Election 2016: edgy leaders survive messy first week

What a messy week on the campaign trail. And it can\u27t be put down - even in part - to teething problems for the rookie leaders. Both Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten had sensible strategies and focussed topics, but they were repeatedly blown off course by events beyond their control. For the Opposition, the most damaging issue to emerge from left field was asylum seekers. The steady flow of dissenting material from departing MPs and new candidates kept Shorten\u27s campaign on the back foot and served to highlight how brittle the support is within the wider party for the policy steered through the national conference. For the Government, the issue was the superannuation changes and the shouts of indignation from within their own supporter base that those changes are retrospective and therefore offensive to a basic tenet of Coalition philosophy. That\u27s debatable at best. More likely they simply want to accumulate more than $1.6 million in their accounts without paying the 15 per cent tax