Leaders’ debate analysis: Turning point as Bill cuts through with ordinary folk

Bill Shorten won first of the leadership debate and it may prove a turning point in this strange election campaign, says Mark Kenny.

Bill Shorten is no Red Adair – the famous Texan who extinguished oil well fires with, of all things, an explosive charge.

But there is a renewed sense of having conquered an inferno since Monday night’s dull-as-ditchwater leaders’ debate. Shorten was adjudged by “undecideds” in the room to have easily won the first such leadership face-off ever staged in the West.

And it may prove a turning point in this strange election campaign.

For the first time since his budget reply, Shorten had notched up an unambiguous win with ordinary voters, and he had done it in a direct match-up with the sitting PM.

To the trained political eye, the decisiveness of the peoples’ verdict 25-12 was surprising given it was the Labor leader who shuffled his notes, and struggled with details of his tax and climate plans. But so what?

In eyes of ordinary folk, whose lives are not normally wasted examining the minutiae of politics, it was the Labor leader who cut through, made more sense, and crucially, had something positive to say.

On the campaign trail the following day, Shorten more closely resembled the would-be PM he has been over the last six years – a continuously campaigning, politically savvy streetfighter, who has led a unified opposition, while the Liberals have eaten themselves alive. The message from audience members was actually the same one voters have been transmitting to the Coalition for three years – think about us, think about the environment, stop holding the nation back. Sure he’s no Red Adair, but by inserting explosive subjects like tax increases into the election oil fire, Shorten feels closer to snuffing out Morrison’s flames.