It was announced on August 4 that the Australian election has been scheduled for September 7. The announcement came after the date had been thrown into uncertainty by the surprise return of Kevin Rudd to the office of prime minister in the wake of a party ballot on June 26.

With Rudd replacing Julia Gillard at the helm, the stage has been set for a showdown between Rudd and the leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott.

With all this factional infighting within the Labor Party, and the media-friendly sound bites of doom and gloom from Abbott, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger threats facing Australian democracy.

The gap between Rudd and Abbott was revealed to be far narrower than voters thought, when Rudd abandoned long-held Labor Party principles and defied UN treaties that Australia has signed to announce that Australia would reject all asylum seekers and send them to Papua New Guinea.

In moving to the right of Abbott on this issue, Rudd succeeded in outflanking him but revealed how far he is willing to go to win the election.

Both Rudd and Abbott have made their absolute dedication to that goal very clear, both showing ruthlessness without restraint in their strategies.

However, while the election itself has been revealed to be a contest between two poll-driven party apparatchiks, there are very real issues at stake.

Just a few notable differences in policy remain. One is the attitude toward climate change which Abbott has rejected as a scientific theory at times, although later embraced in a lukewarm manner, and another is Rudd's cherished multibillion dollar National Broadband Network (NBN).

It is the NBN which has ultimately revealed where one of the most systemic threats facing Australian democracy really lies - the threat of corporate influence over election campaigns.

This is a threat that faces democracies across the world but one that is exceptionally difficult to counter.

The NBN, if it lives up to its promise, will have significant repercussions for certain businesses in Australia as the ability to download and stream content will be dramatically increased.

First and foremost among the businesses that will be affected is Rupert Murdoch's global news empire News Limited. While there is significant room for debate as to the final effect of the NBN on News Limited's coffers, the universally negative election coverage of the Labor Party in Australian papers and tweets from Murdoch himself attacking the NBN is evidence of an orchestrated stance.

Coverage in News Limited's papers has been critical for quite some time, but the recent arrival of one of their senior staff in Australia, former editor of the Daily Telegraph and editor of the New York Post, Col Allan, seems to have kicked the smear campaign into overdrive.

Some Fairfax articles - Fairfax being the chief newspaper competitor to News Limited - have speculated that News Limited's broadside against the Labor Party and NBN is largely due to News Limited's ownership of pay TV giant Foxtel, which could be seriously impacted by live-stream high-definition services to be made possible by the NBN.

It would hardly be the first time corporate interests have brazenly interfered with the course of Australian election campaigns, nor the first time Rudd has been the target of such an attack.

Last time however, it was Australia's mining giants who coordinated a withering attack on the Labor Party in response to Rudd's original version of the mining super-profits tax, which would have eaten into the revenues these companies have enjoyed courtesy of the mining boom in Australia that was largely driven by growth in the Chinese economy.

The campaign was a stunning success, and was widely attributed as the prime cause of Rudd's drop in the polls, which in turn preceded his ouster as leader of the party.

Now, Australian politics faces the strange prospect of a leader who has not once but twice drawn the ire of powerful multinational companies and, as a result of a savage advertising campaign, has lost his job as prime minister.

Regardless of whether Abbott or Rudd wins the election, the development which should concern Australian voters is that these smear campaigns have proven so successful in recent years, thus either leader could fall prey to similar events in the event they run afoul of powerful companies.

With this kind of threat looming over their heads, it's far more difficult for leaders to lead on behalf of the electorate as opposed to companies with vested interests.

The author is an editor with the Global Times. daviddawson@globaltimes.com.cn