It is amazing how many things, in a beige, vanilla blancmange election like the one we are currently enduring, can still infuriate me.

Today’s complaint is about the election debate scheduled for this Friday night.

If you haven’t heard about it, don’t blame yourself. I don’t think many people have. Which seems to be the point.

Asked about a proposal for a third election debate, to be broadcast on Sky, Turnbull said last week that instead he wanted a debate live-streamed on Facebook and news.com.au. And fair enough: it was innovative, it was convenient, it was so now. That bit’s fine.

Here are the things he said to justify it:

So this debate will enable millions of Australians to participate. It will engage a vastly wider audience than the formats that we’ve used before. So my aim is to have as big an audience as possible and to reach everyone, you have got to use the devices which I noticed you are all holding in your hands.

Millions. A vastly wider audience. As big an audience as possible.

These are fine justifications, by the way. Sky News, which hosted the first debate, does an excellent job of live coverage, but doesn’t reach many people. The second debate was only hosted by the ABC. (A fact of which the commercial networks should be ashamed. I understand the commercial thinking, but sometimes there are bigger considerations.) Its ratings were pretty terrible. So, yes, with two weeks to go people are just beginning to get mildly interested: let’s get it out to the widest audience.

Which is why the two major parties have agreed to hold the debate at 6 pm on Friday.

You see the logical flaw.

6 pm on Friday, when a huge slab of the demographic which gets most of its news online will be at the pub. 6 pm Friday, when another huge slab of people will be stuck on the M5, or Punt Road, or some other dismal piece of infrastructure. 6 pm Friday, when another huge slab, including a significant proportion of the people actually home by that time, will be watching the commercial television news bulletins, which, naturally enough, won’t be able to cover the debate in time.

This is almost certain to be the final debate, by the way. That’s it. In an eight-week campaign we’ll have only got three debates, none of them screened on commercial television.

This is a bare and bloody insult to voters. Turnbull has been PM for less than a year, and, everyone agrees, hasn’t shown us much. Shorten hasn’t been PM, obviously. Let’s get them in a room, actually having arguments with each other, and see how they stand up to the pressure. Let’s see what the public thinks of each of them afterwards. And let’s give the public the greatest possible chance to watch that exchange.

Remember Turnbull’s announcement that he’d be challenging Tony Abbott, because “We need to respect the intelligence of the Australian people”?

I think the PM has to bear most of the blame for this. He suggested the format for this debate, and laid out his reasons, which have turned out to be patently false. And it’s been fairly clear for a while that Shorten would jump at the chance for any debate. But then why didn’t Labor push harder for a time when people would actually be watching? And why wasn’t Turnbull interested in a debate other people would be interested in?

I’ve been told that after negotiations between the two sides, logistics dictated that the only possibilities were Friday or next Wednesday (which is State of Origin night), and Friday was the lesser of two evils. The view of the tech wizards was that 6 pm was the best time to reach the most people, partly because a lot of people are on public transport heading home from work and looking at their phones. And there are still hopes that the ABC and Sky will take the debate as well.

The obvious truth is that if the two leaders were taking seriously their responsibility to engage with the broadest possible swathe of the electorate, in the most constructive fashion possible, they could have found another time.

I’m sure in the fuzzy world of online metrics someone will find some way of spinning just how many people “had access” to the debate, or were apparently watching somebody else’s handset. I hope we get an honest accounting. But either way, it’s pretty clear there were better options available, and ignored. In the unlikely event that more than a tiny minority of Australians tune in, we will be left to imagine how many people might have watched in another slot.

Shorten should have pushed for another time. But it was Turnbull who promised us better when he removed an elected prime minister. And it was Turnbull who said he wanted to reach as many people as possible. And so, in case it wasn’t clear, that’s why I’m angry. The prime minister has played us for mugs

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