TIME to get serious now that people are already voting in that Federal election which has bored the pants off us since PM Malcolm Turnbull headed to Yarralumla all those weeks ago.

The double dissolution was vital, he told the G-G, to reinstate the ABCC as the building industry’s “cop on the beat”. And that was pretty much the last we heard of it.

Since then it’s been “jobs and growth” versus a plethora of policies from the Opposition with virtually no change whatever in people’s voting intentions. Except one: The Greens and independents have roared ahead.

According to the polls, the voters like Labor’s policies, but can’t wear Bill Shorten as Prime Minister; and they like Malcolm Turnbull as PM but not the right-wingers who seem to be dominating his policies. Little wonder that so many are parking their votes elsewhere. But will they actually cast them that way on July 2? We’ll see.

MEANTIME, there’s been a few diversions in the last seven days to keep us from dozing off. For instance:

TURNBULL publicly accepts the bleeding obvious that in 1788 there was a British “invasion” of the land we now call Australia (which they called New Holland). Bill Shorten supports a “treaty” with the Aboriginal people but then – “Let’s be very clear” – he prefers a “conversation” about it.

FORMER SAS operator, Lib MP Andrew Hastie, insists on wearing his military uniform in his campaign advertising and is sacked from the Reserves (and as the author of four books on the SAS, I can attest that the regiment itself deplores any association with politics). Then former Labor MP Mike Kelly, once an Army colonel, resigns from the Reserves for the same reason.

SHORTEN changes the subject and promises half a billion to help save the Great Barrier Reef. Turnbull doubles it from money already allocated to the Clean Energy Finance Corp.

TURNBULL tries to chuck out a British Muslim preacher who says homosexuals deserve to die; but the cleric clears out before Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, whose department kindly gave him a visa, can get his hands on him. Shorten offers to give journalists access to Manus Island and Nauru.

LABOR promises to fix the mess Turnbull made fixing the mess he says Labor made of the NBN. And both promise lots of money to keep producing Australian steel that nobody else wants,

TURNBULL makes a “captain’s pick” to preference Labor ahead of the Greens in every House seat (thus saving Shorten’s leadership rivals Tony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek), while Labor puts the Libs ahead in a few three-cornered contests with the Nats.

FINALLY, Turnbull declares himself the winner in a speech to the WA faithful and Shorten reckons that was “arrogant”. Malcolm, arrogant? Perish the thought.

AND so we yawn our way to the polling booths. But compare it with some other overseas polls this last week – “Daffy” Donald Trump, for instance, and his obscenities over the latest US massacre in a gay nightclub; or the terrible shooting and stabbing of British MP Jo Cox while advocating the EU “Remain” case.

You can’t help thinking that a boring election isn’t so bad after all.

robert@robertmacklin.com