Election Diary: there were a couple of ‘moments’ in second Albanese-Dutton encounter

Two “moments” stuck out in Wednesday’s leaders’ debate, the second head-to-head of the campaign.

Peter Dutton cut his losses over his faux pas this week when he wrongly named Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto as having said there had been a Russian approach to base aircraft in Papua.

So that was a mistake, ABC moderator David Speers asked. “It was a mistake.”

The other “moment” was in a discussion about negative gearing, when Anthony Albanese denied the government had sought modelling on that. The public service “certainly wasn’t commissioned by us to do so”. In fact, we know Treasurer Jim Chalmers asked Treasury to do it.

That enabled Dutton to repeat a favourite Coalition line. “This prime minister has a problem with the truth.” (Albanese has given grist for this line by his denial earlier in the campaign that he fell off a stage, when the footage contradicted him.)

While the leaders were predictably well-rehearsed across the broad sweep of issues, they could not prevent their weak spots being put on display.

Albanese struggled with something that has not been canvassed enough.Wasn’t there a case for more means testing of some of the big spending the government has undertaken?

Then of course there was the perennially unanswerable question: when will power prices come down? The PM squirmed.

ABC Pool Dutton left us no more informed about what a Coalition government would cut to finance his programs, although he did concede, when asked whether cuts to the public service would be enough to cover all his spending, “The short answer is no”. On climate change, the opposition leader looked awkward, when asked what seemed simple questions, such as whether the impact of climate change was getting worse. That’s a judgement he’d prefer to leave to others, “because I’m not a scientist”. Aware that he is paying a political cost by being painted as Trump-lite, Dutton dodged when asked whether he trusted Trump. “I don’t know Donald Trump” was his lame response (although he continues to declare himself confident of being able to get a deal on tariffs with him). Albanese, for his part, said he had “no reason not to trust him”. The PM reconfirmed that in tariff discussions with the US, Australia’s critical minerals were on the table, but lacked clarity when pressed on what precisely was Australia’s proposed critical minerals reserve. The two leaders were at one on being behind AUKUS (just like they are on not touching negative gearing) despite increasing criticism of the agreement in Australia. Housing was thoroughly canvassed but without taking us much further. It now seems it is the politicians against the experts, many of whom are sceptical of much of both sides’ offerings. Speers’ raising the issue of renters was a reminder that the housing issue in this campaign – at least as it’s being argued by the main parties – has been firmly focused on promoting ownership. The plight of renters has been the bailiwick of the Greens.