As Albanese and Dutton fought it out, these were the questions they couldn’t answer

But nobody gave a straight answer when Speers asked whether people should be able to use tax breaks to buy four, five or six properties.

Dutton instead brought the conversation back to Albanese’s denial that he would revisit the tax breaks for investors. “Anthony, your government modelled negative gearing changes and capital gains tax. The treasurer has done that,” he said.

Albanese shot back: “That’s not right”. Dutton replied: “It is right”.

This masthead revealed in September last year that Treasury had worked on options to scale back negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions.

Asked about the modelling at the time, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said it was “not unusual at all for governments, or for treasurers, to get advice on contentious issues which are in the public domain.”

Balancing the budget

Both parties are going into this election with billions in big spending plans. Where will the money come from? Wednesday night did not deliver an answer.

Albanese tried to spruik his government’s two surpluses. But given Labor’s most recent budget predicts the government will spend more than it raises for the next decade, host David Speers asked why so many of the government’s policies – wiping HECS debts, Medicare rebates, energy rebates – aren’t means tested.

“The HECS debt is about intergenerational equity. We spoke before about young people. I think young people deserve a fair crack,” Albanese said in his first attempt to answer.

“When I get sick or you get sick we have access to Medicare or a hospital. Every child, Peter’s or mine, will get access to a public education and school,” he said in a second.

“[With] energy rebates, you had two choices because of the way it is delivered through the energy companies, you either give it to everyone or just to concession cardholders. We understand a whole lot of working people need that assistance in cost of living,” he said in a third.

But he never gave a clear answer about the principle of giving cost-of-living relief to wealthy people, which is what Speers asked three times.

Dutton’s grilling came a few moments later. First, he was asked if his public service cuts – eventually worth $7 billion a year – would cover all the Coalition’s spending.

To that, Dutton gave a straight answer. “The short answer is no,” he said. “We won’t achieve all of the savings we need to achieve through our changes to the public service.”

But the clarity did not last long. Dutton was asked three times which part of the public service he would cut. He did not say. He was asked twice if foreign aid would be cut. He did not say.

Cuts would come “where we find inefficiency,” he said. “It’s not something you can do from opposition to redesign the public service in the way that works.”

Energy and climate change

Labor’s ill-fated promise from before the 2022 election to bring power bills down $275 by this year has haunted the government. Albanese refused to walk into any kind of commitment like that on Wednesday night. Three times he was asked: “When will we see our power bills come down?”

Albanese demurred. “What we need to do is to roll out renewables, make sure there’s energy security, make sure it’s backed up by batteries, by hydro and by gas,” he said, in one of several attempts at answering, but never delivered a timeline.

The question that had Dutton talking in circles was when Speers asked: “Do you accept we are already seeing the impact of climate change?”

“There’s an impact,” Dutton said. Speers wanted to know Dutton’s thoughts on it getting worse. Dutton prevaricated. “I’ll let scientists pass that judgment,” he said. “I don’t know because I’m not a scientist and I can’t tell you whether the temperature has risen in [the recently flooded Queensland town of] Thargomindah because of climate change or the water levels are up…”

On the same question, Albanese said: “The science is very clear. It doesn’t mean that every single weather event is because of climate change. It does mean the science told us the events would be more extreme and they’d be more frequent. That is what we are seeing playing out.”

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