Anthony Albanese clanger hardly fatal, but wounding and wildly embarrassing
The election writs are barely 24 hours old, and already we have seen a flameout as spectacular as John Hewson’s grocery list or Mal Meninga’s pulling the pin on his seconds-old political career.
Opinion
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The election writs are barely 24 hours old, and already we have seen a flame out as spectacular as John Hewson’s grocery list or Mal Meninga’s pulling the pin on his seconds-old political career.
The scene: A media conference in Launceston, Tasmania, where Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese is hoping to pick up the marginal seat of Bass for Labor.
The question: Can you name the national unemployment rate.
The answer: “The national unemployment rate? I think it’s” – and here Mr Albanese pulled a confused toddler face – “I think it’s five point uh, five point four. I’m not sure.”
Kaboom.
In political terms it was a train wreck worthy of the 1976 Richard Pryor-Gene Wilder buddy flick Silver Streak, with its epic sequence of a locomotive tearing through Chicago’s Central Station.
The knife was further twisted when reporters put similar questions to the shadow finance minister, Senator Katy Gallagher.
“Shadow finance minister, do you know what the unemployment rate is, and what the Reserve Bank current rate is?”
“The Reserve Bank current rate is, um 0.1, and the unemployment rate is at four percent.”
Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner.
Labor supporters will call this a gotcha, though it was no more of a gotcha then when Prime Minister Scott Morrison was asked to name the price of a loaf of bread at the National Press Club.
Indeed it is an easier question than one about bread or milk or petrol because those prices can fluctuate from shop to shop and brand to brand.
The cash rate and the unemployment rate are single figures, updated on a regular basis and widely reported.
Mr Albanese nominated a figure that was out by more than a third, and reflects a far different reality to the one Australians are living in.
There are forty days left in the campaign and at this stage the error is hardly fatal.
But it is both wounding and wildly embarrassing, and suggests a would-be prime minister who’s not across the basics.
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