First Australian election debate fails to reverse Peter Dutton's nightmare week, despite his best efforts

By Annabel Crabb, ABC

Analysis - It would be fair to say - as participants assembled at the Wenty Leagues Club for the first head-to-head debate of the 2025 election campaign - that everyone concerned went into the event with differing measures of success.

For the incumbent Anthony Albanese, a Sydney local who has done several of these debates before and is broadly acknowledged to have had a far smoother opening week-and-a-half's campaigning than his opponent, the primary objective upon taking the stage at the Sky News/Daily Telegraph's People's Forum was not to fall off it. Turns out there wasn't a stage, just a floor. Too easy!

For Liberal leader Peter Dutton, by contrast, the ask was sickeningly complex.

Dutton hasn't done a leaders' debate before. His home town is far away. And - as explained in greater length below - he's had just about as bad a start to his campaign as could possibly be imagined.

He walked into the already tricky terrain of his first ever leaders' debate with declining fortunes and what must have been a cicada-buzz of conflicting directives in his ears.

Look firm and decisive and tough. But also extremely sorry about the work-from-home thing. You're the type of guy anyone would want in the trenches fighting for them. But also, totally cool for chicks to be there too. Also: smile! And for God's sake don't say anything about Kirribilli.

Both leaders kept their cool

The short answer? Everybody fulfilled their KPIs.

The prime minister looked relaxed and didn't blather. The opposition leader - who in the hours before the debate took yet another body blow with the news his 79-year-old dad, Bruce, had been hospitalised - did not exhibit the slightest sign of panic.

Both were courteous to audience members, and careful to note that Australia's resilience and ability to prevail in difficult conditions was attributable to group effort, rather than political virtue.

Such scuffles as there were did not arise over significant differences in sentiment. They were differences over who had committed the worst hypothetical crimes against an agreed principle.

Albanese spoke of his budget surpluses. Dutton countered that they were built on sound Coalition management and forward planning, and now were crumbling into a pattern of structural deficit. To which Albanese responded, politely: Pah! And so on, as the People's Forum's 100 chosen people politely listened, though you could feel the weight of their eyelids as the hour passed.

Audience awards debate to the PM

Monica (an education department employee) asked what could be done about the gap between quality of education in the public and private sectors. Dutton responded that he occupied an "identical position" to the prime minister on public school funding. There was no reprise of his recent musing about stripping funding from public schools pursuing "woke curriculums".

On Medicare, both men empathised with audience member Prith who doesn't like out-of-pocket expenses, and promised to make things easier. Albanese pulled out the Medicare card, as is now customary at his every outing.

Dutton - initiating probably the only elegant sequence of the evening - asked Prith if she ever found that a Medicare card was sufficient. She said that she generally needed her credit card too. Points to Dutton, until Albanese sweetly asked whether he was the same health minister who pitched the A$7 GP co-payment in the first Abbott government budget a decade ago. One all?

Not according to the audience, who gave the debate to the prime minister.

Of the 100 attendees, 44 reckoned Albanese had prevailed, while 35 gave it to Dutton, and 21 were undecided, or possibly watching something on their phones.

Of the broader viewership, we know little. The People's Forum was, after all, only available to Sky News and Daily Telegraph subscribers, and while Sky was pimping a special A$5 sign-up tariff ahead of the debate, it is unclear how many voters were sufficiently tempted to chuck their first round of tax cuts at this televisual treat.

An alien might call it a draw

If you were viewing this debate as a visiting alien, you'd likely call it a draw. And later at the pub, you'd probably struggle to distinguish the protagonists one from the other. Two middle aged guys in glasses and warm-coloured ties, both of whom are huge fans of owner-driver truckies and public education and the nation-building power of an adequately-controlled immigration programme. Both of them want a ceasefire in Gaza, and are fans of gas. One of them is a bit keener on nuclear. The other seemed a shade more optimistic about the state of things.

If you were weighting the event in terms of stress and expectation, you'd say that Dutton did well. He's had a truly horrendous week, and managed not to dissolve into tears, or a puddle of sweat.

But this is a kind of crucial point. Three years ago, Albanese at this event was exactly where Dutton was. A first-time opposition leader, coming off a nightmarish first week (as you'll no doubt recall, Albanese's opening campaign excursion involved forgetting what the current interest rate was).

Albanese - three years ago - banked comparable reviews from the Sky audience as he did tonight as incumbent. Forty percent awarded the night to him, 35 percent to Scott Morrison, while 25 percent were undecided.

And in this first debate between Albanese and Dutton, it's clear that the encounter has not reversed what appears to be an inexorable slide for the opposition leader, despite his best efforts.

Dutton's nightmare week

You know those mornings when everything just kind of goes wrong, in a seamless choreography of self-inflicted injury and Sod's Law? When you head out the door and catch your sleeve on the handle and spill your coffee down your front and while you're looking down in horror you lose your footing on the steps and stumble onto the lawn but you step on a rake and it whangs you in the face and you fall senseless to the ground and then the sprinkler comes on?

That's what Dutton's last week has been like.

I mean, not literally. As the opposition leader rashly confided to the top-rating FM breakfast radio show in coffee-mad Melbourne last month, he's never drunk coffee in his life, so that part's just fantasy. ("You've lost my vote. Gone. See ya! You're in Melbourne," was Nova host Jase Hawkins' immediate, incredulous response.)

If you feel this is the most 'meh' election you've witnessed, you are not alone. New research shows Australian voters are not deeply polarised or highly enthusiastic; instead, they are both uncertain and ambivalent.

But the cascade-of-misfortune vibe is unmistakeable. Having got things started at the beginning of the campaign with a nice, simple offer of cheaper petrol, Dutton backed himself up a dry gully last Monday with a reverie about moving to Kirribilli as prime minister, then over-corrected that night with a wild and unexplained rhetorical swing about stripping money from public schools with "woke" curriculums.

Then he was obliged to watch, helpless, as US President Donald Trump - a leader with whose views on many things, like diversity programs and renewable energy and public sector employees, Dutton broadly agrees - took a fire axe and laid waste to the world trade system, creating not only an opportunity for Australia's Albanese to look boringly reliable by comparison, but also the prospect of cascading interest rate cuts in Australia plus a headlong plunge in global oil prices such that Dutton's A$6 billion petrol excise cut might well be lost in the noise. Thanks, buddy.

Oh, and the one bright spot in Monday's Newspoll (which otherwise gloomily confirmed a further decline in the Coalition's primary vote) was that Dutton was still seen as more "strong and decisive" than Albanese.

Which only increased the poignancy as the opposition leader appeared on the Nine Network first thing that very morning - with the awkwardly apologetic, service-station-gerbera-clutching air of a man who knows he's made a woman mad and somehow has to fix it - and announced a complete reversal of his policy to end work-from-home for Commonwealth public servants.

This policy has been going down like a case of hand, foot and mouth among the flexibly-working parents who are - as Sod's Law and the immutable rules of logic independently dictate - also the people statistically most likely to be home when Dutton's candidates go doorknocking in the seats they hope to win.

Now, it is true that it does take a strong, decisive leader to own up when he's made a bad call, and apologise for it. It's a rare thing to see, and should be commended when it happens.

Last night, the opposition leader played a resolutely dead bat to any mention of flexible work, beyond offering a guarantee that it would not be affected by any government he leads.

And in a weird way, Dutton's capitulation - extracted in full on Monday's Today show by a blisteringly on-form Sarah Abo - felt slightly more dignified than the prime minister's denial that he'd fallen off a stage in Perth, based seemingly on the technical argument that his bottom had at no point connected with the ground.

Pundits with long memories immediately likened Dutton's reversal and apology to that of fellow Queenslander Peter Beattie, who defiantly amid general party crisis in 2001 booked a photo opportunity swimming with sharks.

How Dutton must dream of such repose. Switching off the phone! Swimming! With sharks! Such predictable animals. There are many miles to go, and two more debates, before either man can sleep.

- ABC