The worm was buried for Friday’s leaders’ debate between premier Kristina Keneally and opposition hopeful Barry O’Farrell. So who won? Crikey turned to a panel of professional judges — high school debate adjudicators from NSW Debating and Public Speaking. Over drinks our crack panel scored the contest. Tony Davey sums up:

Neither Keneally nor O’Farrell would be leaders of their respective parties if they couldn’t string a convincing sentence together, and both were engaging enough once they’d settled in to argue the issues of the debate. Unfortunately for the premier, settling in took her somewhat longer. Her opening address, which seemed overly rehearsed and stilted, gave her the unfortunate appearance of being the puppet her opponents occasionally accuse her of being.

Where she generally avoided policy, O’Farrell presented a more straight-forward list of problems with the current government and an (admittedly very) broad-strokes plan to fix them. It should also be said that he flagged five priorities for his party and seemed to lose track of them around three or so, but then that’s happened in pretty much every debate we’ve ever seen.

Transport was the first issue of the debate and provided the audience with a welcome transition from parallel public speeches to a real debate over the running of key NSW infrastructure. Keneally defended her government’s track record with an impressive (and a little surprising) account of improvements to CityRail, but faltered in answering O’Farrell’s criticisms of the Labor government’s planned — and canned — public transport infrastructure. O’Farrell (though lacking detail on his proposals) was able to link Keneally to past failures and turn this issue of the debate into one of economic management as well as transport.

It was during that tussle over economic management that we saw the most concrete outcome of the debate: an agreement to have all policies costed by an independent auditor-general rather than Treasury. O’Farrell’s challenge was gamely answered and it’s good to see independent auditing of campaign proposals is on the table with apparently bipartisan support. In the end, O’Farrell managed to portray the premier as having wasted at least a portion of NSW’s budget on unnecessary or cancelled policies — his rhetoric on the $500 million on the planned Rozelle light rail was powerful and stood at the end of the debate.

It would have been nice to see O’Farrell source his election promise funding from somewhere other than a claimed capacity to reduce unnecessary expenditure and wastage. Keneally on the other hand was strong on her $50 billion plan for transport infrastructure and the possibility of including new projects as capital became available, making her seem optimistic but realistic about the government’s capacity to develop transport solutions.

But O’Farrell’s attacks on Labor’s economic record stood. For future debates, he’d be well-advised to come up with a convincing answer as to why he led a Liberal Opposition to the privatisation of power, as well as a more concrete idea of how much his vision for NSW would cost and where the money would come from.

On the issue of health, the premier responded to a question claiming her government had removed 1500 beds from NSW hospitals with a spirited defence of her party’s record. She retaliated that the government had actually added 2800 beds, and had ensured that 96% of people employed in public health care were involved in patient care rather than administration. O’Farrell probably didn’t dispute those claims carefully enough, but did promise more efficient management through local health care boards that allowed communities to make their own decisions.

The debate over these statistics and some frankly pretty nebulous future plans was fought basically to a standstill, with the only decisive moment coming when O’Farrell interrupted Keneally to dispute her history of Port Macquarie Hospital. The Premier chided him for butting in, and probably would have been better off simply defending her version of events. In truth it was one of the few moments in the debate where the leaders engaged directly with each other, and it saw the Opposition leader just edge ahead on health care.

So who won? We’ve given the debate to O’Farrell. It wasn’t the most detailed policy presentation we’ve ever seen, but he has done something to rehabilitate the public perception that he has no new ideas or plans to offer. In fact just appearing in the debate makes him a slightly larger target and addresses some of those criticisms.

The premier’s comments on her sons, upbringing and charity work seemed designed to make an already likeable figure even more likeable. But the polls said Keneally’s challenge wasn’t her image but her government’s record.

Ultimately, a debate’s not a popularity contest. Winning here (and, according to the polls, next March) takes more than being the most personable speaker. We’d like to see a Labor Party with plans and policies as likeable as its leader in time for the next debate.