Anthony Albanese tells colleagues he ‘f**ked up’

Anthony Albanese has told colleagues he “f***ked up” and it “won’t happen again” after Monday’s trainwreck press conference.

Anthony Albanese has told colleagues he “f***ked up” and it “won’t happen again”.

It was agonising, sloppy and by any definition a trainwreck press conference.

And now every galah in the pet shop, as Paul Keating once said, will be asking him ‘gotcha’ questions for the rest of the campaign.

The Labor leader made a swift exit after he was stumped by questions about the Reserve Bank’s cash rate and the unemployment rate.

According to witnesses, he tore strips off himself and told colleagues that it was not a good start — an understatement — and that he should have known the answers to the journalists’ questions.

Mr Albanese refused to say what the cash rate was three times, before admitting he also didn’t know the jobless figures in Launceston.

“The national unemployment rate at the moment is … I think it’s 5.4 … sorry,” he said. “I’m not sure what it is.”

Of course, the current unemployment rate is 4 per cent — a level not seen since February 2008 and 1974 before that — a far cry from 5 per cent.

Katy Gallagher, the Labor Party’s finance spokesman, looked downcast and pale as she was asked to step forward and answer the questions herself, which she did with ease.

“The Reserve Bank current rate is 0.10. And the unemployment rate is at 4 per cent,” she said.

Of course, it would have been even better if she had prepped the Labor leader on the figures before the press conference.

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Mr Albanese is travelling with Senator Gallagher — who recently copped the “mean girls” epithet from the late Senator Kimberley Kitching — because his main campaign adviser Mark Butler is lying low with Covid in Adelaide.

But given the cash rate has remained at 0.10 per cent since November 2020, Mr Albanese should have known the answer.

He didn’t and it’s an unhelpful reminder of the Liberal Party’s main attack on Mr Albanese.

He may have been Deputy Prime Minister for a nanosecond, but he’s never held a big economic portfolio such as Treasury or Finance.

Every political leader should know the basics — the cost of petrol, the interest rate and the unemployment rate.

The Prime Minister found that out at the National Press Club earlier this year the hard way, when he didn’t know the cost of a loaf of bread.

You can dismiss these questions as stupid, but the joke is on the Labor leader when you end up looking underprepared.

That said, the Labor leader starts this election campaign in front. It’s his election to lose.

His bungled press conference also served to distract from legitimate questions over the taxpayer-funded payout to Education Minister Alan Tudge’s ex-lover of over $500,000.

The Prime Minister suggests this is a “private matter”. He claims he doesn’t know how much is being spent. That answer is not going to cut it.

The real question is this — has the Prime Minister reinstated the “don‘t ask, don’t tell” policy that he maintained he had dumped in the wake of allegations of abuse in Parliament?

Originally published as Anthony Albanese tells colleagues he ‘f**ked up’