Leaders debate: Anthony Albanese brings heft of being prime minister to debate

Anthony Albanese is a man with a plan and he wants everyone to know.

The Prime Minister put in a second solid debate performance on Tuesday night, even if he ended it with a waffle rather than a bang.

He demonstrated he is across his policy detail — despite the frequent criticism from his detractors — and not afraid to take the fight to his opponent.

Albanese has been jovial on the campaign trail since his launch on Sunday and it’s showing up as a more confident performance.

After the first debate, which the in-studio audience awarded to Albanese, Labor insiders said that even a draw would have been a win for the PM.

This one had a different dynamic, with no audience for Albanese to talk to in person — just him, Peter Dutton and host David Speers in a studio — but the same metric applied.

At multiple points, Albanese brought the heft that having actually been Prime Minister has given him.

Dutton mentioned UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer pursuing nuclear power; Albanese shot back that he’s friends with Starmer and knows all about the reactor cost blow-outs he’s dealing with.

He further pointed to his friendships with Indonesian leader Prabowo Subianto and Joe Biden, and multiple conversations with Donald Trump, while Dutton had to concede he’d never met or spoken to the US President when asked if he trusted the American.

But he couldn’t say when power prices would fall and was evasive when Dutton asked directly whether the Government had modelled scrapping property-investor tax breaks.

Viewers were treated to the full gamut of the PM’s sceptical expressions as he listened time after time to Dutton characterise Labor’s policies instead of describing the Liberals’ offerings.

And he scoffed at claims he thought were wrong or untrue, although Dutton was much more liberal in tossing the “liar” tag around.

“I have a very different view of Australia,” Albanese said when asked how bad the other side would be.

That was clear in the positive picture he sought to paint of his plan throughout a commanding, if somewhat boilerplate, offering.