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The debate

While you were watching Australian Idol or National Bingo Night, channels Nine, ABC and Sky News were holding their own contrived talent quest/game of chance.

Kevin Rudd won last night's debate, and in my view won it quite comfortably. John Howard started well and was best when he was delivering set pieces, but increasingly he sounded more and more cranky and defensive, and repeatedly side-stepping questions he didn't want to answer. Rudd kept his cool, however he was surprisingly weak at handling the climate change questions.

I watched the ABC feed, though it sounds as if the best comedy of the night came from Channel Nine's unauthorised Diet of Worms. The Australian has video of the Sky News feed of the entire debate online, in four chunks.

Interesting to see the online polls at the Telegraph and Sky News websites favouring Howard in last night's debate. But this is at 6.30am. Maybe Labor supporters log on to their computers later.

I'll defer to the Poll Bludger for more analysis, and will pick up some of last night's more hypocritical moments (like Howard going berko over Rudd's use of a negative OECD report) when I get time this evening to review the footage and hopefully have a transcript to follow.