Where will Tony Abbott's axe fall? How big will the cuts be? And who will be hurt the most? Barrie Cassidy says Kevin Rudd has finally hit upon a message with cut through.

The Broncos Leagues Club can take the credit for finally kick-starting a lacklustre 2013 federal election campaign.

Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott engaged in a compelling, entertaining and illuminating forum, the best of its kind since debates began and just 10 days after the worst of its kind.

Because the leaders were able to directly engage and question one another, the forum was a real test of their policy strengths and political acumen.

Rudd benefitted the most from the forum, just as Abbott gained the most from the first debate at the National Press Club.

For the Prime Minister, the forum helped because it recharged his batteries and gave a confidence politician a genuine confidence boost.

But more to the point, it allowed Rudd to recast the campaign around the Opposition Leader's ill-considered parental leave scheme, and to work that issue into the more critical question of Coalition spending cuts to come.

Labor's only hope of resurrecting a so-far failing campaign is to build a strong sense of anticipation around what lies ahead in the last days of the campaign.

Up until Wednesday night, Rudd and some of his ministers had failed to effectively lay down that marker.

First, they wasted too much time on a distracting beat-up over changes to the GST. Second, they banged on about "costings" when the issue is "cuts", a very different proposition.

Costings go to whether the sums add up, whether the savings meet the spending. The chances are that will not be the issue this time around given the nature of the expert panel that will oversee the arithmetic.

It's the cuts, stupid, not the costings! Where will Abbott's axe fall? How big will the cuts be? And who will be hurt the most?

On Wednesday night, Rudd started to more effectively exploit the sheer generosity of the parental leave scheme; draw comparisons with aged pensions and child care; and, by extension, lay the groundwork for more up-to-date comparisons when the cuts are announced.

There is little doubt Labor hit the midpoint of the campaign behind, and dangerously so in some of the key marginals.

Sorry, this video has expired Barrie Cassidy talks to ABC News Breakfast about the campaign so far.

However, the Coalition to be comfortable needs to go into the last week with a handy lead just in case the cuts bite, and bite hard.

It does seem the Coalition is timing the cuts to hit the advertising blackout the Wednesday before the election. However, bad news cannot be buried in the dying days of a campaign to the same extent that it once could be.

These days the media is much bigger than the mainstream. There are new ways to whip up a storm overnight.

It is worth recalling what happened in the 2010 campaign. The leaks against Julia Gillard cost her somewhere between six and 10 points in the two-party-preferred vote virtually overnight.

Such was the immediate hit that party strategists stopped the overnight tracking polls. They said at the time that they couldn't see the point of paying to have confirmed what they already knew.

Whether the cuts when they come - and by any measure they will have to be significant - have anything like the same impact is impossible to predict.

But the great unknown surrounding them does suggest that a campaign that only started in earnest on Wednesday night will run its full distance, no matter what the polls are saying.

Having said all that, the forum again gave Abbott a chance to trot out the most effective line of the campaign so far - and no, it wasn't telling Rudd to "shut up".

Whenever he addresses the country and asks "Do you want three more years like the last six?" you almost sense his opponents squirming.

Those few words go to the Achilles heel of all three governments since 2007 - the first Rudd government, the Gillard government and the second Rudd government.

With little effort, it recalls the policy failures, the leadership battles, the deals done and undone in the name of minority government, the scandals in Canberra and the corruption in NSW.

And that "shut up" line, as Michael Kroger pointed out on Lateline, might have offended some Rudd partisans, but it probably delighted some Gillard loyalists.

The chances are that it simply amused the non-committed, either because the thought had probably crossed their minds or because it seemed such a curious complaint to make of an opponent in a debate.

Labor's efforts to turn this into an act of aggression is unlikely to work; just as Rudd's supposed surliness, or whatever it was, in the makeup room will hardly revive the tantrum memories.

It is interesting though that three years ago when Abbott said the same thing of Julia Gillard during a discussion on The Today Show - that she talks too much - it did go over badly.

That suggests there is such a thing as "gender tensions". When two blokes go at it, somehow it's different.

Can it be that we are more comfortable returning to the status quo? That it's so much easier dealing with a campaign free of the gender wars?

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of ABC programs Insiders and Offsiders. View his full profile here.