'Wrap it up, please': The hits and misses from the 2016 election
"Wrap it up, please."
With polling day finally here at the end of a gruelling and often unengaging campaign, the public's mood was probably summed up in these four words from ABC 7.30 anchor Leigh Sales.
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Eight weeks down and the whole country probably wants to say the same thing Sales said to Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.
Sales cut Shorten short before he was able to read through another line that will soon be forgotten.
"Wrap it up, please."
There wasn't much on the memorable front, but here are some of the standout moments from this year's federal election campaign.
The one good boy on the bus
Someone not likely to be forgotten any time soon is the former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
Abbott kept his head down and his voice muffled throughout much of the past eight weeks, only to pop up in a likely self-shot video while on the bus in his electorate.
Much like his time in the top job, Abbott was seemingly unaware of what was going on behind his back and the video was hijacked by a couple of cheeky teenage boys.
Thankfully for Abbott, the boys were mostly pulling faces, not knives.
The 'Mad Katter' takes his shot
Queensland MP Bob Katter has never shied away from shooting his mouth or firing from the hip, traits that came through in his campaign ad.
The minute-long clip showed two "faceless" blokes from the major parties trying to knock up an "Australia for sale" sign in the outback, only to wind up shot dead by the gun of the independent MP.
When releasing the ad online, the Katter camp pondered, "Perhaps the most wicked campaign ad for 2016?"
Wicked? Possibly. Ill-timed and insensitive? Probably.
The "Mad Katter's" ad came out just days after a mass shooting in Orlando, Florida.
When critiques took aim him, Katter fired back to say he was not sorry for releasing the ad and had no idea what happened in the US because he stopped reading the newspaper.
The 'Fake tradie' who was real
With two weeks to go until polling day, the coalition released what they might have hoped was going to be the silver bullet for their campaign.
The ad featured what appeared to be a typical Aussie bloke at a building site wearing a high-vis vest and $7000 TAG watch.
The Twittersphere pounced on the ad and labelled the man "fake tradie" with parody accounts and memes rushing into the void that should have been filled with policy discussion.
But it turned out the tradie was a true-blue Aussie Battler who was gifted the watch after 20 years working as a mechanic.
Win over voters with annoying songs
There have been few offerings in this campaign that could go down in Australian election lore. There were no "It's Time" jingles.
The Australian Sex Party came close with a rehash of a Willy Wonka ditty about the Vatican.
Cormann switches sides for 30 seconds
For those looking toward Sunday so they can forget the whole campaign, spare a thought for Liberal senator Mathias Cormann who forgot who is leader was.
In the carefully stage-managed world of politics, it's the unplanned interactions with the public that usually make for the most memorable moments.
There were only a few in this campaign that rate a mention, including when Malcolm Turnbull was introduced to a man and his rat while on a walk through Penrith in the marginal seat of Lindsay.
The other was when a swinging voter took the swinging part up a notch and made Bill Shorten plant a "proper kiss" on her lips.
In the spirit of pleasing voters, Shorten obliged.
