Monday should have been a good day for the Prime Minister. It almost was. Malcolm Turnbull was excoriating his own party's fiscal recklessness. Tony Abbott was in Queanbeyan, alienating yet more women as he pretended to iron a shirt. And the ridiculousness of a week in which a loon-eyed Barnaby Joyce and a skirt-wearing Joe Hockey all but destroyed the Opposition's economic credentials was still front of mind.

But then, a little after 9.30pm, everything fell apart. In just over an hour Kevin Rudd did more to alienate young voters than he has in more than two years of government.

That the longest televised interview with the Prime Minister since 2008 was conducted by a room full of teenagers should have been telling enough. But in the space of three questions it collapsed into pointed fingers and condescension - proof of how Rudd has misjudged his relationship with young Australia.

Six minutes into Q&A on ABC TV, came the first question to unsettle the Prime Minister: ''Mr Rudd, I'd like to know how you expect us to trust you.'' What followed was one of the most painful hours of television this side of an Iain Hewitson cooking double.

''Our generation are the ones that got behind you in the Kevin 07 and now you expect us to trust you on everything you're saying. And you broke promises like the laptops ones and the health ones and all the ones that are important to our generation.''