It was meant to be a bit of high-tech showmanship for Australia's prime minister, but as it turns out, the Internet cares not for Malcolm Turnbull's electoral ambitions.

On Friday evening, the leaders of Australia's two major political parties went head to head during the country's first online leadership debate on Facebook Live. Unfortunately, repeated buffering prevented a fair number of Australians from enjoying a smooth stream of political zingers.

Hosted by news.com.au, the debate saw Turnbull, leader of the Liberal Party, face off against Bill Shorten, leader of the Labor Party. The debate also had some stiff competition from the Season 4 premiere of Orange is the New Black on Netflix, and the debate's live viewership numbers sat around 13,000. According to Facebook, the video had a total reach of 1.6 million on the night.

Excessive buffering, 13,000 viewers and falling on FB. This "clever" idea not so clever frankly #leadersdebate — Rachael Lonergan (@RachaelHasIdeas) June 17, 2016

The building of the national broadband network (NBN), a government-backed project to deliver fast broadband across Australia, was a prickly topic during the debate. As the former communications minister, Turnbull walked back the previous Labor government's policy of rolling out fibre-to-the-premises technology and has pursued fibre-to-the-node, arguing the network would be delivered faster and for less money.

The policy has been marked by endless controversy, with critics suggesting the new deal won't deliver the fast Internet speeds Australia needs for the future. It was also the perfect topic for viewers to vent about in the Facebook comments as they suffered through bouts of buffering.

Interestingly, although the debate trended on Twitter, it did not touch Facebook's trending news section.

Image: mashable

Small mercies — at least the debate wasn't as bad as BuzzFeed's Facebook Live interview with Barack Obama in May: The feed froze that time, forcing the video to be shifted over to a livestream on YouTube.

The shaky feed could of course be due to people's individual WiFi setups, or it could be an illustration of Australia's truly lacklustre Internet speeds — the country currently sits at 48th for global average broadband connection speeds, according to Akamai's State Of The Internet report.

According to Facebook, any latency was not a result of its setup. "We thoroughly tested all aspects of our product on different devices with people located around the country both before and during the debate and were not able to identify any issues with the livestream at our end," a spokesperson told Mashable Australia.

Either way, it was not the most comforting omen for Australia's high-tech future.

Buffering issues in the media room, calls to "watch it on your phones" #leadersdebate #ausvotes pic.twitter.com/9GukMjpA9m — Annika Smethurst (@annikasmethurst) June 17, 2016

Horrible stream quality and unbearable stuttering from the Facebook live stream. Very poor. #leadersdebate — Max Miller (@max_cmiller) June 17, 2016

UPDATE: June 18, 2016, 10:55 a.m. AEST Added official Facebook numbers.

UPDATE: June 18, 2016, 2:30 p.m. AEST Added statement from Facebook.

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