Just worry about the abbreviated version. Forget about judging the hour-long  version of today’s joint question and answer session with the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader at the National Press Club. What counts will be the 2-minute version shown on the evening news. And that will have very little to do about any of the actual arguments but plenty to do with style and the verdict of the “experts” of which the Nine Network worm and its Seven Network equivalent will be the most important.

The television audience for the debate itself is bound to be small. Most of those who do sit through it will be the most politically interested of citizens and they will already have their own views. Very few committed Labor or Liberal supporters will actually change their mind because of anything that is said by Kevin Rudd or Tony Abbott. For the political leaders the point of the exercise is to try and influence the normal voter who will only catch the brief edited highlights on the radio and television news.

This then will be the battle of the 20-second grabs with the one thing that both leaders should take care to avoid being too harsh with criticism of their opponent. Abuse does not go down well with ordinary sensible voters. Better to look and sound serious and a little dull.

Booing the Prime Minister. Of course they booed Kevin Rudd at Bruce Stadium last night when the glorious Raiders defeated the Brisbane Broncos. What’s wrong with those commentators. Forget about him being Prime Minister, the toad is a Queenslander. And what’s more he had dared to look pleased when the Broncos scored a try. Scored a try against our team! On our home ground! And he rubbed it in by being shown on the big screen smiling? Reverse the roles and a Canberran who did that at Lang Park, or whatever they call it these days, would be lucky to get out alive.

And while on that toad business. Being pictured sitting in the grounds of the Lodge in Sydney at the weekend didn’t strike me as the best of all possible locations for a Queenslander claiming to be a proper cane toad. The man should have put on his stubbies and double plugger thongs, packed his port and gone north to the Ekka before making a comment like that.

An awkward guilty plea. It’s hard to know what it all means when the proceedings are only scantily reported but the guilty pleas in Shanghai by Rio Tinto employees are potentially very embarrassing as the Shanghai Daily noted in its report of the trial this morning:

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Follow the Tasmanian example. Just ban how-to-vote cards. That’s the simplest and best solution to the kind of chicanery that the South Australian Labor Party got up to on Saturday. There is something sick about the way the Labor Party apparatchiks are congratulating themselves on their cleverness in passing off their “Put your FAMILY FIRST” how-to-vote cards as being those of the Family First Party. If the practice is not illegal it should be made irrelevant by getting rid of the whole practice of allowing cards to be handed out anywhere near polling booths on election day as they have wisely done in Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory.

And while the reformers are at it they should get rid of the scourge of above-the-line voting for multi-member electorates and introduce a version of the Robson rotation as well.