That is in stark contrast to the US where, because of the way the Trump administration dropped the ball, the US election was a referendum on crisis management.

By the time Australians go to vote the vast majority of people will have been vaccinated, most of those stranded overseas should have returned home, and the medical emergency should be well and truly under control - assuming all goes to plan.

Public attention will have begun to shift back to the other existential threat - climate change, which was the nation's headline issue in the months immediately before coronavirus arrived, and the traditional Labor-LNP battleground of industrial relations.

This is why, on the one hand, Scott Morrison is trying to drag his Coalition partners, and his own party's recalcitrants, towards acceptance of a net-zero emissions target by 2050 and, on the other, Anthony Albanese is striving to reaffirm that the Labor Party is the best friend the nation's downtrodden workers have ever had.

The LNP began the year on the back foot on IR after apparently trying to pull a "swifty" on the ACTU with some elements of its COVID-19 recovery inspired Fair Work Amendment Bill, the so-called "omnibus bill".

All appeared to be tracking well until, at the very last minute, Industrial Relations Minister Christian Porter slipped in additional provisions that would allow the Better Off Over All Test (BOOT) to be suspended under some circumstances.

The idea was that it should be possible for workers and employers in industries hit hard by COVID-19 to strike short-term agreements that could reduce wages and wind back conditions below those specified in awards until the situation improved. This would supposedly make it easier to save existing jobs and to create new ones.

While the debate is a complex one in that the reform's advocates say such agreements can already be struck under existing legislation introduced by Labor, the union movement is in no mood to give ground.

The Coalition is still carrying a lot of baggage from the WorkChoices debacle. When its members suddenly declare, hand on heart, they are all for the worker most unionists react with scepticism.

That scepticism is legitimate and justified. There is nothing in any of the reforms being proposed that would prevent employers from saying "thank you so much" for tilting the IR power balance even further in their favour before embarking on structural reforms and redundancies on a large scale. It's certainly happened before.

Labor, by way of contrast, argues workers should be rewarded for the way they have stepped up during the pandemic, not punished for good behaviour. At a speech in Brisbane on Wednesday Anthony Albanese reminded the nation how the pandemic had laid bare the increased levels of job insecurity as a result of the rise of the gig economy.

He called for transferable leave entitlements, a cap on rolling fixed-term contracts, and a requirement for labour-hire workers to receive the same pay as their full-time coworkers. These are commendable objectives given even the Reserve Bank governor has repeatedly expressed concern about the historically low rate of wages growth in recent years.

Mr Morrison, Mr Frydenberg, and Mr Porter would do well to remember the scriptural injunction that one should not "muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn".

A failure to do so could result in the Coalition paying a heavy price at the ballot box.