IN THE final frenzy of her campaign for Australia's general election on August 21st Julia Gillard, the prime minister, criss-crossed the whole continent in less than a day. She started by flying to Perth, on the far coast of resource-rich Western Australia, where many voters are unhappy about the Labor government's plans for higher taxes on mining profits. Then it was back to the east coast to face voters at a “people's forum” in Brisbane. She wound up at the National Press Club in Canberra, where she declared on August 19th that the election will be an “absolute cliff-hanger”. It's already quite the frequent-flyer.

For his part Tony Abbott, leader of the conservative Liberal-National opposition, set out at 4:30am on Thursday the 19th for what he said would be 36 hours of continuous campaigning between Brisbane and Sydney. Both cities hold several marginal constituencies where Ms Gillard's cliff-hanger could be decided. A fitness fanatic, Mr Abbott boasted that his only sleep would be naps snatched in moving cars and aircraft until campaigning stops on the night of the 20th.

The leaders' frantic pace reflects a campaign that has left Australians feeling entertained and somewhat cynical, more than enlightened. Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott have led their parties for only two months and eight months respectively, both after toppling their predecessors. After an earlier round of opinion polls hinted at defeat for Labor, in the campaign's last week the indicators have swung back the government's way. A poll in the Australian newspaper on August 16th gave Labor a four-point lead over the coalition. Another in the Sydney Morning Herald two days later suggested the government's majority of 16 in the 150-seat lower house of parliament could be slashed to just four.

The stakes are probably the highest for Ms Gillard. She has struggled throughout to explain an apparent contradiction: how on the one hand she needed to usurp Kevin Rudd as prime minister in June, while on the other she can extol the economic achievements of the government he led since bringing Labor to power in 2007. After stumbling in the campaign's early weeks, she saved her best shots for the last one. She held her formal campaign launch on August 16th, only five days before voting itself, in front of Labor's gathered faithful in Brisbane, Mr Rudd's home city. Mr Rudd received a standing ovation when he took his seat in the audience. There were none of the earlier signs of public friction between the two: Ms Gillard is rumoured to have offered Mr Rudd a senior job, perhaps foreign minister, if she wins.

By the time she returned to Brisbane two days later, to meet her opponent at the people's forum held at the Broncos Leagues Club (an entertainment complex and “Home of the Brisbane Broncos”), Ms Gillard appeared the more sure-footed. Mr Abbott took questions from the audience first. His answer as to why he had refused her calls to debate her on the economy—“I debate the economy every day”—sounded flimsy. Ms Gillard fielded four questions about Mr Rudd's overthrow. Both leaders were asked why they opposed gay marriage. An audience poll judged Ms Gillard the winner by 83 votes to 75.

Mr Abbott has sharpened the opposition's attack against the government since he took over as Liberal leader. But his campaign has been mainly just that: accusing Labor of over-spending and raising voters' anxieties about asylum-seekers arriving in boats off northern Australia. He has also promised to abolish what seems to be one of the government's more popular projects, a A$43 billion ($38 billion) fibre-optic broadband scheme, which it has just started rolling out.

Whoever wins the election will have to deal with a resurgent Greens Party, which has changed the political landscape. The Greens' first vote, or “primary”, has climbed to 14% in one poll, almost double its primary in the most recent election, in 2007. Some of their gains can be put down to voters' dismay at how the two main parties squibbed on taking action against climate change. The Greens also want gay marriage legalised, and mining taxes raised even higher than Ms Gillard proposes, to fund an extra A$2 billion for public education.

Most election watchers predict the Greens will take enough of the vote to increase their number of seats in the Senate, the upper house of parliament, and hold the balance of power there. If so, the party that forms government in the lower house will have to sharpen its horse-trading skills to get its programme through. Labor has already done a deal with the Greens to swap second-preference votes in lower-house constituencies. However this election's final hours play, it will have left Labor on a stickier wicket than Ms Gillard would have hoped when she called it, barely one month ago.

(Photo credit: Bloomberg)