boats carrying asylum seekers was accepted by both parties, in deference to xenophobes in marginal seats, as a problem, even though boat arrivals have always been a tiny fraction of total immigrant numbers. The debates on asylum seekers and population have been allowed to blur, distorting both.
On all these areas of national policy, the Labor government seemed unable or unwilling to contest mistaken assumptions and prejudices, while the Coalition, especially after Mr Abbott replaced Mr Turnbull, seized every opportunity to fan them. And, after Labor walked away from the greatest moral challenge of our time by shelving its legislation for a carbon emissions trading system, Mr Rudd's popularity, and the government's, waned, leading to his replacement by Ms Gillard.
This election campaign has been conducted in an intensification of that mood of disillusionment. Ms Gillard, who acknowledged when she took office that the Australian people must be given an opportunity to cast their own verdict on the change, has acted more like a troubleshooter than a leader. Only in the past week has her focus turned to the crucial battleground of the economy. Mr Abbott, while performing above expectations and proposing a useful initiative to harness private investment in infrastructure, has mostly preferred to run on negatives: no more waste, no new taxes, end the debt, stop the boats. He is untroubled by the irony of a new tax being necessary for the Coalition's most notable policy innovation, parental leave on full pay.
The campaign has been characterised by diminished expectations, small targets and vapid slogans, and neither party should be proud that it has come to this. But the fact that they have chosen to contest the campaign in this way does not mean voters are confronted with an indifferent choice. Ms Gillard's decision to re-emphasise the economic fundamentals is both a recognition that the government has a success story to tell and an implicit acceptance that it must build on that success to recover a buoyant focus on the future, and revive the vision that has faded.
Disputes continue about the extent to which Australia's ability to withstand the global financial crisis derived from the Howard government's management of the financial system, the earnings of Australia's mineral exports or the Rudd government's economic stimulus measures. The preponderant opinion among economists, however, credits the stimulus with preventing the downturn from cutting too deeply, and helping the economy to recover quickly once the danger of recession had passed. There was waste and mismanagement in some of the stimulus programs, but the debt on which the opposition has harped so insistently is almost negligible by comparison with that of other developed economies, and unless there is a double-dip global recession the government is well placed to return the budget to surplus by its target date of 2012-13. By all the principal indicators - low unemployment, low underlying inflation, moderate interest rates and continuing growth - the government has established its credentials.
The Age believes the government should be returned, because of this successful economic stewardship and so that it can resume the project of adapting Australia to meet the challenges of the 21st century. In undertaking to build a national broadband network - a transformational project whose importance the opposition seems unable to understand - the government has shown that the vision of 2007 was never entirely extinguished. That vision must now be broadened, emphasising not only infrastructure but internationally competitive higher education and strategic population growth, if Australia is to be well positioned by 2013 and beyond.
Finally, there remains the great global challenge of climate change. Labor relinquished the task of devising a system of pricing carbon emissions, and Mr Abbott has ruled one out. Ms Gillard has pledged to resume the task. If voters give Labor a second chance, she must not squander the opportunity.