His remarks will be scrutinised in China and domestically he will be pressed for more detail. Obvious questions arise – such as, did he consult colleagues about hardening the government’s position?
It does seem strange to announce this in the debate forum. It was not like his deliberate strategy in the initial debate of dropping his plan for a gay marriage bill in the first hundred days. This appeared more a case that the question happened to tap into what was in his head.
The audience of undecided voters scored the debate 45 to 38 to Rudd. This encounter lacked the liveliness of the Brisbane forum; there were a few barbs but no “does this guy ever shut up?” moment. Rudd made a point of saying he would stay to talk to people (because that worked for Abbott last time). No doubt he was very nice to the make-up woman.
Rudd seemed more animated than Abbott. He kept his cool during some critical questions, notably one about his destabilising Julia Gillard’s leadership. When challenged on his proposal to relocate ships from Garden Island he declared “I don’t apologise for being in the vision business.”
He repeatedly hammered Abbott about his paid parental leave scheme, and pushed the opposition leader on why he would not release his policy costings and budget bottom line then and there.
Both leaders pledged to keep all their promises – an undertaking that the winner will inevitably break.
Abbott batted through in a night-watchman sort of style. He didn’t radiate any sense of excitement and had a lot of same-old, same-old lines (ending carbon tax, stopping boats etc), although he did say the Coalition was not planning to shut any Medicare Locals, a guarantee he declined to give a few days ago.
But they won’t be raising eyebrows in Beijing or anywhere else about what he said and he didn’t open up any big new questions for the morning. And he’d rate that as a very satisfactory outcome.
Michelle Grattan is a Professorial Fellow at University of Canberra .
This piece was first published on The Conversation.
Michelle currently holds an academic position at the University of Canberra and is associate editor (politics) and chief political correspondent at The Conversation. She was the former editor of The Canberra Times, was political editor of The Age and has been with the Australian Financial Review and The Sydney Morning Herald.
