If Bill Shorten loses the election, three things will follow

They included "Medicare for all", "housing as a human right", "mobilising against climate change", and - most terrifying of all - "support seniors".

The graphic behind Hannity was the political equivalent of - pick your generation - a Magic Eye picture, or perhaps The Dress.

Some people saw a commonsense set of entirely reasonable propositions. Others, looking at exactly the same graphic, could see only left-wing nuttiness leading straight to apocalypse.

Every election campaign is based on a version of this. One side announces policies it believes are reasonable, the other describes them as disasters.

Often, in Australia, with compulsory voting and a large set of swing-votes to capture, the major parties are not miles apart on central issues, so this involves taking small details and blowing them up.

Regardless of how slight the contrast, the leaders tell us this is the most important choice in Australia's history.

The surprising thing about this very boring election is that it really is important. On both the political and policy fronts, it is quite different from previous battles.

And that matters because election results have a massive influence on how future campaigns are run.

John Howard ran nasty on refugees and prevailed, so that became the standard playbook - as in Morrison's announcement he would freeze the refugee intake.

Tony Abbott tried to disrupt Julia Gillard's government by stressing her fragile parliamentary position and won, so Bill Shorten tried a similar approach. Theories about what may have led to victory become conventional wisdom, then iron law.

So what are the elements that mark this campaign out?

A former colleague recently pointed out that change-of-government elections tend to provoke wide interest, while this campaign is the opposite. Ordinarily that might point to government victory - except that it seems to be part of Labor's strategy.

A feature of the past fortnight has been Shorten running what feels like the small-target version of a big-target campaign.

He regularly refers to his "plans", but when questioned seems unwilling to defend them.

One instance was probably a simple mistake.

And perhaps Shorten just likes to be liked. But his reluctance to debate Scott Morrison in primetime suggests that the choice he has sometimes been criticised for - putting tactics ahead of strategy - has been reversed.

Labor has decided it is willing to weather a few bad days if it prevents larger mistakes that could steal expected victory.

I tend more towards the view, as Chris Uhlmann put it, that "Labor has made the big play so it has to have confidence in its choices and be honest about them".

But I could be wrong, at least politically, and if Labor persists and prevails then its strategy will become orthodoxy, as will the new belief that Labor can win without a popular leader.

On to policy.

The most obvious fact is the breadth of Labor's policy program.

Labor's platform is starkly different from the Coalition's - on a republic, on an Indigenous voice to Parliament, on climate change, childcare, on representation of women.

But mostly - because Shorten's momentum seemed to start there, and because it is the focus of attacks - a Labor victory will affirm a certain view of tax and class.

This is the Australian version of the Hannity graphic: changes to franking credits treatment, negative gearing, and capital gains tax; raising taxes on the wealthy; increasing penalty rates and wages.

The aim isn't just attracting people on lower incomes.

It reflects an assessment that most voters feel society has skewed to the "top end of town" (Shorten's words).

This feels new, and is of a piece with the backlash against neoliberalism, but is also old, from a time when Labor was more clearly identified with the working class.

If Shorten loses, three things will follow, each with significant implications for Australian politics.

First, he and John Hewson together will have forever killed off detailed opposition platforms, at least those involving tax.

Second, the identity Labor has spent the past six years creating for itself (or perhaps returning to) will be up for grabs.

Third, the result will be seen as a rejection not just of Labor, but of Labor's judgment that Australia has reached a certain place politically.

The idea that Australians have become permanently more progressive will die.

This would have a mixed impact on the Coalition's own identity debate. On one hand, Morrison would have immense power to shape the party in his own image.

But at the same time, those to the right of him like Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton would become bolder.

Really, this particular election, with its lack of excitement, is probably not an indicator of much at all - as my former colleague observed, at this moment in time the chance to change prime ministers has lost its usual thrill.

And trying to draw conclusions from a single campaign is always ill-advised.

Nevertheless, you can bet that if Morrison wins, both the Liberals and Labor will learn this unfortunate lesson: that cycling through multiple prime ministers is just fine, as long as you end up with one who takes you to victory.

Sean Kelly is a columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald and a former adviser to Labor prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.