Given the campaign had already delivered such a cathartic moment on Wednesday, when the brain-dead belligerence of a tabloid newspaper prompted Bill Shorten to go for broke and express his vulnerability, the final leaders’ debate was always going to feel anticlimactic.

The spectre of what had occurred earlier in the day trailed the two leaders into the event at the National Press Club. Both were noticeably restrained. Shorten was drained of exuberance. Morrison, who can be punchy, was slightly on egg shells rather than encroaching on his opponent, which has been his style during their campaign head-to-heads.

It was a peculiar atmosphere. Two men who, if truth be told, are now heartily sick of the sight of one another, gathered in Canberra to try and hit their talking points, understanding this last debate might actually have an audience. Yet they were strangely solicitous of one another as well, as it something might break if it got stretched too far.

Punches were thrown, because there was a job to do, and the partisan entourages had gathered at the press club for an hour’s gratification, but none of them had any particular sting. The net effect of all this was an atmosphere of solemnity – and the debate was a draw.

There were some interesting moments. Morrison, who has been escalating his presidential pitch, minimising his own organisation, barely referencing his mostly invisible colleagues, was asked how he would keep the Liberal party’s restive conservative faction in check if he won the weekend after next.

It was a question about the lessons he might have learned from the current dispiriting era, from the cycle of bloodletting that resulted in his elevation to the top job. “I will lead, as I always have, from the middle,” Morrison said, suddenly summoning a whole government back into view – a collegiate concept that has been absent since the proroguing of a parliament that nobody will mourn in April.

The ghost of government past lingered when Morrison, on the hop, was forced to promise he would keep the current environment minister, Melissa Price, in her portfolio, despite her being such an abject disaster she’s been in hiding through much of the campaign.

There, in those brief moments, reality pierced the strange boys’ own adventure of political campaigning; the state of being where the political leader is both in the fray and suspended above it, moving frenetically, yet free from the burdens of governing that now crush incumbents.

Morrison’s reveries were a breadcrumb trail leading us to those same problems, waiting, unresolved, in the event the voters give the Coalition three more years. Perhaps it was the sense of shared melancholy the two carried into the room that brought that all back into view.

Shorten looked tranquil, as he has for much of the campaign. He assumed an equality of status with Morrison in this last encounter, either lacking the energy to fight for it, or perhaps imagining he was now at the point of the contest where he had proven his mettle sufficiently not to need a ritualised display of dominance.

The most notable thing about Wednesday night was the Labor leader wasn’t seeking approval.

Throughout this contest, Shorten has visualised a path to victory that has involved him trying to communicate both who he is, and what he will do with power.

He has streamlined and pared back his communications and leaned into the risks he wants to take, both with the agenda and with the way he wants to present leadership. Rather than imagining a leader Australians want to see, and trying to project that product, Shorten has elected to be himself, and put his faith in the institution he leads to bring this contest home.

The courage of being himself is the last bridge Shorten will cross in this period of leadership, because whatever happens, this era, when he learned to lead, is coming to an end.

Shorten’s basic intuition is simple: self acceptance is the natural pre-condition of community acceptance. In 10 days’ time, we’ll see if his political instincts have served Labor’s cause.