Think back to April, to those advertisements with smiling, well-funded nurses and recuperating patients. The panoramic views of freeways, roads and workers in hard hats.  The happy families and smiling school children brimming with Doris Day innocence.

All that is largely gone in the final week of the election campaign.  In its place, competing fears: ‘Labor can’t manage money’, versus ‘Three more years of cuts and chaos’.  Darkness and shadow replace images of light and colour. Orchestral fanfares give way to a foreboding, deep bass.