Rudd comes out ahead as leaders clash on health

Tony Abbott. Photo / Supplied

Challenging Tony Abbott to a leaders' debate before this year's election campaign even kicks off was a big gamble on Kevin Rudd's part.

But it appears to have paid off, with most commentators declaring Rudd the winner of the televised joust on health and hospital policy.

The public, too, was more impressed with the Prime Minister's performance, if the "worm" - which records the reactions of a studio audience - is to be believed.

More than 70 per cent of undecided voters watching the debate at the Channel Nine studios felt that Rudd - who appeared calmer and more self-assured than the Coalition leader - acquitted himself better.

If Australian voters, who go to the polls this year, were hoping for concrete policy pronouncements, they would have been disappointed.

Rudd gave no new details of the federal Government's plan to take over control of ailing public hospitals from the states and territories, and Abbott said his own recipe for fixing the health system was not yet available.

The Coalition leader is no slouch at debating and puts on some talented parliamentary performances. But he was not in his element in the confines of the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday.

He appeared to flounder at times, read from prepared notes and cracked a few jokes that fell flat - dubbing Rudd a parliamentary "anaesthetist", for instance.

He also spent most of his time attacking the Labor leader and his policies, rather than putting forward alternatives to address doctor and nurse shortages, lengthening surgery waiting lists and a dearth of hospital beds.

Rudd seized on this, accusing Abbott of sending "a rolling tidal wave of negativity" in his direction.

Ominously, the worm - a line that "worms" its way across a screen as the audience touch their keypads - dipped almost every time Abbott opened his mouth.

The Prime Minister personalised the issues, saying in his prepared opening: "One of the worst things that can happen to us ... is when in the middle of the night a little one gets sick or they have an accident at school or at sport."

He noted that his sister and sister-in-law were both nurses, and said that as a child in rural Queensland he gained extensive experience of the public hospital system.

Abbott, for his part, asked television viewers if they trusted the Government to fix problems in the health system, given its incompetence in other policy areas such as the home insulation scheme, which had to be suspended after being linked to more than 100 house fires.

It was in an effort to divert attention from such tricky subjects that Rudd offered to debate Abbott on health.

Rudd's popularity is at its lowest since he was elected Labor leader in 2006.