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Immigration and climate change are set to be key issues thrashed out Sunday by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and challenger Tony Abbott in the only televised debate of the election campaign.
The debate will be the sole chance for centre-left Labor leader Gillard and the conservative Liberal Party's Abbott to go head-to-head before the nation goes to the polls on August 21.
Gillard, who called the election just weeks after wresting power from Kevin Rudd in a Labor Party room coup, is likely to focus on the government's commitments to climate change and workers entitlements.
While Abbott, who Sunday vowed to slash Australia's migrant intake if elected prime minister, is set to place immigration and population growth squarely on the agenda.
Asked whether he was nervous before the crucial debate, Abbott said: "Of course, who wouldn't be?"
Gillard and Abbott are talented political performers who know each other well and are known for their humour and debating skills, but analysts said few fireworks were expected from the pair Sunday.
"Julia Gillard is trying to play safe in this campaign," veteran Canberra correspondent Michelle Grattan wrote in The Sun-Herald.
"A bolder leader might have seen advantage in a couple of television debates with Tony Abbott, gambling that he would look rough at the edges by comparison.
"But she's stuck to the safe formula of one encounter, early on. If anything bad happens, it will be forgotten well before August 21."
Abbott, a former Rhodes scholar and one-time trainee Catholic priest, goes into the debate as the underdog with Gillard, buoyed by a surging female vote, comfortably ahead in opinion polls.
But the monarchist Abbott, known as a straight-talker, has the most to win from a strong performance in the debate, analysts said.
"Gillard speaks in slogans, as though she has switched off her considerable brain power to get through the campaign fault-free," commentator Peter Van Onselen wrote in the Sunday Telegraph.
The National Press Club debate, which was rescheduled after it clashed with the final of a popular cooking programme, is due to start at 6:30 pm (0830 GMT) with both leaders speaking briefly before taking questions from journalists.
Unlike in the British election, in which the debates were a three-way contest between former prime minister Gordon Brown, his successor David Cameron and the Liberal Democrat's Nick Clegg, the Australian Greens are excluded.
"They don't want me there because they know that I would bring up issues like the return of our troops from Afghanistan or at least debating that in the parliament, like a carbon tax," Greens Senator Bob Brown told Sky News.
