The last election Canberrans experienced was the federal election in May last year, of which Bill Shorten's leadership characteristics were made a central feature by the Morrison government. The attacks on Shorten set a gold standard for personal attacks on character and competence, and they apparently resonated with voters. Labor will have no sympathy for any opposition leader targeted by a government.

Now we are faced with an ACT election in which Opposition Leader Alistair Coe is being targeted by the Barr government, most recently at Labor's election launch. Outgoing Liberal frontbencher Vicki Dunne has reacted to this targeting by claiming the government has an "ugly and unhealthy obsession" with Coe. Labor speakers concentrated particularly on Coe's social conservatism.

The attack was not purely personal. Much of it was directed towards the Canberra Liberals as a whole, with federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese claiming that the Canberra Liberals were the most socially conservative branch of the Liberal Party in the whole of Australia.

That is a big call, given other contenders such as the Liberal National Party in Queensland, but certainly it is a curiosity that a socially progressive community like Canberra should be home to a socially conservative major party. Albanese contended that Coe was the only leader of a major party, in government or opposition, to oppose marriage equality in 2017, a postal ballot in which the ACT recorded the highest Yes vote of any jurisdiction.

The character of the Liberal branch has been public since 2013, when then-senator Gary Humphries was unseated in a factional fight over preselection by now-senator Zed Seselja.

The electoral impact of this social conservatism is still being determined, as there are many other factors than ideology involved in winning and losing elections. Is it a major negative for the Liberals, or is the wider community disinterested? Nonetheless, anti-conservatism is being tried again. The Greens are echoing Labor by urging voters to keep the hard right, not just the right, out of government.

It is common in Australian election campaigns for one side of politics to be labelled too extreme by their opponents. It has been a constant refrain against Labor leaders and parties that they are too left-wing. Less commonly is it alleged that Liberal leaders are more conservative than the Liberal norm. It certainly applied to Tony Abbott, though it did not stop him winning in 2013.

Shorten suffered under the charge that he put together an election program that was too left-wing on climate change and tax policy. Though he comes from the official Left faction, Albanese appears to be consciously moving Labor back to the centre on some of those contentious policies, and dropping others altogether.

Many of the allegations against Coe, using similar evidence such as opposition to same-sex marriage, were run enthusiastically against Seselja in the ACT Senate race in 2019. He was comfortably returned. That campaign targeted not just Seselja but his links, in unseating the more moderate Malcolm Turnbull, to conservative national Liberal figures such as Abbott and Peter Dutton.

Leadership is a factor in deciding election campaigns, but its role should not be exaggerated. Federal Labor's election review following its 2019 loss put Shorten's leadership inadequacies in the context of other important factors, such as the lack of focus in the campaign and unpopular policies such as changes to negative gearing and franking credits. Shorten alone did not cost federal Labor victory.

Importantly, Morrison's clever campaigning was given credit for blunting Labor's alternative message and for exposing Shorten's weaknesses. It will be a test for Andrew Barr whether he can match Morrison's campaigning skills.

He will attempt not only to contrast ACT Labor's progressive credentials with the Liberals' conservatism, but also to frame his government's longevity in a positive way - as maturity and experience, against the Liberals' undoubted inexperience. That said, many in the community will challenge Labor's claim to be progressive outside the social arena, especially on urban development and the environment.

The Liberals, while aware that they are not facing a popular chief minister, will not want a leadership election, and will not frame their aspirations around Coe's leadership alone. They are realists. They also lack a sufficiently appealing prospective leadership team to surround Coe, as opposition parties sometimes do in such situations.

Instead the Liberals, like Labor, will run a mixture of positive and negative slogans. They will raise negative criticisms of things like rate rises, the cost of living in the capital and health service problems, while floating positive promises such as better transport services, an improved local environment and support for private education. One of Coe's big problems, like Shorten, will be to show that he is financially responsible and can pay for his promises of both lower taxes and better services.

Labor will not try to ride on the back of the Chief Minister, but will instead try to pull off the difficult task of persuading voters that 20 years in government brings experience, not fatigue, and that the Labor-Greens government is truly progressive in the various meanings of that term. That means providing a convincing explanation of developer-government relations.

In a close election, just how Labor deals with the quasi-intervention on the Liberal side of former Labor chief minister Jon Stanhope, who denies the claims of the government to be progressive, will be a big test. The Liberals face a somewhat similar test with former MLA Bill Stefaniak and his Belco Party.

When it comes to the trench warfare between candidates in the five electorates leadership won't be the major factor. The face of the parties will not be Coe or Barr but their individual candidates.