You could be forgiven for concluding there's little to pick from in this election; the age of ideology is long gone and the true difference between the parties is minor. The two sides have assiduously eliminated their differences to the point where we're asked to choose between the red management team and the blue management team.
You could be forgiven for thinking all this because there's much truth to it. The more "scientific" and calculated politics has become the further the sides have moved towards the centre.
But it's not the whole truth. The parties may not be terribly ideological and - with the notable exceptions of Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan - they may assiduously avoid the language of class conflict, but they do play favourites in the policies they espouse.
If you think the class war is over, you're not paying enough attention. The reason the well-off come down so hard on those who use class rhetoric is that they don't want anyone drawing attention to how the war's going.
All of them except Warren Buffett, the mega-rich American investor. "There's class warfare, all right," he once said, "but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."
The reason the wiser heads in Labor don't want to talk about class conflict, either, is they know it gets them nowhere. It alienates people at the top without attracting many at the bottom.
This, of course, is why the well-off like me are winning. The workers are too busy watching telly to notice the ways they're being got at. It requires attention to boring things like superannuation when you could be up the club playing the pokies.
The significant thing about the looming change of government is not that the economy will be much better managed - it won't be; these days most of the key decisions are made by the econocrats - but that the Coalition will bring to its decisions about taxing and spending a different bias to Labor's.
How can I say that? By looking at Tony Abbott's promises. If you do pay attention it's as plain as a hundred dollar bill.
Let's start with that boring question of the concessional tax treatment of superannuation. It's by far the most expensive example of (upper) middle-class welfare.
Super has always been a scheme heavily favouring those on the highest rates of income tax, who also happen to be those most able to afford to save.
But towards the end of his time as treasurer, Peter Costello introduced "reforms" that made it far more favourable to the well-off by making super payouts tax free and opening the scheme wide to "salary sacrifice" by those able to afford it.
At the time, many economists said what they're saying now about Abbott's paid parental leave scheme, that it was so generous as to be fiscally unsustainable.
And so it has proved. In its unending search for budget savings the Labor government has chipped away at that generosity in almost every budget (as I know to my cost).
And as part of its mining tax package, Labor finally acted to remove one of the most iniquitous features of the scheme.
It introduced the "low-income super contribution rebate" to end a situation where everyone earning less than $37,000 a year gained nothing from the concessional treatment of super contributions (while people like me saved tax of 31.5? in the dollar).
Earlier this year, when Labor was making noises about doing more to make super less inequitable - and the big banks and insurance companies were putting up their usual furious fight - Abbott promised to avoid any further changes for three years. Labor later topped this by promising no further changes for five years. Who benefits most from this moratorium - aspirational families in the western suburbs?
And get this: to help pay for its promise to abolish the mining tax - paid on their super-profits by three of the biggest mining companies in the world - an Abbott government would abolish the low-income super contribution rebate.
Who would benefit most from Abbott's opposition to Labor's plan to remove the concessional tax treatment of company cars?
Abbott's paid parental leave scheme would introduce a major new example of middle-class welfare. Since even most on his own side disapprove of it, it's guaranteed to be chopped back in future.
Then there's his pledge to remove the means-testing from the private health insurance rebate.
To its unforgivable shame, Labor has repeatedly refused to increase the poverty-level rate of the dole. In March, however, it began paying dole recipients a twice-yearly supplement of up to $105. No doubt as part of its campaign against waste and extravagance, an Abbott government would abolish this supplement.
Early in its term, the Howard government rejigged its grants to schools so as to favour private schools. After doing nothing for six years, the Labor government accepted the Gonski report's plan to bias school funding in favour of disadvantaged students, most of whom are in public schools.
After roundly condemning the Gonski proposals, Abbott affected a deathbed conversion to them as the election loomed. Read his fine print, however, and the parents of children at private schools can rest easy. The disadvantaged will soon be back at the back of the queue where they belong.
