Julia Gillard likes to talk about the patchwork economy, but it's the patchwork electorate that is Labor's biggest worry.
The Australian economy is split along its resources assets with gold and silver in one corner, steel and iron ore in another, alongside a consumer sector hanging on by its coat tails.
Many voters outside the booming resources states of Western Australia and Queensland would have been gobsmacked by the Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) decision to keep the cash rate on hold this week.
Most forecasters and industry groups were expecting a cut, given sluggish jobs growth (2011 was the weakest since 1992), a high dollar hammering manufacturers, tourism and retailers, and a lack on confidence amongst consumers.
The RBA board was more upbeat, saying domestic growth was expected to be pretty much in line with trend, economic fundamentals were sound and price pressures under control.
But voters in the Prime Minister's Victorian seat of Lalor and the Labor-held Queensland electorate of Capricornia would disagree.
Lalor in Melbourne has a disproportionately high number of manufacturing, retail, transport, postal and warehousing and construction workers.
It also has a young demographic, with a higher than average proportion of people under 40, and a high proportion of mortgage holders.
Capricornia, held by Labor backbencher Kirsten Livermore, is in the heart of Queensland's Bowen Basin coalfields and beef belt.
It has a massive population of miners, with high numbers of farming, electricity, transport and tourism workers, a disproportionate number of couples with no children, and a high home ownership rate.
Both seats are crucial to Labor, amongst others, if the government is to avoid a landslide coalition election win in 2013, as the polls continue to predict.
Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott know this and have spent the past week, as parliament resumed for the year, road-testing their key economic messages to voters.
The prime minister's mantra is the "new economy" - an all-encompassing slogan bringing together Labor's reform program since ousting John Howard's Coalition government in 2007.
Carbon pricing, skills training, car industry subsidies, the national broadband network, even the national schools curriculum all fit into Gillard's grand theme pitched at nervous workers.
"We ... are determined to make sure that we support working people today and get them great opportunities in the new economy that we are building for our nation's future," she told parliament this week.
For Lalor voters, the message is training and jobs for kids, keeping interest rates low through good budget management, sharing the dividends of the resources boom through a minerals profits tax and standing up for manufacturing jobs.
For those in Capricornia, the message is more about the long term. The carbon tax won't hurt mining, dealing with climate change will address threats to coastal tourism and farming, income tax is coming down.
The Labor leader also has a blunt message for the opposition.
"Every time I hear about job losses in this country, I am concerned; every time the leader of the opposition hears about job losses, he works out how he can use that to his political advantage ... a disgusting approach at a time when working people are in need and under pressure."
For his part, Abbott has seized on a recent speech by the prime minister in which she described a recent round of industry restructuring, including jobs losses, in challenged sectors of the economy as "growing pains".
"These are real people," he told parliament, as the opposition renewed its attack on the government's impending carbon price regime as a tax on jobs and growth.
But the coalition faces a real danger of confusing the electorate over its economic strategy.
Abbott, his treasury spokesman Joe Hockey and finance spokesman Andrew Robb tied themselves in knots this week over when a coalition government could deliver a budget surplus.
Their responses ranged from maybe in the first year, over the economic cycle, within five years, to depending on how well Labor has managed the books.
The size and timing of promised coalition tax cuts is also unclear.
We know the coalition is committed to scrapping Labor's carbon tax in office, which means the accompanying compensation - a package of income tax cuts, pension rises and extra family benefits - will be "wound back".
Beyond that, voters have been told to wait until closer to the election to find out the coalition's tax plan.
At the coalition's first joint party meeting for the year this week, Abbott warned MPs "the only thing that can save the government is a disorganised opposition".
He challenged Gillard, Dirty Harry-style, to "make my day" on what's expected to be a year-long push by both parties to get on the front foot with voters on the economy.
As Gillard told Abbott: "Bring it on."
