AUSTRALIA going to the polls on Saturday, has its first modern political prisoner a Victoria man, Mr Albert Langer, jailed for urging people not to vote for either of the two main political parties.
Mr Langer, a Marxist veteran of the anti Vietnam war protests in the 1960s, was given a 10 week sentence for contempt of court after he refused to stop issuing "how to vote" cards which effectively showed how to spoil a ballot paper under the Australian preferential system.
Many Australians would prefer to see the politicians behind bars after a five week election campaign distinguished by little except low level point scoring.
Dignity and what George Bush called "the vision thing" are conspicuous by their absence.
For around 10 million voters, the choice for prime minister appears to be between a bruiser and a bore. The situation has left many people taking the old "they're all as bad as each other" line. Certainly there are few differences between the two main parties in major policy areas, such as health care and the environment.
The opposition, the Liberal National Party coalition (right and righter), under the leadership of Mr John Howard (the bore), was eight points ahead at the start of February. But this margin has shrunk as the press, with not a little help from Mr Howard, portrayed him as a confused bungler who had altered his stance on health care and industrial relations to tempt voters.
A bald threat by the secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Mr Bill Kelty, that the unions would never cooperate with a Howard government didn't help. Neither did the public statement by 100 leading churchmen criticising the coalition's industrial relations policy.
Meanwhile, the incumbent Labour Party looks to Mr Paul Keating, Prime Minister since the end of 1990, to repeat his 1993 conjuring trick and pull another election victory out of the hat.
Labour the traditional working man's party, which has been in power federally since 1983, initially used a one word campaign mantra, "leadership" The peculiar tribute to Paul Keating "You might not like him, but you've got to respect him" went down like a lead balloon.
Leadership turned out to come somewhere between dental hygiene and standards of garden furniture in issues which concern Australians according to a poll by a national news magazine, The Bulletin.
The poll, like so many others, showed that the parties should be concentrating on issues such as unemployment (8 per cent nationally, but much higher among young people) and health care costs. The environment and aboriginal issues also ranked well above "leadership".
But perhaps it was the quality of the two 50 something year old leaders who have any chance of winning that caused this decided lack of interest.
Mr Keating is sharp witted and cultured, despite his reputation as a flinger of epithets of the order of "ya mouldy maggot". But after five years and the inevitable electoral boredom with a long term government, he has been looking tired, edgy and lacking in sparkle.
Fortunately for Mr Keating, Mr Howard has been doing little better. On the same day that he had to make an embarrassing retraction on Sydney Radio of a forceful statement regarding proposed taxation cut off levels, the hapless coalition leader fell off a platform and injured his ankle.
"Not one of my better days," he conceded.
But worse was to come when the respected Four Corners television documentary devoted a programme to Mr Howard, showing him as the bespectacled nerd who never drank in his student days, and including comments from erstwhile colleagues such as "I never got much excitement out of anything he [Howard] said or did and "He's a man totally lacking in charisma".
On a different level, the guard also changed in Australia in February. The Governor General Mr Bill Hayden, ended his term and handed over to a low profile High Court judge, Sir William Deane.
"They wanted somebody noncontroversial for the changeover to a republic," said a former top civil servant in Canberra, the nation's capital and home of the Governor General. But although this precaution has been taken, the road to a republic is still not straight.
Mr Howard says he does not. .want to change the nation's status the governor general as representative of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, is head of state although rarely involved in political affairs. (A notable exception, the dismissal of an earlier Labour government by governor general Sir John Kerr in 1975, accelerated the move to a republic).
However, Mr Howard agreed in his Four Corners interview that "as Australia is a democracy", he would be willing to change his views should be public demand it. However, he has not made the same pledge as Mr Keating to hold a referendum on a republic before the turn of the century.
One of the few live issues in the campaign was the fate of the national telecommunications company, Telstra. Both parties accused the other of planning to sell this to foreign interests, although the official coalition line was that it would sell one third of Telstra to fund a $1 billion environmental package.
The election result, now appears to hinge on 13 seats in New South Wales held at present by Labour. If they are retained, Paul Keating should be safe. Late in the campaign, hysterical reactions to Mr Keating by a crowd of schoolgirls and an overwhelming welcome at the Melbourne Town Hall would have given him heart.
"If this keeps up. I'll be a cult figure," Mr Keating joked. But the only figure that really matters is the final count after the polls close on Saturday night.