So here’s my quick, two key takeaways verdict on last night’s Sky News Australia leaders’ debate. First off, the questions skewed Left and by at least a 2-1 margin. I don’t know who Sky TV hired to find these ‘representative’ undecided voters, but were I they then I’d be using someone else in future. At times I was thinking to myself ‘based on that question if she’s undecided then it’s because she can’t decide between Labor and the Greens’. Questions on issues that would help Mr Dutton were half as frequent as questions that played to Mr Albanese’s strengths. And that way Sky. Just wait for the second debate on the ABC. That’s why these sort of curated or managed or ‘let’s have these legacy media journalists ask the questions’ debates are very poor vehicles for conservative politicians. I’ve come around to the view that the only sort of debates that would be remotely even-handed are ones where each leader picks a journalist to ask the other side’s leader questions. In other words, Mr Dutton chooses a journalist (Bolt?? Our Fearless Editor Rowan Dean?? You get the idea) who will ask questions of Mr Albanese. And he, in turn, picks a journalist (the choices of a journalist for Albo would be myriad) to question Mr Dutton. I have yet to hear of a more balanced way to run these things that would get at the weaknesses of the candidates’ positions and not be, you know, dull as dishwater. That, no doubt, is why left-of-centre politicians here and around the anglosphere refuse to be part of that sort of set-up. But my first point remains, the questions last night were at least 2-1 premised on a left-leaning worldview over a right-leaning one.

My second takeaway is that Mr Dutton was too gentlemanly. Too soft. He was at his best in his closing remarks. But he needed a lot more mongrel and bluntness. Every answer should have started with one of three lead-ins: a) Thank you for that question. Australians have suffered through seven quarters of GDP per person decline and the biggest drop in living standards in half a century. We are much poorer since Mr Albanese won the last election. Also, our Prime Minister lied to every Australian when he said before the last election that his government would lower energy costs by a couple of hundred dollars a year. In fact, he’s increased them by thousands of dollars. Mr Albanese lied to you and there is no reason to trust what he says now. So your question is very timely … Or, b), Thank you for that question. Mr Albanese spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to divide Australians by race in some utopian scheme called the Voice. To even try to do that shows he was, and is, captured by the Woke mob. And what you cannot get openly through the front door you can try to get furtively through the back. That is a big danger if Australians put Mr Albanese back in office for another three years. And that is why your question is so important … Or, c), Thank you for that question. The Albanese government is running the world’s highest per capita immigration Ponzi scheme. This is making us all poorer. It’s making us less safe – even the Canadians and Brits balked at letting in thousands of people from Gaza. It’s been a disaster. And that is why your question is so important.

Rinse and repeat those again and again and again. And stop with all the softly-softly silliness. It’s pure folly. The whole Coalition campaign has been run in that same small target way. It was a terrible idea to do that from day one. It’s now obvious it’s not working. It’s almost as though Mr Dutton’s advisors were people who initially wanted to come out for ‘Yes’ in the Voice. Or were afraid to make Net Zero and big, big cuts to immigration the core focus of the Liberal campaign (which, in my view, would have delivered a majority Coalition government). Instead, the Dutton advisors seem to be the types who focus-group everything. Who don’t want to run a strong values-based campaign. Who prefer to wallow in the middle of the road, where Maggie Thatcher used to say ‘your chances of getting run over are a lot higher’. And when things go wrong, as they do three times out of four with this pusillanimous approach, they’ll bray ‘we should have been even more left-wing, even more indistinguishable from Labor’.

Anyway, I scored the debate somewhere between a draw and a very slight win for Mr Dutton. Not good enough. Come on Libs. Faint heart never won fair lady.