Samantha Maiden: You won’t catch Albanese running around topless with a surfboard at Manly

In the words of one Labor MP, even Anthony Albanese can’t cock this up, writes Samantha Maiden.

Anthony Albanese doesn’t look like a prime minister. Not yet anyway.

That’s been the concern muttered quietly among even his colleagues for years.

As one Labor frontbencher once told me, “The question is, does he pass the having-a-cuppa-with-the-Queen test?”

Could you picture him there, smiling in his new spectacles and enjoying an Earl Grey with Queen Elizabeth?

The MP who said that is still on his frontbench, just quietly. A survivor of Bill Shorten losing the unlosable election.

But this time around, Anthony Albanese appears to be on the precipice of beating the guy nobody thought he could.

What does Labor’s own polling tell us? The ALP’s tracking poll, which is a basket of 16 battleground seats, has Labor ahead.

It suggests a 5 per cent swing to Labor and a majority government. But ALP strategists remain nervous.

In the words of one Labor MP, that suggests even Anthony Albanese can’t cock this up.

But they worry he seems to be coasting during these final days of the campaign as Scott Morrison accelerates over super for housing.

In South Australia, separate polling has Labor picking up the seat of Boothby with a 6 per cent swing.

Australian Labor Leader Anthony Albanese speaks at the National Press Club on Wednesday. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

The character question is one the Liberal Party continues to pursue though in focus groups.

There’s real hesitation around Anthony Albanese.

The question is whether or not the Liberals have left it too late to prosecute the case.

This week, I asked the Liberal Party to open up their files on what the focus groups are saying about Anthony Albanese.

“He hasn’t got the personality to lead the country,’’ said one voter.

“He’s asking us to trust him with the most important job in the country but it just feels to me that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,’’ said another.

“If I go into the supermarket, I need to know how much things cost and what my household budget is. I need to know what’s in my bank account and my super. We’ve got mortgages and bills to pay. It’s not right that he doesn’t know.”

Another common refrain: “He needs to do his homework”.

“You don’t just make a policy once you become prime minister, that should be in the plan. Albo is making all these big promises but he hasn’t costed it, he’s just putting these things up to try and get elected,’’ a voter said.

“They don’t just go overseas just to shake hands and take photos, they negotiate big deals and if you don’t know what you are negotiating, it affects your country. If he stuffs up with billions of dollars, we pay for it in taxes.

“You want your prime minister to know what’s going on with the country; he just doesn’t know, and he looks awkward, what else doesn’t he know the answer to?”

On the question of a hung parliament another voter told the Liberals: “I don’t think he’s strong enough to handle that – he’d settle for anything just to get it (policy) through. He’s just too weak”

That last criticism is completely wrong in my opinion. He’s actually very practised in hung parliaments. He probably just doesn’t want to end up with one if he could choose.

Watching Anthony Albanese at the press club on Wednesday was a reminder he is not the aggressive macho man we have become accustomed to leading the nation in recent years.

A Current Affair host Tracy Grimshaw interviews Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on A Current Affair. Tracy Grimshaw interviews Prime Minister Scott Morrison

He probably won’t threaten to shirt-front the Russian President or decapitate an onion with his bare teeth like Tony Abbott did.

You won’t catch him running around topless with a surfboard at Manly.

He’s not Scott Morrison either, who this week revealed he was not questioning his gender, heaven forbid, but was now identifying himself as a heavy truck.

On A Current Affair, Tracy Grimshaw thus began with the question many have pondered since the Prime Minister compared himself with a heavy truck last week: “How long have you known that you are a bulldozer?,’’ she said.

In a brutal interrogation, the veteran host didn’t hold back when she suggested the Prime Minister was not the superhero he suggested he was to voters.

“Prime Minister, you said at your launch on Sunday that you saved the country,’’ she said.

“You don’t hold a hose, you weren’t in your tinnie plucking people off rooftops, you weren’t doing 16-hour days in PPE on Covid wards, you didn’t get enough vaccines soon enough, you didn’t get enough RATs so that we could finally have a holiday interstate for Christmas, and China is set up, based in the Solomons,” she said.

“Do you think maybe you slightly over-egged the part about saving the country?.”

Tracy Grimshaw – proving more effective than the Opposition Leader has for most of this campaign.

But he just might still win.