Despite being declared the unofficial winner of the New South Wales leaders debate, Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell still has a long way to go to win over the majority of voters.

Political analysts say the first non-parliamentary debate was a close-run affair, but most agree Mr O’Farrell was the winner.

A new opinion poll shows that his opponent, Premier Kristina Keneally, is enjoying enormous popularity.

But the 15-year-old Labor government is still widely disliked and her personal popularity has not made a real dent in that.

The NSW political reporter for the Australian newspaper, Imre Salusinszky, says that 12 months out from an election, the Opposition is tracking well but Mr O’Farrell will have to watch his tone.

“Mr O’Farrell was at times a little bit smirky and at times a little bit aggressive,” he said.

“He’s going to have to watch that because he is up against, firstly, a woman, and secondly, quite a popular leader.

“You could see him calibrating the degree of negativity and the degree of aggression that’s appropriate to be used against Ms Keneally, as against, for example, Mr Rees, who could give just as good as he got in terms of the surliness stakes.

“Another observation was Ms Keneally’s repeated stress on her experiences as a mother when she was asked questions about areas such as childcare, health and education.

“She couldn’t seem to say often enough that she knew, as a mother who had delivered babies into daycare, how important it was to get the staff ratio right and so on and so forth.

“Clearly, her advisers, and perhaps the focus groups that Labor is running, have told Ms Keneally that what’s playing particularly well out there is that voters can associate with her as a working mum.”

The deputy editor of the opinion website The Punch, Tory Maguire, says Ms Keneally took the curious step of defending her Government without conceding to any mistakes.

“I was on the Daily Telegraph live blog during the debate and we ran a poll at the end and it was wildly in favour of Mr O’Farrell,” she said.

“I think [Ms Keneally] looked like a bit of a Pollyanna, to be honest.

“She was actually asked by one of the journalists on the panel if she had anything to apologise for, for the Labor Government for the last 15 years, and she said, no, absolutely not.”

And Mr Salusinszky says both leaders avoided committing to large projects.

“Neither of them was prepared to commit even to such obviously urgent projects as the M5 duplication or the completion of the M4 east,” he said.

“What that tells us is either that they don’t think they’re going to be able to afford it during the four years between 2011 and 2015, or more likely, that in terms of big-ticket promises like that, they will keep their powder dry until we are considerably closer to the election than we are now.”

The leaders have committed to another debate but it may make little difference.

Polls show that the people of New South Wales have absolutely no intention of pushing Labor out to a 20-year term of office, even if they personally like Ms Keneally.

Infrastructure arguments

During the debate, the Premier promised to stay positive and be practical and refused to apologise for past failures.

“I am proud to head this government. This is a government that has delivered some of the best performing emergency departments in the country,” she said.

“This is a government that has delivered the best literacy and numeracy results for year three and year five in the nation.

“This is a government that is delivering transport infrastructure as we speak.”

But Mr O’Farrell lamented the state’s transport, health and housing woes, and he threw forward to the choice on offer at the next election.

“A choice between a party, the New South Wales Liberals and Nationals – committed to growing the economy and restoring opportunities – or Labor’s continued cycle of stagnation and decline,” he said.

There was an early victory for Mr O’Farrell after he issued a challenge to the Premier to have all election promises independently costed.

Ms Keneally agreed to empower the auditor-general to take care of that.

“I’m happy to have it done because it will expose the speedometer that is the New South Wales Opposition’s approach to campaign promises,” she said.

Things got heated on the topic of hospitals and how the leaders would approach the Prime Minister’s health reform plans.

“The Liberal government had a very unique approach to health care in Port Macquarie; they closed the hospital and then they sold it off, and it was a Labor government that had to buy it back and re-open it,” Ms Keneally said.

“That is simply untrue. It again displays your lack of history,” Mr O’Farrell retorted.

“We went, entered into a public-private partnership for a new Port Macquarie hospital, which was so successful it became an attractive option for people across the region that it then had capacity problems.

“Labor then ignored it for five years, used us as that blame game you said you would finish.”