Who’s scared of Leigh Sales? Not Malcolm Turnbull! He’ll be on the show tonight, perhaps in a bid to spoil Shorten’s Queensland “People’s Forum”, which both leaders were invited to but Turnbull decided to skip.

When we asked 7.30 yesterday what the deal was with Turnbull’s absence from the program, executive producer Jo Puccini told Crikey the program was in “daily contact with both offices to organise the first appearance”. We guess at some point yesterday afternoon, or early this morning, Turnbull finally agreed to an appearance.

Virtually every other ABC political program has also been trying to get Turnbull and Shorten to appear in recent weeks. Q&A has finally booked in Shorten, alone, next week.

Yesterday Shorten and Turnbull agreed to do another debate — instigated by Turnbull — on Facebook, in conjunction with News.com.au.

It’s not clear exactly what a debate tailored to Facebook will be like. Turnbull said yesterday it would “engage a vastly wider audience than formats used before”.

Turnbull yesterday made a big point of how “innovative” the debate would be. But there are precedents. Several digital media outlets, including The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed, have in recent weeks hosted individual politicians for live Facebook Q&As. When she was PM, Julia Gillard also did a hour-long Facebook live chat, with moderators ignoring a torrent of sexist abuse in the comments thread to focus on questions on education policy.

Of course, what these previous Facebook forays have only had one interview subject. No one’s done a two-person debate using the format before, though both the previous debates — at the National Press Club and Sky News — were also aired live on Facebook, minus any Facebook interactivity.