PETER VAN ONSELEN: How a ridiculous ABC management decision left leaders debate host David Speers out in the cold – and booted from his OWN show

By PETER VAN ONSELEN, POLITICAL EDITOR FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

Published: 13:52 BST, 16 April 2025 | Updated: 14:03 BST, 16 April 2025

The ABC hosted the second leaders debate of the election campaign, which was extremely hard to get excited about.

We all know that the ABC are masters of making the interesting boring, and this campaign hasn’t even been interesting to begin with.

With no political editor to speak of at the public broadcaster – they made their former political editor Andrew Probyn redundant a few years back, that left Insiders host David Speers to moderate the debate.

The only problem with that was because he needed to use his car’s GPS to find the new ABC studios in Parramatta where the debate was held.

The meant he couldn’t host his own program immediately after the debate.

That’s right, the geniuses at ABC management decided to air a special edition of Insiders straight after the debate.

If he was still working at Sky News, Speers would have happily strolled offstage to take his place to host the post-debate program.

But not at our ABC, which couldn’t even dream of letting the Insiders program leave Canberra. 

The ABC’s David Speers hosted the second leaders debate on Wednesday night

Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton shook hands before facing off

That’s right, Speers hosted the debate but was left out in the cold when it came to analysing it afterwards on his own show! How ridiculous.

And to add insult to injury management dragged in Patricia Karvelas to fill in…cruel and unusual punishment for those of us who already were forced to sit through an hour of Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton squaring off.

So what about the debate itself, and what the leaders had to say?

It’s tempting to say Dutton needed a win to regain momentum after what’s been a poor start to the campaign. And that is certainly true. 

But given this is debate two of four, with the remaining two debates on networks that rate far better than either Sky or the ABC, Dutton has more opportunities to lift his game.

He did OK in this debate, but so did Albo. Neither leader was especially convincing. 

Dutton’s best sales pitch was to hammer the point that Australians need to ask themselves if they are better off now than they were three years ago when Labor was elected.

The data tells us few are, but the problem is that as Albo pointed out time and time again, plenty of Australians worry about the alternative PM. 

Dutton did OK in this debate, but so did Albo. Neither leader was especially convincing

Whether that’s his nuclear policy, his climate change skepticism or indeed some of his looser comments such as the ones recently about Indonesia and Russia.

One of the more surprising admissions was by Dutton that he doesn’t even know Donald Trump. He’s never even met the man. How does he hope to shift the dial on tariffs if elected?

Both leaders sold their respective housing policies early on, and the moderator worked hard to remind viewers why journalists are only mildly less hated than politicians by continuously interrupting as they tried to provide details.

Of course to be fair, most journalists have the attention span of a child. When details get listed, they tend to glaze over, waiting for the next opportunity to ask a ‘gotcha’ question.

The key debate topics were cost of living and national security, both of which are supposed to be Coalition strengths. 

But interestingly, Albo probably got the better of Dutton on both fronts.

Albo got the better of Dutton on two key Coalition topics – cost of living and national security

Peter DuttonAnthony Albanese

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PETER VAN ONSELEN: How a ridiculous ABC management decision left leaders debate host David Speers out in the cold – and booted from his OWN show

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