THE two leaders in the great election race leapt from their vehicles at Sunday’s pitstop for the TV “debate” – Malcolm sounding like he owned the company that made his car while Bill had built his from spare parts in the garage. But both had a winning plan that would bring cheer to the nation…if anyone, that is, can stay awake till then.

THE two coalition square-heads, Treasurer Scott Morrison and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, claimed they’d discovered a $67 billion “black hole” in Labor’s budgetary Milky Way. But almost before they’d announced it, they revised it down to $35 billion and at week’s end it was still falling.

SPEAKING of milky ways, when Waleed Aly made the case on “The Project” that Australia’s dairy farmers were going broke, Barnaby hinted at big loans “in the works”. And when “Gogglebox” weighed in, suddenly the money appeared… a brand new twist on “caretaker mode”.

THE Barr-Rattenbury government’s commitment to the big spend on the Gungahlin tram really hit home with the signing of a $939 million contract for the 12-kilometre line to Civic. “Just imagine how many bike paths and renovated shopping centres we could get for that,” said a Seven Days correspondent.

They refused to publish the actual contracts, so who knows how many “nasties” are hidden in the fine print? Lib Deputy Leader Alistair Coe said: “The decision not to release the details is despicable.” Hard to argue with that.

IN that other election across the Pacific, Donald J Trump not only passed the 1237 delegate count to secure him the nomination, a respected poll showed him edging ahead of Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House. And that was before a damning report was released on her use of a private mail server when she was Secretary of State. Bill Shorten’s “barking mad” description of daffy Donald might have been “un-prime ministerial” but at least he was fair dinkum.

SADLY Sorry Day barely touched the wider community. In fact, the most poignant tears to fall were from Nova Peris, whose departure from the Senate is clear evidence of how desperately we need our own Aboriginal Reconciliation Commission. The Anglo-Australian colonial crimes must be confronted before we can be a truly united nation.

THE Anglo connection was much in evidence as the British “Queen of home cooking” Nigella Lawson paraded her dimples and dumplings on “Masterchef”. The highlight was when she twittered George for putting his knife in his mouth. And about time, too – the man eats like a pirate.

THE Chaser team released their election mag to a plethora of self-congratulation – mostly unfunny undergrad humour except for one nice line from the editor: “It’s really important we get this right because the PM we choose we’ll be stuck with… until the mid-term knifing late next year”.

robert@robertmacklin.com