Everyone is having cracks at Rudd for using notes.
"He cheated!" "He couldn't do it without notes!" "Abbott wins because Rudd used notes!"

I would understand it if it was a competition for the President of the Debating Team, but it isn't. It's two potential leaders of the country debating who is better for the job by comparing policies and discussing facts.

I'm not excusing Kevin for 'cheating'. If they agreed not to use notes, they shouldn't have used notes... What I'm saying is why the hell would you agree to not use notes?

Without notes it becomes a competition for the person that has either the better memory or who is best at manipulating discussion without adding any real content. ie vague waffling without substance.

Ideally, you'd have all the important information written down in front of you; who said what, when and where they said it, what the statistics involved are, numbers of this and that, the proportion of x, y and z etc.

That way rather than 'who can waffle the best?' it becomes 'who genuinely has better policies based on statistics, evidence and facts'.

Or is everyone not quite sick to death of empty sales pitches and useless governments just yet?

maybe because

Karnal wrote on Aug 12^th, 2013 at 11:56am:


Whenever I go to any presentations I tend to get turned off people continuously referring to their notes, I even get the odd presenter reading out a script which suggests me they really don't agree or understand what they are saying.

If you truly believe something or are intimate with a subject matter you can speak without notes.

Rudd just bunches a bunch of lies together and is heavily scripted, telling the truth has a nice natural flow, when you start lying you need to keep thinking up new lies to fill in the gaps that lies create....... it like running on a treadmill with no controls.

Wigley0 wrote on Aug 12^th, 2013 at 12:09pm:


You clearly know nothing about public speaking to make such statements.

Professional speakers might have bullet points at best written on cards, really good ones have absolutely nothing.

Rudd is more like a news reader he needs heavily scripted lies in these situations but even that failed.

Wigley0 wrote on Aug 12^th, 2013 at 11:47am:


They certainly are!
Why?

Because cheat is exactly what he did.

He knew what the rules were, then deliberately broke them to possibly gain an advantage and then win.

In golf, the sport of integrity and self-regulation, he would've had to disquality himself or live forever in shame.

Krudd is a CHEAT.

First, Wigley, welcome to the forum.

Second congrats for a very impressive first message.

As a union leader and, later, an advocate, I have done a lot of public speaking. I spoke largely off the cuff, but always had with me some cards detailing the main points in case I forgot anything.

It is the sensible way. Why there was an agreement not to use notes I have no idea.

RightSadFred wrote on Aug 12^th, 2013 at 12:13pm:



I attend a LOT of professional speaking engagements pus hire a lot myself.  Almost all of them have notes. Most are in shorthand or bullet form and others will use powerpoints to prompt them.  Very few speak without any notes and frankly, few can.  It is easy to miss a salient point, easy to forget the detail of a topic etc. 

But this was a debate with questions for them to answer and like most debates, notes were nor permitted.  Rudd broke the rules.