Interwebs became the hot topic, as geeks around the nation logged on for the unveiling of the Coalition’s broadband policy. It was routinely trashed, but the rise of Tony Abbott still has the commentariat enchanted, as the two leaders sharpen their knives for tonight’s leaders’ showdown.

Crikey’s Bernard Keane offered an extensive rundown of the Coalition’s broadband policy details yesterday, which basically promises 97% of Australian households access to a high-speed broadband network delivering 12-100 Mbps, a plan which will cost over $6 billion over seven years. But the commentarait appears collectively unimpressed by the Coalition attempts at winning over the nerds.

Finally, they have a plan, but it isn’t good enough, says Keane: “It is confusing and transfers responsibility for broadband roll-out back to the market, which failed to deliver it for so many years.”

The Coalition needed to enthuse the twitterverse, and it didn’t, notes Dennis Atkins in The Courier-Mail:

“The announcement of the Coalition’s cheaper, slower and smaller broadband plan was not a great success… In 2007, the Coalition suffered because it didn’t get community sentiment on climate change. This election they risk making a similar mistake on broadband.”

Adele Ferguson didn’t mince her words in The Age: the policy “lacks vision, is half-baked and stuck in the past”.

Abbott’s hybrid method seems doomed. “There is a creaky old copper network, a hybrid fibre network fast approaching its use by date, wireless and a never-before-seen bullishness from the nation’s telcos to invest in fixed-line broadband,” laments Stuart Kennedy in The Australian.

But remember, expensive doesn’t always mean better. “It’s cheap, relatively speaking, but is it nasty?” asks Jennifer Hewett in The Oz. “The Coalition plan for high-speed broadband tries to make a virtue of its own modesty.”

At least there is one policy where both parties offer very distinct option. As Peter Hartcher writes in the Sydney Morning Herald: “So the choice is between a cheap plodding present and an expensive expansive future. This is one very clear difference between the parties.”

The Australian has more Newspoll data, with Dennis Shanahan reporting: “Labor faces the loss of up to 16 seats in NSW and Queensland alone.”

Don’t take the polls at face value, warns William Bowe from Crikey’s Poll Bludger blog: “The results appear to suggest that the swing to Labor has faded in Victoria and that Western Australia is weaker for Labor than generally supposed, but the margins of error is high enough that this should be treated with caution.”

As often happens in elections, it’s down to a handful of marginals. “This election will be decided not on the sweeping national stage of 150 electorates,” writes Shanahan in The Oz, “but in hand-to-hand local combat in fewer than 30 seats.”

Are the government indulging in a bit of last-minute vote buying in the marginals? “Labor has quietly announced more than $1.5 billion in local election promises to ultra-marginal seats without adding to its formal ‘election spending’, apparently by raiding funding set aside in the federal budget,” reports Lenore Taylor in the SMH.

Even as we near the pointy end, the old gender lines remain. “As it approaches the turn into the home straight to Saturday week, economics and male voters are weighing on Labor’s collective mind,” says Michelle Grattan in The Age. “The former is the key debate it must win, the latter the big demographic it has to woo.”

Usually by now an obvious leader would have emerged. “But it’s far too early to predict how this increasingly fascinating campaign will end,” writes Dominic Knight at The Drum “More twists will surely happen in the third act.”

Her campaign has been a mess but Gillard could still grab this. “A Labor campaign beset by bad decisions, bad judgment and just plain bad luck may still score a miraculous victory,” writes Graham Richardson in The Oz.

But the focus today remains on the Coalition, in particular its leader. The rapid change in Abbott the politician since he took the opposition leader job still has the commentariat slightly bewildered. “Elected nine months ago as populist agitator for the anti-climate change rebellious Right, Abbott now seeks high office as a restrained and genial pragmatist who offers not a new path but a restoration of order,” writes Paul Kelly in The Oz.

Gillard has made Abbott in to a fine leader, who was able to unite a warring party and discovered inner strength, argues Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun:

“…it’s Shakespearean in depth and intensity as we see both Abbott and Gillard grapple with a question that may well count for more. What kind of person are they really, and what is required of them to lead? From Abbott, at least, has come an answer. The shame for him is it’s so new and surprising, that few may yet credit it as they perhaps should.”

But Gillard must have her fingers crossed that the gaffe-making, feminist-hating, uber-religious Abbott will return. “Labor is waiting and hoping for a public and juicy Abbott eruption, one which would expose the wilder side of the chap. So far that hasn’t happened despite some barbed questions at press conferences, and provocations from abridge of radio type,” says Malcolm Farr at The Daily Tele.

It’s just not Abbott who should be let off the leash. “There is a real desire within the electorate to see the leaders outside the scripted, controlled daily campaign atmosphere,” argues Shaun Carney in The Age. Will tonight be the night that Abbott comes undone?

Tonight Gillard and Abbott will face off in the leaders debate-that’s-not-a-debate, the town hall style forum at Rooty Hill RSL. News Limited has monopolised the conference, meaning it will only be viewable in its entireity on Sky News. Other networks will receive a highlights package. Regardless, it will be a highlight for wonks across the nation.

Final word goes to the Daily Telegraph editorial: “Let the battle of Rooty Hill begin.”