Nicola has asked us how do the political leaders prepare for the big debates?

If you have done high school debating, you would be well across it – because it is not that different. Each campaign goes to ground a little early and locks themselves away to scrub up on all the potential policy questions, the trap questions and the curve balls (how much is a litre of milk etc) and then, the leaders get quizzed over and over on it, as if they were in the debate itself.

So that means someone on the campaign plays the role of journalist and another plays the role of the opposing leader. Daniel Andrews has been advising Anthony Albanese on how to handle debates (and communicating in general) and Tony Abbott/Peta Credlin and Scott Morrison have been giving Peter Dutton advice.

So the leaders are heckled as they speak, to prepare them for potential interruptions and how best to answer them. Which also means the campaigns have to be across the gaps in their own policies and the hypocrisies in their approaches and attacks. Which is interesting in itself.

The main part of the game is to not stuff up. It’s not so much about who wins the debate, it’s about the performance. And they are performing to the journalists who cover this (like me) because if there is a f*ck up, then that is what gets reported on for days and days and that is more likely to be what voters end up hearing about.

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