Battle faces were drawn, appropriately colored ties were chosen, three of Australia’s fiercest journos were selected, the worm was readied and the National Press Club chose their fitting backdrop of mauve—a melange of the ALP and LNP’s signature colours. Nice touch! Welcome to the leader’s debate 2013. Game on, moles.
Leader of the ALP Kevin Rudd started to cook with gas, and Coalition leader Tony Abbott did a casual pre-match warm up of the City To Surf, just a quick 15 kms, no big. Broadcast across virtually every channel last night, it was near impossible to miss the damn thing, but in case you had better things to do, like, oh, scald yourself with a hot iron, we watched the debate so you didn’t have to. Buzz words were rife, disgusted looks were thrown, questions were (surprisingly) answered. At one point, both of the leaders constructed responses that consisted entirely of a stream of phrases, half way in to the debate it started to sound a bit like, “Well, Stop The Boats Is of course a new way for working families who need an NBN for those caring for vulnerable citizens in aged care hoping to avoid a recession while taking pride in school reforms and NDIS and medicare and a united party“. Praise incoherence!
Let’s look at things blow by blow:
THE OPENING ADDRESS
Following the traditional tossing of a 1939 penny to decide the order of speakers, which is apparently a thing, KRudd won, having him address the press club first. It should be pointed out that the mediator of the debate, David Speers, seems to be a fucking legend, confirmed after hearing him speak for all of two minutes, nailing it by saying that viewers at home could curse and yell at the TV to their heart’s content, while the Press Club had to remain silent. This guy.
Rudd was visibly nervous, but handled the opening address pretty well, but should lose points for having no restraint and blurting out ALP slogan “A New Way” in the first 3 seconds. “We’ve got to manage a new great economic transition. We need a new way, to take Australia forward, because of the challenges we face. I can see a great, new future for Australia. Under my prime ministership I offer a new way to secure Australia’s future.” Staying true to himself, Rudd gesticulated wildly for no real reason, because hand gestures will explain this whole politics thang to you feeble idiots, or something.
Tony Abbott opted for a shorter opening address, but took pride in saying the clunky phrase, which I’m still not sure if it actually makes sense, “We are a great government but we can’t afford another three years like the last six.” Abbott then did this amazing nod of the head, furrow of the eyebrows, judgmental point of the finger which was actually the ultimate highlight of the entire debate/my entire life, watch it below (or skip to 2:07):
ASYLUM SEEKERS GET A QUICK MENTION:
Gosh, stopping the boats, amirite?! #Auspol’s favourite three words sprung quickly in to the debate, with Abbott being asked to recite the fundamental flaws of the ALP’s current PNG solution. Abbott kept saying that they would “salvage what they can” from the PNG solution, but didn’t actually answer the question of what is wrong with Rudd’s policy. With a kamikaze inspired flourish, Abbott virtually screamed that he will STOP THE BOATS before Rudd pointed out that simply stopping a boat of asylum seekers and refugees isn’t quite as easy as turning the ol’ thing around, waving a handkerchief and holding a sign saying, “Thanks but no thanks”. Rudd pointed out that when boats are refused by officers, general practice has it that asylum seekers “scuttle” the boat by force, potentially resulting in deaths and drowning at sea, with INTERNATIONAL MARITIME LAW (nice one, Rudd, Lucille Bluth gets you) has it that the nearest vessel has to save anyone overboard which makes everything a little more complicated, and pretty much *sigh*.
At this point you can see how everyone was reacting on the internet’s worm, Twitter:
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT NAN AND POP
A question was proposed about aged care, and before Tony Abbott gathered his reply to an ABC journalist who pointed out the LNP only dedicated a mere paragraph in their pamphlet about aged care, despite there being about 6 million voters above the age of 50, 2 million above the age of 70, he decided to mention that BREAKING: he has/had grandparents in aged care. You guys!!! Tony Abbott has a granny! Stop The Votes! Anyway, Abbott said that the Coalition would be set on reducing paper work for aged care employees so that bureaucracy is less and care is the priority. He threw in a mention that aged care workers are fantastic, so he didn’t piss any more of those nurses off. In the end, when asked what he would change, Abbott admitted that the LNP and ALP were fairly aligned in their aged care policies. What! Ugh, you’re meant to convince us that you bros are different. At this point, viewers were allowed to fall asleep.
RUDD REMINDS EVERYONE THAT HE IS FROM QUEENSLAND, SO ALBO AND SYDNEY CAN FIGURE OUT THAT PESKY SECOND AIRPORT
News Corps’ Simon Benson asked Tony Abbott about building the long-awaited, bureaucratically drawn out development of Syndey’s second airport. Benson politely asked, “Why don’t you just build the bloody thing?”, Abbott pretty much blamed the ALP for stalled productivity, but promised that if elected, his government would make a decision on the airport in the first term. Kevin Rudd was all, “Look, I’m from Queensland” in case you didn’t already hear him the other hundred times before, and said that he wasn’t fit to answer the question, but his infrastructure minister would be—basically saying, “God, where’s an Anthony Albanese when you need him?“. Rudd also subtly undermined Simon Benson (presumably bitter by the unflattering front page the telegraph published on Monday) by saying that “Well Simon,” Sydney isn’t the only city we need to think about, and despite the “good folk of Sydney” (note: first, but not last, use of the word “folk”, kill me) being genuinely concerned, there’s actually 7 other states/territories to worry about. This was probably the most poorly-answered question on the night. Not surprising.
ABBOTT CLAIMS RUDD IS RECYCLING DEBATE TACTICS FROM HOWARD-ERA DEBATE; ALMOST SAYS “THIS MMMM….OB, SWIFTLY CHANGING TO “MR RUDD”
Tony Abbott out-smugged his smug face, doing that forced smile of his that is the stuff of nightmares:
Abbott served up a cutting remark that Rudd was recycling debate points from his debate with John Howard six years ago. OOH! Right where it hurts. Can anyone confirm that that’s actually true? In any case, Tony Abbott’s glee in having a killer memory was pretty great. Is it relevant to today’s policies? Hell no! Is any of this debate really relevant to policies? Of course not! A while on, Tony Abbott did the biggest slip of the tongue, almost, almost saying “This mob” but swiftly turning that “m” in to a “mr” in what was probably the most transparent save in history. We know what you were thinking, T-Abs.
GAY MARRIAGE FINALLY GETS A MENTION
Twitter was basically twiddling its thumbs for an entire hour before anyone said anything about marriage equality, which was pretty infuriating, because it was one of the biggest outcomes of the entire thing. David Speers gave thirty seconds to TA and KR. Their responses were alarmingly different:
ABBOTT: for some reason Tony Abbott decided to mention that his openly gay sister was in the audience, but proceeded to directly disarm her publicly expressed wishes by saying that marriage equality wouldn’t be the government’s “priority” and waffled vaguely about whether he would allow for a conscience vote in parliament. Sigh. Next!
RUDD: got cut down by Speers by starting to mention the totally irrelevant fact that he and his certified Wifey Therese have been together for 32 years, and blurts out his policy, happily stating that his personal views on marriage equality were plain, that loving relationships of any gender should be accepted and that, if elected, he would introduce legislation to legalise gay marriage in the first 100 days in office. As the previously shown graph shows, twitter went insane for the announcement.
CLOSING REMARKS: DO YOU EVEN LIFT BRO?
Kevin Rudd kicks off the closing remarks, by fitting in every possible sect of Australia he could (working families, university students, school kids, health workers, transport, etc) which made for a fairly messy few minutes that essentially promised, yes, A New Way. For everybody. Bland in its lack of memorability.
Tony Abbott puts on his inspirational Dad face and says I BELIEVE IN YOU, Australia, which is somewhat frightening in its tenacity, and completely transparent in its overarching, flawed optimism that says nothing but “work harder“. Abbott also ended by lauding the sentiment of, does Australia even lift, bro, by stating that we are a nation of “lifters, not leaners.“
STOP THE NOTES
After the debate was over, and Rudd and Abbott played nice for this handshake that was no doubt gripping in its attempt to crush each others’ bones, with award winning forced smiles:
There was a bit of an uproar that Rudd was “Caught Rudd Handed” (thanks news.com.au) and that we should “Stop The Notes” because Kevin Rudd allegedly broke the debate rules by bringing in paper-based back up in the form of notes and prompts, and potentially even a scripted opening/closing which he appeared to be reading from. Wow, what an outrage. I was very much hoping for some real sly-tactic cheating, or at least an on screen flip of the bird, but nope. We got notes.
SO, WHO WON?
Publications across Australia today are reporting different victories. The worm on The Guardian indicated a win for Rudd, but that certainly wasn’t unanimous across headlines. There was no clear loser last night, which is another way of saying that neither Rudd or Abbott were terrible nor outstanding: as predicted, it boiled down to a fairly bland contest. Those who are set on the ALP will, of course, consider that Rudd won; those that are inclined towards the Coalition will think that Abbott reigned supreme. In the end, it’s not about popularity polls on the election leader, as Julia Gillard may be all to familiar with. We can only crown a winner on September 7, when this whole thing will finally happen.
If you really want to identify a victor from last night, someone ought to buy David Speers a beer, or a medal, or the prime minister-ship. Dude nailed it, which is no mean feat when you have to intervene two highly functioning toddlers:
