Senators will return to Canberra later this month with the expectation that they will give final consideration to the government's industrial relations legislation.
While Labor goes into the election year as underdogs, the party's strategy to win government will capitalise on what it sees as its competitive advantages.
The conventional wisdom is that Bob Hawke’s 1984 election was too long and almost disastrous, and therefore not to be repeated. But the times are very different now.