Don’t worry you didn’t miss much.

On the upside it was markedly better than the previous Treasurer’s debate last week on Sky News. But that really isn’t saying much.

It started with a slanging match about why we have a deficit. Each side blaming the other. Neither side was willing to actually talk about why we really have a deficit. We’re one of the lowest tax countries in the developed world and Australians expect first class services from their government.

After a detour attacking each other’s tax policies they moved on to housing. This, more than almost any other issue, is what people are most concerned about. This was an opportunity for the Treasurer and shadow Treasurer to talk about their competing plans to help more people into their own home.

What we got instead was a debate that basically boiled down to, claims the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF)* has not finished building any houses since it was established 17 months ago.

Not a debate about how many houses it might build. Not how long it might take to build them.

The Labor Party’s success or failure on housing apparently comes down to completing new homes before an entirely arbitrary time of the 2025 election campaign.

Now I have concerns about how the HAFF works. I think it is needlessly complicated. We could have even discussed that. But instead, we get the gimmick of Angus Taylor claiming that no house has yet been finished, 17 months after the fund was established.

Both sides then avoided questions about how their housing policies will just push up prices because all they do is increase demand for housing.

Let me just pause here. Both sides talk about the despair they say they’re hearing about how people just can’t get into the housing market.

Both sides then put up policies that all the experts say will do nothing to fix the problem. In fact, they will make affordability worse.

Both sides can’t even say that more affordable housing means house prices have to stop rising faster than incomes.

Neither side is willing to take the relatively simple step of cracking down on capital gains tax and negative gearing loopholes, that will help push out investors and make room for first home buyers.

Is it just me or is that really weird?

The debate moved on to nuclear energy. And honestly, you’ve heard it all before. The one policy the opposition seems to have done some work on before the election campaign, and they now don’t want to talk about it. This is because the general public knows it will be more expensive and won’t get built (if ever) for decades to come.

It all wrapped up with some closing arguments.

If the chief Labor and Coalition strategists want to know why the major party vote keeps dropping, they need look no further than this debate. Both sides are more concerned about having policies they can announce, rather than having policies that will actually fix problems that Australian’s are concerned about.

*A $10 billion fund set up by Labor to earn returns on investments. Those investment returns will then be used to build social and affordable housing.