A matter of debate: The general consensus from Australian newsrooms seems to be that Sky News Australia did a good job with the first leaders’ debate of the election this week. It was well-moderated by chief anchor Kieran Gilbert, and featured a refreshingly balanced set of questions and questioners.
That is, unless you ask Sky News itself. While the audience of undecided voters found in favour of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese over Opposition Leader Peter Dutton 44-35 (with 21 undecided), Sky’s own commentators were flabbergasted.
On the post-game broadcast, host Sharri Markson insisted it was the voters who were wrong, saying all four of her guests found in favour of Dutton. Daily Telegraph editor Ben English and “baffled” columnist Ray Hadley even went so far as to suggest there were hijinks afoot, with English saying (before the audience verdict was revealed) that “there might be a few inquiries” as to the audience selection.
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A spokesperson for Sky News Australia told Crikey that “any suggestion that Sky News is displeased with the independent audience selection process is false”, stressing that the audience was independently selected. In a previous statement to CrikeySky said that it was “not involved in the question selection process nor were the questions known in advance of them being asked during the live broadcast”.
The News Corp papers and Sky News Australia usually work hand-in-glove, with any cross-criticism generally silenced with an iron fist by the powers that be. For English and Hadley to make those remarks on air during one of their own employer’s marquee events seems odd. Trouble in paradise?
Teal this album: Look. It’s just the job sometimes. It brings us no pleasure to share any of this. We don’t delight in telling you Climate 200-backed independent candidate for Monash, Deb Leonard, did a rap — on purpose — or that it ends with an autotune breakdown.
If you think we like pointing out the slightly baffled elderly volunteers behind her in various shots, think again. We’d rather not mention that Leonard allows a child to do an absolutely abysmal cartwheel in a video she presumably wants as many people as possible to see. Frankly, it pains us to note that this kid will spend their teenage years with a sense of gnawing anxiety, knowing this footage exists, and that it might be shown to someone they wish to impress. It’s not how we imagined our lives turning out, to be honest.
But it does inspire us to remind people that there’s quite a big back catalogue of this sort of thing in Australian politics and media. At least Leonard’s flow is better than business reporter Ticky Fullerton’s a cappella six-and-a-half-minute rap about revitalising Australia’s central business districts. Though it’s not quite as good as former opposition leader Bill Shorten’s effort over a 50 Cent beat (unlike Shorten, Leonard doesn’t fail to high-five someone three times, so it kind of evens out). We take no pleasure in any of it. We do this for you.
I think, then you’re going to: Earlier this week we made some allusions to the… better than real quality of some of the Liberal party’s merch. A tipster got in touch to point out how unfair we had been, focusing on the slightly automated quality of certain sections of the party apparatus. Look how engaged and sincere the web design is on the Victorian Liberals “Get Involved” page:
TKO: The only thing more reliably dreary than a leaders’ debate is the search for the ever elusive “knockout blow” in the next day’s takes. “Neither leader landed any knockout blows,” concluded the Nine papers. “Anthony Albanese won the night but he only did so based on a number of cut-through moments in an otherwise status-quo performance that he failed to land the knockout blow he needed to harden soft voters,” The Nightly observed. “No major gaffes and no knockout punch: The first leaders’ debate was a pedestrian affair”, “There were neither knockout blows nor falling on their faces as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton met for the first of their federal election leaders’ debates,” came the ABC’s verdict, restated in its live coverage.
Nor could a knockout blow be detected in 2022. Or 2019. or 2016. 2013? Nothing doing. 2010? ‘Fraid not.
The hunt for a knockout blow continues. The question arises: readers, can you think of a single debate that ever decided anything?
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