Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

In fact, on that day when he failed to front for the debate with the shadow minister for health, his recourse was to swear at the shadow minister for health. That is obviously his preferred debating style. I will leave that to him to resolve come the next election. I also seem to recall in that period that the Leader of the Opposition, then the minister for health, had some interesting exchanges with Bernie Banton as well. I seem to remember that it was about that time that he had to apologise for what he had said in relation to Bernie Banton. On the question of transparency, at the last election we asked and asked again whether we could have a debate—more than one, but two or three—with the then Prime Minister, Mr Howard. I welcome debating the Leader of the Opposition—all three occasions I committed to last time, and I look forward to the first of those debates next week on health and hospitals.

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