More importantly, the news media have no right to be picking election winners in advance. Regardless of the realpolitik of what politics geeks know is likely and unlikely, in theory any of the party leaders could be PM (or co-PM?) after Oct. So any election leaders debate should be inclusive.

Sure, you can't include every registered party, they wouldn't all fit on stage. But they could set a reasonable cutoff, like polling over 3% in at last 3 election year polls.

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