Prime Minister Anthony Albanese emerged as the winner of the first leaders’ debate of the federal election campaign on Tuesday night, edging out Opposition Leader Peter Dutton in a tightly contested forum dominated by cost of living concerns, healthcare, and the global economic shock triggered by Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.
The debate, hosted by Sky News and The Daily Telegraph in western Sydney, saw both leaders go head-to-head on a range of domestic and international issues in front of a 100-strong audience of undecided voters. By the end of the 90-minute forum, 44 per cent of participants said they believed Mr Albanese won the debate, compared to 35 per cent for Mr Dutton, while 21 per cent remained undecided.
The leaders fielded a raft of questions from audience members, with cost of living emerging as the defining issue of the campaign. Roughly half the room raised their hands when asked if they were struggling to make ends meet.
Education, energy prices, and health care were also raised by voters. Mr Dutton sought to deflect criticism over his stance on migration, pledging to cut intake by 25 per cent over two years to ease housing demand.
“We have to have a managed migration program and our argument is that you can reduce it from the record level of at the moment, down by 25 per cent for two years, which will create about 100,000 homes and that will help young Australians get into housing,” he said.
Mr Albanese reaffirmed his party’s commitment to Medicare, reaching for his Medicare card in a now-familiar campaign move.
“Labor created Medicare, will strengthen Medicare, and will make sure that in the future we get those bulk billing rates back up to 90 per cent,” he said.
Dutton was critical of the ‘Mediscare’ campaign or Labor while talking up his experience in the health portfolio.
Both leaders were asked how they would respond to the economic shockwaves caused by former US president Donald Trump’s reintroduction of sweeping tariffs on imports. The tariff announcement sparked a global market sell-off and added pressure to the domestic election campaign, placing the spotlight squarely on economic management.
Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Dutton criticised the Labor government for weakening Australia’s fiscal resilience.
“The government hasn’t prepared our economy,” he told reporters.
“Labor has made decisions in subsequent budgets now which make it harder for the economy to function with international headwinds.”
Prime Minister Albanese countered by pointing to Labor’s record of budget repair, citing a $207 billion improvement in the bottom line over the government’s first term, which saw two budget surpluses following a decade of deficits under the coalition.
The lead up to the debate had some twists and drama, with ‘breaking news’ less than an hour before the debate began that Mr Dutton’s father had been ‘rushed to hospital’. Sky News personalities talked up the ‘professionalism’ of Mr Dutton for continuing with the debate, Nationals Senator Matt Canavan offered “thoughts and prayers” to his family. Discrepancies in the reports, with Sky News claiming the ‘serious medical episode’ happened just ‘minutes’ before the debate, and other news outlets reporting a heart attack ‘hours’ before the debate, and following a bad week for the Dutton campaign, resulted in some questioning the authenticity and timing of the news as an attempt to excuse a potential poor Dutton performance.
Economy and Energy debates to follow
The issue of economic credentials will be further dissected in Wednesday’s treasurers’ debate between Treasurer Jim Chalmers and his coalition counterpart, Angus Taylor, also on Sky News.
Labor hopes Dr Chalmers’ communication skills will give him an advantage over Mr Taylor, a Rhodes Scholar and University of Sydney economics medal recipient.
Mr Taylor has criticised the Treasurer for failing to model the consequences of potential retaliatory tariffs that could escalate into a trade war.
A third debate on Thursday night on energy will see Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, one of the biggest champions of renewable power, take on the opposition’s Ted O’Brien, the architect of the widely criticised nuclear power plan.
The coalition released the promised modelling into its national gas plan that would make companies keep gas in the Australian market on Tuesday night. The forecast was published during the first leaders’ debate, timing also viewed to be a distraction from Mr Dutton’s debate performance.
Frontier Economics managing director Danny Price, who prepared the modelling, said the plan would decouple the domestic price from expensive international rates. Industrial customers are being promised a 15 per cent reduction in retail gas bills, with a forecast eight per cent decrease in wholesale electricity prices.
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