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In the once bustling port town of Gladstone in Australia's northeastern Queensland state, more than a dozen for-lease signs hang in store windows along the main street.

An office set up by a local liquefied natural gas plant to field jobs queries is among those lying empty.

Thousands of construction workers have packed up and moved on since multi-billion dollar LNG projects on nearby Curtis Island went into the less labor-intensive production phase in recent months. That's left Gladstone at the epicenter of an economic transition that's defining the national election to be held July 2.

"Things are starting to slow down dramatically," said Tammey Goggi, 38-year-old manager of a retailer on Goondoon Street, which sells iconic Outback clothing and leather boots. "A lot of work has gone and a lot of people have left town."

Queensland, a region 2½ times the size of Texas that ships more LNG than Russia, is a key battleground in the election as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and opposition Labor party leader Bill Shorten seek to convince voters they can best manage the unwinding of the resources boom.

The state has lost more than 20,000 mining jobs in two years and its unemployment rate is higher than the national average.

With the eight-week campaign in its final days, Labor is targeting several Queensland electoral districts that the government holds by a wafer-thin margin. The opposition party needs a clutch of victories in the so-called Sunshine State to have any chance of toppling Turnbull's government.

The tightest contest may be in Petrie, a commuter belt district north of the state capital, Brisbane, where pop music group the Bee Gees first performed in the 1950s.

In the political realm, it's famous for another reason. The bellwether seat has been won by the party that formed government at every election since 1987 and, at 0.5 percent, is the most marginally-held by the Liberal National Party.

"If you can't win it, you won't win" the election, said Adrian Brimble, 70, standing across from Bee Gees Way, a walkway in the sleepy bayside suburb of Redcliffe that honors the band behind hits including "Stayin' Alive." Brimble, who has supported both Labor and LNP candidates in the past, is leaning toward the incumbent.

Politics in the state have proved turbulent in recent years, with huge swings from Labor to the LNP and back again since 2012. Labor is likely to win Petrie and the district of Capricornia, but is falling short in other electorates, according to a Galaxy poll published in the Weekend Australian newspaper.

"It's probably one of the closest fought contests in recent history," Curtis Pitt, the treasurer in Queensland state's Labor government, said in an interview in Sydney Tuesday. "There are a lot of seats that are in that line ball situation."

Disenchantment with both of the major parties probably favors incumbents and means "there's no mood for change," said Paul Williams, a political analyst at Griffith University in Brisbane. "There's a general sense of political ennui."

Turnbull, whose coalition is expected to retain power, has made the economy the focus of his campaign. The former investment banker said in a June 10 speech that Australia risks falling behind competitors globally if sectors such as education, health and tourism fail to pick up the slack.

In remarks in Queensland two days earlier, Shorten, a former trade union leader, put the end of the mining bonanza at the top of the list of "defining forces of the decade ahead."

Resources have been a huge driver of the economy in Queensland. The state is the world's largest seaborne exporter of coal used in steel-making. It has also benefited from huge spending on gas-export projects by energy companies including ConocoPhillips, Total and Santos, which closed its "shop front" on Goondoon Street.

A crash in oil and gas prices has discouraged new investment, while slumping coal prices have seen mines shuttered and projects put on hold. India's Adani Enterprises's plan to develop Australia's largest coal project in the state has been delayed amid falling prices and protests by environmental groups concerned by potential damage to the nearby Great Barrier Reef.

The industry has lost more than 20,000 jobs over two years, the Queensland Resources Council estimated in January. The state's jobless rate of 6.4 percent in May compares with a national average of 5.7 percent.

Yet there are signs the economic transition is underway. Health, education, professional services and tourism-related services in Queensland each created more jobs than were lost in resources over the past two years, according to the Australia Institute, a research group.

That's no consolation for James Melksham, who lost his job earlier this year at an insulation company that had work tied to the LNG industry.

"I'm nearly ready to pack up," said the 23-year-old, sitting outside Gladstone's Grand Hotel. "There's no work, and there's no money. We need something new in this town."