WITH an election drawing closer, Labor sees votes in workplace relations and climate change.
To succeed, the ALP's "net zero by 2050" policy needs to placate climate warriors but not unnerve the blue-collar base.
Its "same work same pay" campaign plays to community fears that permanent work is giving way to "insecure" casual employment.
The Morrison government, on the other hand, will claim superiority as an economic manager, even if that allows Labor to highlight the JobKeeper millions paid to subsequently profitable companies.
With an effective national consensus on COVID policy, there may be little to separate the parties on the pandemic.
But with Defence Minister Peter Dutton deciding to dump a troubled fleet of European MRH-90 Taipan choppers to go back to the US Black Hawks they replaced, it seems as though we are in for a "khaki election".
Coalition hard-heads may be sensing the public mood shifting closer to its strident outlook on China, than to Labor's.
By itself, a decision to switch helicopter suppliers a decade early need not ordinarily generate widespread controversy.
But as happened three months ago with the AUKUS submarine deal, Europe loses out to Uncle Sam.
The dumped subs were French, but the Taipan is a true European collaboration between France's Airbus, Italy's Leonardo and the Dutch-owned Fokker.
The Taipans bought by the Navy in a $3.7 billion contract were assembled in Australia, while the Black Hawks will be "off the shelf" made in the US.
As with the submarines, the physical impacts of the Defence Minister Peter Dutton are off in the future.
The Taipans were to have served until 2037. Bringing them forward a decade means 2027, still six years away.
China will decry the announcement as more Anglosphere sabre-rattling.
And it is.
But not reacting to an unambiguous military build-up by China would be a worse step, and one interpreted by Beijing as weakness.
At the same time, the famous departing warning of US president Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961 - to "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex" - are as timely today as they were at the height of the Cold War.
We must tread carefully.
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