Federal Election 2022: No gaffes, few fireworks: Debate helps Albanese right the ship

Anthony Albanese stumbled through the first week of a campaign he had been itching to start (remember how he quoted the Ramones' 'Hey Ho, Let's Go!' just hours after it was called).

Whatever your view on the seriousness of a political leader being unable to name the unemployment rate, the gaffe sapped Albanese's confidence and stalled what momentum Labor carried into an election it was widely tipped to win.

Albanese needed a mulligan, a chance to revitalise a campaign noticeably lacking in energy or enthusiasm.

The Sky News-hosted event wasn't beamed into every loungeroom in the country, but it nevertheless offered a national platform to right the ship.

If you want to appreciate the importance of the debate to the Labor leader's campaign, consider his schedule in the lead up.

He spent the past three days in one city (Brisbane), unusual in modern campaigns.

He held just one campaign event on Wednesday, a 9am stop at a factory in a safe seat, before bunkering down for the remainder of the day to prepare for his showdown with Scott Morrison.

Morrison, by comparison, spent at least part of the afternoon swimming laps in his hotel pool. Morrison has been here before. He revels in the furnace of the campaign spotlight.

So did the debate course correct as Labor had hoped?

Well, Albanese's performance certainly didn't sink his hopes of winning on May 21.

There were no gaffes, no memory lapses, no momentary letting down of his guard.

Morrison's social media team will have a tough time finding moments which can easily be clipped up and turned into campaign attacks.

The avoidance of embarrassment amounts to a win for Albanese. Even with 30 days until May 21, the Labor leader could ill afford further setbacks.

But just as he managed to avoid being punched (or punching himself), Albanese cannot claim to have landed many truly telling blows.

The exemption might have been his cutting line of attack on the government's failure to thwart the security pact between Solomon Islands and China.

"This isn't so much a Pacific step up. It's a Pacific stuff up," Albanese said.

Labor figures inside the room think this was the moment the debate turned in its favour.

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The opposition believes that in the "Pacific stuff up" it has found something which both undermines the Coalition's credibility on national security and plays into its main campaign theme: that whether it's bushfires, floods or vaccines, Morrison offers too little, too late.

For his part, Morrison was Morrison. His stump speech is by now well-rehearsed.

This election, Morrison told the audience, was a choice between a stronger economy and a weaker economy, a stronger future and an uncertain one.

But he did overreach at times, including when he claimed Albanese had sided with China with its position on the Solomon Islands deal.

Morrison might also come to regret saying that he and his wife Jenny were "blessed" to not have children with a disability, in response to a question from a mother whose autistic four-year-old has had his NDIS funding slashed by a third.

The Prime Minister was trying to be empathetic, to be human and personable. He had asked what the child's name was [it was Ethan].

This leaning on family anecdotes was a theme throughout the night, a clear and obvious tactic.

In response to an earlier question about housing affordability, he spoke of how it tough it was for he and Jenny to break into the market 30 years ago. Asked about aged care, he spoke of his father's dying days in a nursing home.

But as it has done in the past, Morrison's attempts at empathy tripped him up.

Whether that single moment, or any other from the debate, has implications for the campaign will become clear in the coming days.

What was immediately apparent on Wednesday night is that Anthony Albanese is far from finished.