<< …you'd be battling to find a more vacuous less, inspiring Prime Ministerial candidate than Tony Abbott. >>

Ain’t that the truth, Poirot.

Which is just so so so so so sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo unfortunate, given how bad Rudd is!!¡!!¡!!¡!!

My guess is that those given the privilege of the task of evaluating this debate were all from an academic background hence the verdict so heavily influenced by display rather than quality & substance.

One wonders whom Kevin Rudd is targetting with his campaign slogan "A New Way".

Does he seriously believe that he can sway voters with his proposed banishment of future asylum seekers to PNG? If so, he appears to have overlooked the fact that people smugglers would not be deterred from operating from PNG across the Torres Strait -- it is already happening. The placing at great cost of full-page "keep out" advertisements in the local press may indicate to the naive (voters) that he is being serious, but few if any intending asylum seekers read our newspapers.

Does he seriously believe that he can con electors into believing that swapping the ETS for the carbon tax would markedly improve the cost of living? If so, Kevin is ignorant about how electricity prices have sky-rocketed thanks to implementation of green-schemes and the carbon tax. Besides many more people are awakening to the fact that human-induced global warming is a con.

Or does he believe that he can con electors by going all negative and warning them off Tony Abbott as he allegedly can't be trusted and Coalition policies allegedly hide 'black holes'? If so, he must think we have forgotten how dysfunctional he was in his three years as PM? Even colleagues such as Wayne Swan, Stephen Conroy, Julia Gillard and Tony Burke and new 'colleague' Peter Beattie attested to his dysfunctionality.

Further to my comment on Kevin Rudd's dysfunctionality, I have just come across the following article :
"Ä complete and utter fraud", The Spectator Australia, 6 July 2013
http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/australia-leading-article/8955281/a-complete-and-utter-fraud-2/

It begs the question: how is it, that journos 16,000 kilometres away can see him for what he is, but most Aussie journos can't or won't see?

Raycom,
It appears the further a journalist gets away from Australia the more intelligence they accumulate.