A guppy in plain sight of a piranha has a better chance of survival. A chubby swimmer in shark-infested water would have a happier time. My psyche remains bruised.

Every day in the election, a bizarre ritual is staged: the picture facility - the picfac.

"The purpose of a picfac is to generate images for the nightly news in order to keep a politician in the public eye-without the risk of fielding questions," according to the compilers of the Australian Oxford Dictionary.

After a week of travelling with both leaders, my verdict is that Mr Morrison does better picfacs - or, rather, his media maestros organise ones that generate better pictures for the nightly news shows.

He bowled a jack (the little white ball) at Beauty Point bowls club near Launceston - and the cameras loved it (he was bowling through Tasmania was the script line).

In a headscarf, he cooked a chapati at a Sikh temple in the Melbourne satellite suburb of Pakenham. It was visual gold.

On a chilly Saturday morning at the Norwood Sporting Club (bacon and egg sandwich: $5), he picked up an Aussie rules ball and kicked it. He held the phone and did the selfies with the kids. He said he would show them how to kick a rugby league ball.

He is a natural at these things, and that works well for the cameras - and maybe the voters. Maybe.

In contrast, Mr Albanese's picfacs aren't so telegenic.

It's true he did hold a baby. He also toured a hospital (which is fine but not strong on images). Similarly, with a construction project - lots of men in high-visibility jackets.

The one event that did take off emotionally and pictorially was his visit to his old school.

But it was only loosely scripted and so, to the spin-doctor mind, dangerous because a crowd of adolescent boys is unpredictable. Who knows what political havoc they might have caused if they'd had mischief in mind?

In the event, it turned out well for Labor - "a rockstar welcome", as The Daily Mail opined.

But it was the only event that really generated hoopla.

Maybe picfacs don't matter. After all, a prime minister's necessary skills probably don't include bowling a jack or taking a selfie with kids.

But politicians are wedded to them - welded, more like, because spin doctors want control of how their proteges appear on the news, so picfacs are not going away.

If they're froth, the substance of the daily media ritual comes in the "presser" where words are actually spoken. An arsenal of cameras line up and journos bark questions at the leaders.

At the start of the campaign, Mr Albanese hadn't quite got the hang of this. He actually tried to answer questions succinctly.

Take the kerfuffle over wages and Labor's lack of clarity.

It stemmed from a question bowled in Adelaide. Earlier, the Labor leader didn't endorse the trade union call for a rise to the minimum wage of 5.5 per cent but nor, he said, did he want wages "to go backwards".

So he was asked (completely properly - this was no gotcha question): "Does that mean you support a wage hike of at least 5.1 per cent to keep up with inflation?"

He could have waffled and flannelled but instead he was to the point: "Absolutely".

The Labor spinners then spent a day of "clarification", with the policy still remaining unclear: would wages in general keep up with inflation? What would a Labor government's "absolute" commitment actually mean?

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Mr Morrison's technique is different. He is less inclined to give direct answers to tricky questions. Instead, he answers a different, easier question and then swiftly switches to safer ground (invariably the need for a strong economy).

He was asked several times about the possibility of China having military facilities on the Solomon Islands. Wasn't that "on his watch"?

His answer was invariably general, not addressing the specific point. Instead, he cast doubt on Labor's attitude to China - and then the quick switch to the need for a strong economy to finance a strong defence.

There is a ritual to the picfac and the presser - but they are both genuine interactions. It may be that voters discount them - Labor is ahead in the polls despite (perhaps because of) Mr Morrison's ease in front of cameras.

But Australia is a lot better than elsewhere.

For two weeks during the 2004 presidential election, I followed George W Bush around. A less meaningful, less interesting, more dispiriting process is hard to imagine. It consisted of a fortnight of flights between completely staged, identical rallies, held not even in the nondescript town itself but out at the airport.

The backdrops were the same; the script was the same through the day; the audience was chosen for its loyalty and docility. Sometimes, there were palm trees when we landed so "it must be Florida", only to be told it was California.

Mr Bush would descend the steps of Air Force One for the cameras to film him arriving. He would walk across the tarmac to the rally at a constructed set at the edge of the runway.

He would deliver the same speech he delivered three hours earlier in Edina, Minnesota or Marlton, New Jersey or Boca Raton, Florida. He would then walk back to the plane, stopping at the top of the steps for the cameras.

No questions from pesky journos. Not a word or movement was unscripted.

So thank goodness for the picfac and the presser. Australia surely does democracy better.

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