In the background this week, like a bass beat behind rhetorical noise that was dialled up to a Spinal-Tap-style “eleven”, we heard some defining things about this election year.

Stage right, Malcolm Turnbull is deliberately running a small(ish) target strategy, based in large part around his own popularity, which remains streets ahead of Bill Shorten’s.

The expectations that he would be big and bold were so strong some assumed the sudden shrinking scope of the Coalition’s tax policy was a sign of chicken heartedness in the face of political attack. And perhaps that was part of it.

Some, including me, saw evidence the prime minister had abandoned his lofty promises about evidence-based political debate in favour of a scare campaign that would do his predecessor proud. It was hard to conclude otherwise, with all the talk about Labor’s negative gearing policy “smashing” house prices and the new slogan, “vote Labor get poorer”, when the scant available evidence suggested a one-off reduction of between 1% and 2%.

But the abandonment of the GST hike coincided with a very deliberate decision about the Coalition’s re-election plan. They are calculating that at a time when voters are uncertain about the economy and weary of political dysfunction and upheaval they don’t want big change or grand plans, they just want competent, sensible government. They want smart ideas and careful management. Or “modest, incremental reform” as cabinet secretary Arthur Sinodinos put it this week. They want Malcolm Turnbull to give them enough of a reason to confirm their inclination to vote for them, the inclination they have been expressing to every pollster since he became prime minister.

Now you might say the past few weeks haven’t looked a lot like competent, sensible government, and you’d be right. And you might say we haven’t seen all that many smart ideas from the government lately and that would be right too. And it’s going to take all of the prime minister’s oratorical abilities to present “modest, incremental reform” as a reason for people to accept there has never been a more exciting time in the whole of history to be alive, especially when their wages are rising more slowly than they have for 18 years.

But it would be foolish for their opponents to bank on the Coalition being this bumbling for long. Behind the scenes they are working hard to fill the policy void, with the head of prime minister and cabinet, Dr Martin Parkinson, taking on the role of coordinating tax policies around about the time the goods and services tax hike was abandoned and strong signs at least some of those policies will be announced sooner rather than later.

The prime minister has reassured the states that, contrary to his treasurer’s indications, they will be getting some interim funding for hospitals. Loud complaints from states – including Liberal-led ones – about an imminent crisis in public hospitals would not be consistent with a safe-pair-of-hands federal campaign. Obviously the substance of these assurances is yet to be tested, that will happen when the detail is revealed at the April meeting of the Council of Australian Governments, but the political intent is clear. A small target, a number of cautious but “smart” policies between now and the election, and the overriding message, don’t risk Labor, there’s no good reason to change.

Stage left, Bill Shorten is running a high-risk campaign, using values-based policy to overcome his shortcomings in a head-to-head popularity battle, and to address the same sense of economic insecurity to convince the electorate that a change would be worth it, that there are very good reasons to switch, policy reasons critical to their well-being and to Australia’s sense of social equity, policies diametrically opposite to those in Tony Abbott’s first budget, which they rejected with such vehemence but which in some part the Coalition has not abandoned.

In 1993, the first election I covered properly and by far still my favourite, John Hewson risked bold policy in an election nobody thought he could lose. It was a high-wire campaign, balancing on policy detail, sometimes stumbling over it (remember the birthday cake, and also the pie shop). But it was a contest between leaders advocating things they really believed.

In 2016, Bill Shorten is risking bold policy in an election nobody really thinks he can win.

He’s had to take risks with tax policy, proposing negative gearing and capital gains tax changes that will have some impact on the value of housing, and other tax changes that create real categories of losers, in order to credibly fund the “Labor values” policies he hopes will jolt the electorate into paying attention – policies on health and hospitals and education and training and protecting jobs.

Shorten knows he has to surprise voters, shock them even, he has to change people’s minds, he has to give people an overwhelming reason to take the risk of change, make them reconsider their poor opinion of him, convince them he stands for something and there is a reason to return to Labor despite the utterly destructive, self-interested, inward-looking spectacle they made of themselves the last time the Australian people trusted them to run things.

Turnbull’s negative campaign on negative gearing is all part of the plan to paint Shorten as the risk. He overdid it this week but the direction is clear.

Shorten’s negative strategy is to paint Turnbull as a fraud, someone who claimed to be different but has the same policies and baggage they disliked in Tony Abbott. Every time the right wing of the Liberal party takes on Turnbull over things such as a Safe Schools campaign or climate policy and forces some kind of internal compromise, or awkward paper-over backdown, Labor HQ gives a quiet cheer.

Liberals argue those issues are of secondary importance to most swinging voters, that they matter to the media and the opinion “elites”, but Labor argues they just matter, and that they also go to trust and authenticity, and if a leader is judged harshly on those attributes, it can be lethal.

And as we saw this week, if the electoral fight is around Labor’s risks – whether their policy is credible, whether their values are sound – by definition the debate is on Labor’s turf, and the prime minister can look curiously like an opposition leader. Talking about the other guy’s ideas all the time depletes the authority of office.

So that’s the backbeat of election 2016, one side appealing to values and one to hope and natural hesitation, one trying to turn scepticism into inspiration and one to reassure and explain, the Coalition saying Labor is a risk and Labor announcing risky policies anyway, ones they’ll defend because they believe the social services they fund are needed, and worth it, risks they’re prepared to take because, well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Despite Monday’s 50:50 Newspoll, Labor’s primary vote is 35% – far too low to even think about victory. Bill Shorten has sounded a bit confident, more like he believes in what he is saying, but he’s still some way short of inspiring – which is what he needs to be to pull a campaign like this off. Turnbull is trusted and liked, has the advantage of incumbency and shouldn’t be under-estimated as a campaigner.

But then again, internationally, candidates who are seen as authentic and risky are doing shockingly well against candidates who are running more conventional campaigns and playing it safe.

2016 might turn out to be more fascinating even than 1993.