Election 2025: Experts’ verdicts: Who won Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton’s second debate
Kenny, Benson, Sloan, Bramston, Trinca and Sheridan analyse the performances of Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton in the second leaders debate of the election campaign.
Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton have faced off in the second leaders debate of the 2025 election campaign. Our experts deliver their verdicts.
Chris Kenny
This was the night when Peter Dutton finally threw a few political punches. Long framed as the hard man of the Coalition, the Opposition Leader finally put some of his sharp criticisms of Anthony Albanese directly to the Prime Minister and the electorate.
Dutton was much more assertive from the outset. Asked about housing measures, he went straight to record immigration numbers exacerbating the housing crisis and mentioned union power too. Bam!
Then as host David Speers followed up on housing policies, Dutton attacked Albanese over Labor’s modelling of negative gearing changes, which the Prime Minister first tried to deny but then seemed to accept. “This Prime Minister has a problem with the truth,” Dutton said. Pow!
When Albanese boasted about two surpluses Dutton criticised him for pretending things were getting better when in fact there has been a “household recession” and record small business failures. Whack!
When Speers mocked the Coalition’s cost-of-living measures as coinciding with the election, Dutton retorted that they coincided with families “doing it tough”. And on energy Dutton was able to get on to the record independent costings that show nuclear will be $260bn cheaper than the government’s renewables-plus-storage model, calling out Albanese’s “complete dishonesty” in the nuclear debate. Boom!
When Speers cited Labor’s claim that renewable electricity is the cheapest form and asked when prices would come down, Albanese failed to answer the question – four times. Oh dear.
On the contemporary blow up over Russian defence overtures to Indonesia, Dutton had to admit he made a mistake on Tuesday suggesting the Indonesian President had announced the dealings. But he pivoted quickly to Albanese’s weakness on defence and security issues. Kapow!
On the US relationship and Donald Trump, both leaders tried to claim ascendancy without overtly supporting or condemning the US President. Dutton attacked Labor’s choice as US ambassador (former prime minister Kevin Rudd) as one who “can’t get a phone call” with the President when the Coalition had an ambassador (Joe Hockey) who “played golf with him”. Zap!
With an Easter break and Anzac Day long weekend taking up almost half the days in the 16-day school holiday-run to election day, Dutton is running out of time to turn the tide. He landed plenty of blows tonight and won handsomely, but is it too little too late?
Simon Benson
Peter Dutton had a clear objective in the second debate of a campaign now at its halfway mark. He wanted to get under Anthony Albanese’s skin. And he came close to succeeding on several occasions.
In the end he managed to force the Prime Minister into an awkward mistruth over whether the government had modelled negative gearing. This was a significant blow for Albanese. But overall, on the negative pressure points of the debate, it was probably a nil-all draw. Both faced tough questions and chose to answer them or not when it suited.
Albanese said the legacy he wanted to be remembered for was cheaper childcare. Dutton wanted his to be the remaking of the energy market.
Both leaders were across the detail of their policies. Both tried to demonstrate conviction in their arguments and both leaders made their opening pitch on cost of living with competing interpretations of recent history.
Housing, defence, energy and foreign relations dominated the hour-long debate.
Character was again on trial. Dutton accuses Albanese of being a liar. Albanese accuses Dutton of being unfit to govern.
As for who will be deemed to have won the debate, that will depend entirely on who was watching.
Judith Sloan
As the world trading system crumbles and the global economic clouds grow darker, it was hard to focus on the highly rehearsed and scripted second leaders debate between Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton.
These debates are like watching a car race: an unexpected crash is often as exciting as they get. Short of one of the leaders flubbing an answer – think Joe Biden – it’s hard to think the voting intentions of those who do tune in are much affected.
The two leaders earnestly try to give the impression that they share the pain that so many voters feel but it’s OK because they have a veritable knapsack of remedies.
The facts are that the level of government debt is rising. But what’s a few extra billion dollars here, tens of billions of dollars there between friends?
Both sides of politics are promising to spend up big using borrowed money – to deal with the close-to-intractable housing problems, to fix both the health and education systems, to manage energy prices and the list goes on.
While most voters will roll their eyes at the naivety of politicians in thinking they can solve problems – they have seen it all before – they will closely assess what’s in it for them. They have been trained to do so, and this election campaign is no exception in that regard.
This debate was a dull affair, in part because David Speers of the ABC was the sole interrogator.
The Prime Minister used his well-tested technique of accusing the Coalition of undertaking public sector cuts in the past and planning more in the future. This is untrue but what the heck. Ditto Albanese’s assertion that his government has somehow spent less and reduced debt – again untrue, but it’s not possible for any fact-checking to go on within the hour.
Perhaps the most compelling question was about the two men’s vision for the future of the country. Albanese talked about universal childcare – beware the extraordinary cost of this if Labor is re-elected – whereas Dutton talked about the central role of affordable and reliable energy. The contrast could not have been starker. Dutton also emphasises the importance of national security.
There were no car crashes. Both leaders performed creditably with no clear winner.
Troy Bramston
Both leaders strongly explained and defended their policies across the board, and identified weaknesses in each other, but Anthony Albanese won his second debate because he explained more of his agenda with more detail while Peter Dutton focused on attacking Labor rather than advocating Liberal policy, which has been pretty thin in this campaign.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a political leader say they made a “mistake” in a head-to-head debate before but Dutton did that after wrongly attributing comments to the Indonesian President over possibly allowing Russian planes to be based in their country. Earlier on Wednesday he had refused to admit he was wrong. It was the second time in as many weeks Dutton has admitted a mistake, the other being his policy forcing public servants to work from home.
The government is vulnerable on energy policy given the broken promise to reduce power bills. Albanese could not say when bills will come down. This did not look good. Yet the opposition’s nuclear power plan is decades away from being operational, if ever. The decarbonisation of the economy cannot be avoided and both major parties are committed to net zero emissions by 2050. Yet Dutton wobbled on the science of climate change, which will not win any votes in the teal seats he needs to reclaim to win government.
There was a good discussion on housing. But the Coalition’s initiatives, such as allowing people to draw down superannuation or deductibility for home loan interest payments, will be price inflationary. Labor is on stronger ground here with various schemes to boost supply, reduce costs and help first-home buyers and renters. But Albanese stumbled when he said he had not modelled changing investor tax breaks. Albanese was effective when referring to strengthening access to Medicare. Dutton was effective in highlighting the cost-of-living pressures many voters are facing.
The oddest moment in the debate was when Albanese said he had no reason not to trust Donald Trump but Dutton said he did not know him and refused to say that he could trust him. It shows how rattled comparisons to Trump has made the Coalition campaign.
Helen Trinca
There wasn’t much in it, but the Prime Minister won the debate. His answers were more concise, he was across his brief, and he was more physically relaxed than the Opposition Leader.
Peter Dutton acquitted himself well enough but lack of policies at times left him “admiring the problem” rather than offering solutions.
With the advantage of incumbency, Albanese avoided playing the man and presented as a leader looking past his opponent to the future, while Mr Dutton was a tad too eager to blame Labor rather than offering a vision.
Both leaders spent the first half-hour shamelessly dodging questions, weaving their way around housing and high rents, leaving voters more sceptical that anything would ever get done on about these hot-button issues.
Albanese scored on the Coalition’s plan to hand super over to young home buyers, pointing out that this would simply up the price of properties; and the Opposition Leader had a bad moment or two also as anchor David Speers pressed hard on where the opposition would cut in the public sector.
Soon it was Albanese’s turn to duck and cover on power prices, but he was more forthright and direct on the science of climate change and extreme weather while Dutton made the somewhat unhelpful point that he was not a scientist.
Half an hour in and Dutton had to concede he’d got it wrong on the Russians and Indonesia but a few minutes later was offered a way back with a question about Donald Trump, tariffs and trust. Once again, the PM had the more straightforward response while Dutton seemed anxious about his choice of words and waffled. Ditto on a follow-up question on trusting the Chinese.
Overall, the PM did much better than in the first Sky debate while Dutton was less sure- footed this time around.
Greg Sheridan
That was a debate which was reasonable in tone. Neither leader was remotely inspiring.
I don’t think the format of conducting a debate as an interview is necessarily the best format for a debate.
It was obvious that both of them were avoiding answering difficult questions but you also lose a certain amount of coherence in answers as a result.
Still, it was a useful exercise for democracy.
I scored it overall a draw, if it were a soccer match about one-all.
But I don’t think the Premier League is in any danger of losing viewership to this.
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