What can we hope for in this regard? Election campaigns are not just debating societies or public forums, no matter how rowdy they are. There is a lot at stake in these campaigns and the fear of losing is a powerful driver of a "whatever it takes" approach.

So with my eyes wide open, willing to risk being called unrealistic, I suggest that citizens demand what I will call a "charter of campaign integrity". It could be called "campaign civility" or "campaign ethics" but "campaign integrity" is better.

It has long been recognised that the conduct of campaigns is heading in the wrong direction (though I do not believe there was a past golden age either). The role of television, advertising agencies, media managers and events coordinators has given campaigns a slickness that does not help real engagement between the competitors or real communication with voters. Communication is often conducted in slogans.

Policy launches are becoming more plastic and are pushed back so late in the campaign that they are not very helpful. The revenue and income figures bandied around by party leaders become ever more slippery.

One response has been the introduction of both a Charter of Budget Honesty and a Parliamentary Budget Office to try to improve the reliability of the figures that are used by the political parties in the preparation of their policies. These are useful developments.

But there is a lot more wrong with campaigns than this, because they often distil into a short period the weaknesses of the way politics is conducted as a whole.

I do have some sympathy with the situation political leaders and candidates generally find themselves in during election campaigns. They do not all enter campaigns seeking to be misleading but the pressure to win is constant. Good intentions can be diverted by the desperation that comes with fear of losing. The means can be seen as justifying the ends.

For a leader to stand above the fray just a little or to try to explain things at length to the community is condemned by the "hard men" of politics as weakness. For a leader to recognise complexity or to admit their own failings or to mention the costs as well as the benefits of a particular policy direction is often condemned as weakness. The "hard men" just want the leader or candidate to go for the jugular as it is called in the vernacular.

The whole question of campaign integrity is difficult to come to grips with because so much is a matter of perception and therefore arguable. The past history of truth in advertising guidelines as they apply to elections, sponsored by the Australian Democrats and others, has shown this. They have proven to be unworkable partly because, even when fault is found, any resolution comes too slowly to be any use to the victim.

There will be no charter of campaign integrity agreed between the major contenders. As far as they are concerned, fault is always with the other side.

But what the community can do is to look out for the threats to campaign integrity and to speak out against them.

There are half a dozen such aspects of campaigning that should be called out. In no particular order they are:

Stretching the truth and exaggeration. These are often called half-truths or white lies. The great temptation in a campaign is to go beyond the evidence. This happens especially when making claims about what is going to happen in the future. This can be the budget bottom line or the likely positive or negative future impact of a policy proposal.

Misrepresentation of your opponent. This can include quoting your opponent out of context or digging up a quote from a decade or two ago to suggest that your opponent still holds these views.

Lack of transparency. This can include running your campaigns through fraudulent third parties or dodgy organisations. In common language this is about getting someone else to do your dirty work. It can also be about hiding the facts by claiming "commercial in confidence" or unnecessary delay in revealing the facts.

Negative campaigning. There is a case for comparing yourself favourably with your opponent because elections are a choice after all. But that does not justify scare campaigns. There is rarely a justification for being a Chicken Little and saying the sky is going to fall in if you are not elected or if your opponent is.

Sloganeering. We have to have slogans because at their best they are concise summaries and capture the imagination of the audience. Even the awful ones are mostly harmless. But some of the worst are offensive.

Hypocrisy. Let us have no pretence. In particular, let us have no insincere claims by anyone to a higher morality than anyone else in the campaign. That is an insult to the intelligence of voters.

Like attempts to introduce truth in advertising there will be competing perspectives about all of the things on this list. It is aspirational rather than anything that can be regulated. But let us call out the worst offenders against the ideal of campaign integrity.

John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University.

John.Warhurst@anu.edu.au