PM's cheeky campaign opener

Graham Perrett likes to get up the nose of government ministers in parliament's question time.

Along with his Labor mate Nick Champion, he spends more time out of the chamber than in when he pushes the wrong buttons of a Liberal Speaker.

On the first day of the election campaign, it was the coalition getting up the Brisbane MP's nose.

Whether it was by design or just coincidence, Malcolm Turnbull opted to make his first campaign visit to the seat of Moreton.

The design was to get inside the head of its MP and Labor strategists who expected the prime minister to concentrate his attentions on the marginal seats the coalition holds in and around Brisbane.

More likely it was a happy coincidence. Moreton is home to the Brisbane produce markets providing a great photo opportunity and the background for a millionaire-businessman to reminisce about his first job as a menial banana packer and watermelon lifter.

Perrett did the remarkable in 2013 when he defied a 3.5 per cent national swing to the coalition to retain Moreton, a seat he won initially in the 2007 Ruddslide.

So his observations about what's happening on the ground are insightful.

"It doesn't feel like the NSW or last Queensland election. There won't be a landslide swing," Perrett said this week.

"I don't think people are angry but they are prepared to look at Labor."

The first-flush opinion polls, though historically unreliable as a pointer to the final result, suggest he's right.

A 50-50 vote won't get Labor over the line in its own right.

Which is why the Greens were making mischief this week with offers of a governing coalition with Labor in the event of a hung parliament.

"Tell them they're dreaming," Labor leader Bill Shorten said while campaigning down the Queensland coast.

Shorten targetted the relatively-marginal coalition seats of Leichhardt, Herbert and Dawson before hitting Rockhampton-based Capricornia - the government's second most marginal seat in parliament.

On Friday, he was in Sydney's inner-west and Reid - a Labor casualty in 2013 - before heading further west to Macquarie, another Liberal seat, for a head-to-head debate with Turnbull.

The prime minister also visited Lilley, held by former Labor deputy PM Wayne Swan, and Forde in Brisbane, Lindsay in western Sydney, Dunkley in outer southern Melbourne, Hotham closer to the CBD, and Hindmarsh and Boothby in Adelaide.

All in all, a pretty straight-forward and cautious start to the campaign.