ACT voters will see mostly new names on ballot papers for the House of Representatives, while in the Senate race a long-standing rivalry will resume as Australia heads to a May 18 poll.
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Unlike in other states and territories, the ACT's most interesting race is in the Senate, where Labor's Katy Gallagher is all but guaranteed to return after a break enforced by her ousting over the High Court's dual citizenship decision.
Her old foe from the ACT Legislative Assembly Zed Seselja is also looking to return to the Senate and to his junior ministry, but the conservative Liberal is facing challenges from at least three directions.
The Greens have centred their Senate campaign on trying to remove Senator Seselja, while independent Anthony Pesec, and the union movement, also have the Liberal in their sights, with both throwing money at their efforts.
About half of Canberrans will find themselves in a different electorate to the 2016 election, after a redistribution by the electoral commission last year added a new seat, with all but voters in Gungahlin and Belconnen to face a ballot paper without an incumbent MP on the list.
Following the resignation of Gai Brodtmann, Labor's Andrew Leigh in Fenner is the only sitting MP re-contesting his seat, albeit with new boundaries only taking in the city's outer north and west. His challenger is the Liberal's Leanne Castley.
Voters in Tuggeranong, Woden and the Molonglo Valley will choose between Labor senator David Smith, in his bid to move to the lower house, and the Liberals' Ed Cocks. While the electorate is now called Bean, its profile has changed little from the old electorate of Canberra.
In the lower house, the seat of Canberra, with an old name but a completely new look, takes in both the inner south and inner north. The electorate is the closest thing to a live battle in the ACT's steady electoral landscape, but it's not between the two old parties.
The Greens' Tim Hollo is attempting to emulate the success of others in his party in inner-city seats across the country, while Labor's Alicia Payne is pitching herself as a progressive who can make a difference in a party of government.
According to data released by the Australian Futures project and Roy Morgan, voters in the ACT generally list climate change and education as issues of priority more often than the rest of the country, while issues like the cost of living and health services and hospitals are rated as important at similar levels to voters around the country.
In previous elections, analysts and poll-watchers have closely watched Eden-Monaro, the electorate covering all of the ACT's borders, and until 2016 a bellwether seat that moved in line with changes of government. After it was won by Labor's Mike Kelly last time around, against the victory of the Coalition government, it is now of lower strategic importance to the major parties, but is still considered marginal for Labor. Dr Kelly will face challenges from the Liberals' Fiona Kotvojs and the Nationals' Sophie Wade.
Ms Gallagher began her re-election bid saying this federal poll would be the most important.
"It's not just thinking three years ahead, it's can we afford to do nothing or to not implement our agenda for another three years, because that will make it 13 years things like climate change aren't being dealt with," she said.
Zed Seselja said he wasn't taking the multiple campaigns targeting him personally.
"If we were to have a Green elected to the Senate instead of me, what [Canberra] would effectively have in terms of federal representation is all of our representation would be of the left. I think there would be a lot of Canberrans, even if they are swing voters, if they're somewhere in the middle, would they really want to only see the Labor party and the Greens representing us federally?"
Greens Senate candidate Penny Kyburz said she was confident that toppling Senator Seselja in the Senate was possible. She listed his stance on same-sex marriage as a reason for the change.
"We've come close in the past, but we also believe this time is different. The polling we've seen is that Zed is down 9-10 points, so that brings him within range."
