Day 1 - the smell of burning plastic

Lou Reed says it is best. It's the beginning of a great adventure. Canberra lights fall away beneath me as the Abbott press pack moves on to Melbourne.

The plane is an old Fokker and there is an alarming acrid smell of burning plastic. Not to worry, my mind is taken off the smell by engines which intermittently roar and sigh.

Under two hours ago the debate between Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott finished. It's likely to be the only debate of the campaign but already the minds of the assembled media pack have moved on. That's the way it is these days. The moment, the moment, the moment. It burns brightly when the cameras are on. But when the cameras flick off, the pack moves on. The twitter buzz subsides as the next big issue takes off. It's on to the next moment.

Politics is now just a string of moments with few connecting threads of reality.

Labor's campaign has looked exactly the same.

But there is little of the talk among press that occupies my twitter feed of who won and who lost the debate. In truth, it was a nil all draw and it had all the energy of an old people's home. But in the context of this campaign it was all important. Rudd needed to cut through and land some blows. He didn't. And in this campaign the fact he didn't was enough for Abbott to claim it as a win.

For weeks, Rudd had been goading Abbott to debate him. On climate change, On the economy. On national security. On anything for FFS just get Abbott into the same room as me.

But when the time arrived, Rudd seemed distracted rather than ready to grab the opportunity when it came.

Both looked nervous but Rudd's trademark confidence was nowhere to be seen. Flicking nervously through notes, he stuttered through an opening. His hands conducted a symphony for an orchestra that just didn't seem on tune.

Using notes should be no great crime provided they had some content. But the lack of any compelling content of Rudd's opening made his note reading even more distracting.

This was not the Rudd of 2007 but the Rudd of 2009, who became addicted to bullet points at the dispatch box. Even worse, when he departed from script he rambled enabling Abbott to deliver the most telling blow of the night - "If any of you can remember the debate with Mr Howard in 2007, he said almost the same thing and the trouble is we've just got the same waffle today".

At the Fairbairn airbase before the press pack arrives from the National Press Club the demeanour of the respective campaign teams tell the story of the night. 

Liberal Party campaign director Brian Loughnane and party pollster Mark Textor look relaxed while waiting for the plane. Loughnane talks easily on his mobile, while Textor looks idly at messages on his phone. Neither look troubled. Textor is feeding Twitter with messages to stoke the hubbub around Rudd's use of notes during the debate. Philip Ruddock wanders through the lounge looking for relevance long gone. The Liberal eminence Gris is on the road to keep Abbott on the straight and narrow.

Yet next door the Rudd camp look less at ease. Long-time Labor campaign consigliere John Faulkner rarely cracks a smile. Tonight is no exception.

There are four weeks to go in this long campaign and no doubt things will change. But this wasn't the campaign changing moment that Labor had been hoping for.

Wheels down. Thank God. The Hyatt awaits and a half full bottle of Vietnamese mushroom whiskey beckons.