Sydney: Australians go to the polls on Saturday to chose their next prime minister, either slick Liberal incumbent Malcolm Turnbull or wily Labor former union chief Bill Shorten.
Below are brief profiles of the two men as they battle for the close-run elections:
Malcolm Turnbull
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A 61-year-old multimillionaire banker with a campaign slogan similar to one used in an American sitcom, Turnbull has been criticised as out of touch with ordinary Australians, but insists he is a steady hand on the economy.
He seized power from Liberal Party colleague Tony Abbott last September, with hopes that he could save the government from defeat at the 2016 election.
But after a short honeymoon his standing has also slid, with voters dissatisfied that the supporter of gay marriage and action on climate change has seemingly appeased conservative colleagues.
Struggling to differentiate his leadership from Abbott, Turnbull said his government embodies both “continuity” and “change”.
The slogan resembles the “Continuity with Change” promised by the fictional politician Selina Meyer in the US television show “Veep” so closely that star Julia Louis-Dreyfus said she was “dumbstruck”.
Turnbull shot to prominence in the 1980s in the “Spycatcher” trial in which he successfully defended former MI5 agent Peter Wright against the British government, before moving into banking and then politics.
He entered parliament in 2004, rising under former leader John Howard to become environment minister and then Abbott’s communications minister before assuming the top job.
While he hails from Sydney’s wealthy eastern suburbs, he was raised alone by his father, who worked in hospitality, after his writer and academic mother left.
Turnbull studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar, before working as a journalist, then turning to the law and finally becoming a merchant banker with Goldman Sachs.
Bill Shorten
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Articulate and calculating, Shorten assumed the Labor party leadership in October 2013 after years of infighting that saw two prime ministers, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, toppled in party coups.
Shorten, 49, played a central role in both, leading the Sydney Morning Herald to describe him as “everyone’s mate, when it suits”.
A lawyer by training, his mantra is fighting for lower-income families, with health, jobs and education his party’s key priorities.
His father worked at Melbourne docks and Shorten has been at pains to emphasise his working-class credentials throughout his political ascendancy.
It was at high school in Melbourne and then university that he became involved in the Labor party, working as a lawyer before joining the Australian Workers’ Union in 1994 as an organiser.
Shorten shot to fame during a mine collapse in Beaconsfield in 2006, when he became the public spokesman for two miners trapped underground for two weeks.
He entered parliament the following year, rising to become education minister and workplace relations minister.
In August 2014, police cleared him of sex assault allegations over an incident in the 1980s, when he was aged 19.
In a memoir published last month, Shorten said he has now left factional sparring behind him, while stressing his days as a unionist leave him well placed to govern the country.
