It was American statesman and diplomat Adlai Stevenson who remarked in a 1963 address to the UN that "ignorance is stubborn, and prejudice dies hard". He could well have been describing the Coalition.

Fundamental to the Howard government's demise in 2007 was John Howard's stubbornness and prejudice on two key issues, his unwillingness to say "sorry" for the past mistreatment of our First Australians, and his (now admitted) personal agnosticism on climate, preventing him from ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, even though we had clearly played something of a leadership role, "punching well above our weight", in the development of that protocol, and despite repeated pressure from his cabinet to reverse his intransigence. On both these issues.

This allowed Kevin Rudd to essentially tag Howard as passe, and to move on to offer a broad "vision" for our future - an "education revolution", the NBN, a climate action plan - and a message of HOPE, rather than NOPE. Howard not only lost government, but also his cherished seat of Bennelong.

Of course, Scott Morrison would say "no lessons here", "nothing to be seen here", being just as stubborn, prejudiced, out of touch, and passe. In large measure Morrison, still basically an ad man, is harking back to the "whingeing Wendy" strategy that, ironically, worked so well for Bob Hawke against Howard in 1987. Challenging Bill Shorten on costings, tax and economic impacts, Morrison is attempting to create electoral fear and anxiety about the Labor alternative.

Morrison's focus has been on broad economic management, on the return to surplus, debt repayment, and aggregate employment growth, which simply doesn't resonate with the lived experience of a growing majority of voters struggling daily with ever-rising costs of living, nor with low-income earners and Newstart recipients.

But, just as Rudd did in 2007, Shorten has neutralised the issue by claiming to be at least as "fiscally conservative", promising larger surpluses and earlier repayment of debt, moving on to define a more visionary strategy on other issues.

Indeed, Shorten has also recognised the shift in the electoral mood, whereby voters will wear higher taxes, and more government involvement in the delivery of essential services, if it can be demonstrated that the money is being used effectively to deliver better education, improved hospitals and Medicare, child and aged care, more affordable housing and power, and so on.

Over and above the cost of living, this is a climate election. Climate has become the principal differentiator, the key indicator of whether there is a plan for the future, a capacity to step beyond the short term, the point-scoring games, to think more strategically about longer-term challenges and inter-generational responsibilities and equity.

Morrison has got himself in a real mess on climate. While building a platform with lumps of coal, hasty decisions to facilitate the Adani coal project, and hints of perhaps a new coal-fired power plant, he then attempts to speak of his climate-action credentials, offering a packapooticket of policy utterings.

Unable to really defend this duplicity, inconsistency and contradiction, he has gone on an exaggerated attack about Labor's emission-reduction targets, support for electric vehicles, or whatever. This attack has been a babbling brook of misrepresentation, distortion and scare-mongering - selectively quoting irrelevant "modelling", claiming that Labor will take your ute and your weekend, while ignoring his past statements of support for EVs.

None of this resonates. Voters accept that the transition to a low-carbon society, not just economy, is inevitable. They want stable, considered leadership on this issue, a clear, longer-term framework within which we can all get on with doing our part in that transition. This is an issue where the old and young are at one.

Unfortunately, despite the significance of climate, this campaign will not see much genuine debate. Morrison is just on the defensive, and Shorten has been reluctant to engage on the detail, obviously for fear of putting a foot wrong, dare I say losing the unlosable.

Rather than a genuine contest of ideas, elections have become superficial, increasingly presidential, driven by slogans, sound bites and stunts. Voters increasingly feel disenfranchised and ignored, so they disengage. Hence, the post war drift from the two major parties, both in protest and in some hope that minor parties and independents may be able to force better government.

Both Morrison and Shorten have negative net satisfaction ratings, and voters don't really like the alternative. Shorten is seen as too close to the unions, and likely to sell out to them, while Morrison is too close to the top end of town and some particular interests. Neither offers real answers to the costs of living, just limited and possibly unaffordable tax relief to cushion the pain.

Neither has meaningful social policies on indigenous recognition and disadvantage, domestic violence, drugs, refugee resettlement, or disability and aged care.

I suspect voters have already cut through the hubris and ignored the costings and modelling debates, having largely made up their minds. To an increasing number, I suspect, the campaign is largely irrelevant.

SMH/The Age