CAMERON MILNER: We’re only at half-time in this election campaign and anyone could win still

It’s half time in this election campaign and it’s half time in Australia too.

We’ve seen two teams on the field, but neither has shifted the primary voting dial.

Now both parties are in their locker rooms trying to work out what they can do to win this in the second half.

Meanwhile an underwhelmed public have gone to take a leak or grab a Four and Twenty.

Anthony Albanese has had the best of it so far, yet hasn’t got his team in a winning position.

Peter Dutton had one of the best pre-seasons in memory but his shadow treasurer Angus Taylor looks underdone, and surely it’s deputy leader Sussan Ley’s last season?

Shanking the cost-of-living kick directly in front in the first quarter gave away the Liberals’ lead and swung momentum back to Labor.

As the siren sounds and people start to regain their seats all that matters now is what’s ahead in the second half, because there is still one more week until early voting starts.

It’s the huge soft vote and those yet to make up their minds that is the biggest variable. Support is lukewarm and voters are hardly cheering loudly. Even the die-hards are clapping — not roaring — for their teams.

In the midst of this is Easter and then Anzac Day, when many Australians will be on leave or catching up with family rather than mulling who is best to form government after May 3.

The only clear air both sides have is a Gout Gout-style sprint to the end in the last seven days when voters are given an uninterrupted line of sight of the election.

Sunday’s campaign launches finally gave each side some policy meat on the bone and while each are spending tomorrow’s money to buy today’s vote, at least the Liberals finally promised a sizeable tax cut of $1200 for 10 million Aussies being crushed by Albanese’s cost-of-living pressure.

Labor by contrast just added another lazy $10bn to a money-go-round bureaucracy that’s still failed to deliver a single new home that wasn’t already under construction.

Voters do now have a clearer choice.

The siren has just blown to start the second half and it’s still anybody’s game.

More of the same with Labor extending existing programs that haven’t eased the housing crisis, or Dutton’s clever tax-deductible mortgage payments for first home buyers.

Seventy cents a day starting in 15 months time under Labor’s “top up tax cut”, or $1200 in your back pocket under the Liberals.

No fuel tax relief under Labor, or a family budget-busting and economy-boosting halving of the Federal fuel tax under the Liberals.

A plan for household batteries and more renewable energy to power a decarbonised economy, or more gas now and the promise of nuclear in the future.

A refusal to apologise for failing to deliver $275 cut to power bills and cheaper electricity, or a Liberal promise to domestically reserve east coast gas and drive wholesale gas prices lower by 40 per cent.

Labor’s plan to continue to use the Future Made in Australia slush bucket to fund quantum computers that might not even work, or the Liberals’ plan to axe the fund completely and save taxpayers shovelling $16bn to speculative plays like “local” solar companies making all their panels in China.

By any measure, Albanese and Labor have done their best to lose after just one term, yet Dutton hasn’t been able to convert the palpable anger and disappointment into votes at the ballot box.

Polling suggests Australians are preparing for a minority Labor government with Albanese as PM being led around by the nose by Adam Bandt and a bunch of Tesla-driving Karens.

It’s as though work from home has lowered our collective expectations of what a hard-working and economically productive government should actually look like.

There seems to be a Thursday is the new Friday brain fog amongst voters that this election is just between Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumber.

Voters still being crushed by interest rate rises, spiralling rents and grocery bills seem to have a collective amnesia when it comes to seeking vengeance on the bloke who takes the upgrades, the freebies, asked them to vote Yes to the Voice and bought himself a cliff top mansion in the midst of a housing crisis.

Voters seem resigned to forgiving Albo his many transgressions because they remain unconvinced the Liberals would actually do any better.

Albanese also has Donald Trump to thank in spades, as the President’s tariff tantrums have kept Albo’s cost-of-living crisis off the front pages and seen voters return to the devil they know rather than add even more political risk to their lives in such uncertain times.

Trump’s tariff pause and an Easter reset might though be the relief the Liberals need to actually put the pressure back on Albanese.

The truth is Albanese has outperformed his low campaign expectations. His team, backed by talent like Chalmers have clearly done their policy homework also. But this is the best Labor will do between now and election day.

Dutton by contrast has had a shocker of a start, but is now hitting his straps.

He’s not going to win a likeability contest in the next 17 days, but he looks to have the better announcements. New ideas and a new approach rather than Albo’s billions more on the same failed programs of his first term.

Labor still looks the far more likely to regain minority government that will itself be a particularly cruel political purgatory in the next term.

For Dutton, every teal seat and every Labor marginal gained on May 3 is a seat closer to governing, but it also guarantees that Albanese will govern a collective stranger than those last seen propping up the bar at the Mos Eisley Cantina.

The teams are back on the field now. The crowd are back in their seats for the premiership quarter. The siren has just blown to start the second half and it’s still anybody’s game.

Cameron Milner is the director of GXO Strategies and a former Queensland Labor state secretary