The one-time prime ministerial candidate can astutely highlight the vacuousness of both major parties' campaigns.
The former Labor Party leader Mark Latham has become pretty good at publicly harpooning his successors.
Many of his former Labor colleagues still dismiss Latham as being inspired by bitterness and anger. It's a convenient argument that distracts from the point.
The point being that Latham makes his old mates squirm because of his knack, now that he's a commentator with a unique political insight, of shining a light on their hypocrisies and political inadequacies. Forget his motivations. Listen to what he says.
In 2007 he declared the Kevin Rudd versus John Howard contest to be "a Seinfeld election, a show about nothing", because he maintained there was no significant difference between the Coalition government and the Labor opposition. I said then it was the best line of the election campaign.
"The dominant ethos is greed, not generosity . . . I expect a Labor administration to be even more timid, more conservative," Latham observed.
It was a cynical prediction but, three years later, you'd have to agree it was prescient, especially on the issues that most exercise voters – climate change mitigation and asylum seekers. Today, the leaders have changed but this election has so far proven to be the political equivalent of wallpaper – the more you see it, the less you notice it.
There's a reason for that. So far, it's the least edifying federal election for . . . I don't know how long. Maybe ever.
That probably suits Julia Gillard's intentions perfectly and so too, it seems, Tony Abbott's. Although in fairness to the latter it must be said he seems a lot less comfortable than the former when it comes to minimising friction between Labor and Coalition policies – or what passes for them.
Modern campaigns have become (thanks to the intimidating melange of the relentless 24-hour news cycle and social media) utterly risk-averse affairs. Mistakes are ruthlessly amplified and repeated from every angle. Of course, it pays to be careful.
But caution appears to be killing conviction and reducing campaigning to oft-repeated two-word slogans designed by political consultants, and shopping mall walk-throughs where real questions about Australia's future are second to the quality of bananas and the cuteness of the babies thrust at leaders.
Since becoming Liberal leader in December, Abbott has been an occasionally high-risk, in-your-face, public performer. Sure, he made mistakes, not least when it came to tying himself in knots about when his word could be trusted.
But again and again he captured public attention and imagination because he seemed, for all his human and political faults, to exude a conviction that was absent in Kevin Rudd.
Abbott is a seat-of-the-pants politician. He flies low and sometimes erratically. Whether or not voters agree with him, many could pinpoint several of his deep personal and political convictions.
They might name his support for the monarchy. They would probably mention his genuinely hard line on border control and asylum seekers. They might mention his climate-change scepticism. But perhaps most of all they would name his long and passionate commitment to labour market deregulation, a la WorkChoices.
The contrast with Rudd, especially after he jettisoned his emissions trading policy, seemed profound. So profound, in the end Labor felt no option but to ditch Rudd in favour of someone who apparently had a greater capacity for enunciating and communicating their convictions.
So far we have seen little policy of substance from Gillard or Abbott. Rather, each has sought to effectively contest the ownership of the other's most electorally potent policies – in Labor's case it has effectively snatched the Coalition's asylum policy, and in the Liberal Party's case it is holding on for dear life to Labor's workplace relations policy.
Voters should resent being taken for suckers. Perhaps we should just put it down to one of the few drawbacks of compulsory voting.
Abbott spent day one and much of the second day of the campaign mired in his party's obfuscations about whether – and by what form and when – elements of Work Choices would be reinstated under a Coalition government. He had already volunteered that the policy was dead, buried and (curiously) cremated. The media attention paid to the issue seemed somewhat skewed in light of that.
But media coverage of elections will never be played by Marquess of Queensberry rules; the reason so much attention was given to Abbott's "dead, buried and cremated" assertion was simple – it represents a capitulation of a previously held core conviction. It can be compared to Rudd's about face on his commitment to meet the "great moral challenge" of our times on climate change. It was the point at which public sentiment changed so markedly for Rudd in the face of the alleged conviction politician Abbott.
So what then do we make of Gillard's policy conviction?
Not much. She spent the first three weeks of her prime ministership either undoing or trying to fix the mistakes of the Rudd government for which she was at least equally responsible, but for some reason seen as less morally and politically culpable. Then she ran to a poll before too many had started joining the dots.
It is true that Gillard is yet to cynically drop her core convictions. But that is because she hasn't yet, as Prime Minister, announced any beyond the banal and often repeated principle of "moving forward".
On asylum seekers and population growth it's "I'll have what he's having", with a few added subliminal messages for the marginal Labor electorates.
She does not want a big Australia but she will not nominate a desirable population. Meanwhile, she has declared the election to be a referendum on "our very quality of life" and expressed sympathy for those who live in overpopulated areas but denied that immigration levels are relevant to the debate.
Speaking on Sky News, Latham said: "It's clever politics, but it's a fraud . . . of the worst order. This is a campaign which is a race for convergence . . . I'm sure there are a lot of voters thinking, 'What's this all about? Is there a policy where they disagree? Why should I even go bother and vote?' " The race for the bottom is on.
Latham is right – again.
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