Samantha Maiden: Has Albanese blown up his campaign? The answer is no
Anthony Albanese’s rocky start made Coalition dreams come true but the Prime Minister has nightmares of his own bubbling to the surface, writes Samantha Maiden.
Analysis
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The Liberal Party can hardly believe its luck that Anthony Albanese melted down like a Paddle Pop left out in the sun on the first day of the election campaign.
Some have dismissed his unemployment gaffe as “gotcha journalism”.
The travelling media hit the Labor leader with an economics 101 pop quiz that had him in all sorts of strife, literally sticking his tongue out in consternation.
But unlike the “gotcha” questions the Prime Minister Scott Morrison was asked at the national press club earlier this year – what’s the price of milk, bread and petrol? – these are not figures that bounce around and he should have known the answers.
“The national unemployment rate at the moment is … I think it’s 5.4 … sorry,” he said. “I’m not sure what it is,’’ the Labor leader said.
Campaign strategists’ 2am nightmares are made of this.
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.
It hasn’t been 4 per cent on a regular basis since the 1970s. So, there’s no excuses really for allowing himself to get slotted by a couple of journalists half his age on the campaign bus.
The Reserve Bank of Australia’s cash rate target has remained unchanged at 0.1 per cent since November, 2020.
It was devastating for the simple reason that it saw Albanese deliver all the grabs, quotes and video to fit with the Liberal Party’s campaign narrative that he’s a bungling economic idiot who is out of his depth.
You could not make this storyline up.
But is it fatal? Has Albanese blown up his campaign?
The answer is no.
Labor strategists are still quietly confident they can fall over the line on May 21, if their fearless leader doesn’t keep stuffing up.
But once again, unless things shift, they are looking at a slim majority, not the landslide suggested by published polls.
The magic number remains seven seats to form a majority 76-seat government, although the ALP could probably scrape in and form a government with just 73 seats and rely on crossbench MPs Bob Katter, Andrew Wilkie and the Greens Adam Bandt to survive.
That’s not to say the Liberal campaign has not been without its issues in the first few days.
The difference seems to be that the Prime Minister is simply more match fit to dispose of pesky questions.
On Wednesday, it emerged that the candidate for Warringah Katherine Deves had quietly deleted her entire social media history before running.
It’s standard operating procedure for political campaigns, but not the greatest plan when it’s all easily recovered through the Wayback Machine that archives deleted material on the internet.
Ms Deves has been a campaigner for women’s rights in sport. She does not want to allow trans people to play women’s sports because she argues they are bigger, stronger and could cause injuries.
Her campaign Save Women’s Sport, has emerged as the glossy, Lorna Jane-clad face of the anti-trans movement in Australia.
But some of her deleted tweets were less airbrushed, featuring graphic images of topless trans teenagers that she said showed people who were “surgically mutilated.”
In another post, she said she was “triggered” whenever she saw the LGBTQI+ flag, which made her wonder “what are they demanding now?”.
On Wednesday Ms Deves said the language she used in the debate was “not acceptable”.
“My advocacy for the rights and safety of women and girls is well known, and I stand by my desire to ensure we protect the safety of women and girls and our entire community,” she said.
“However, the language I used was not acceptable, and for that I apologise.
“My commitment is to continue listening to the views of people in Warringah, and the broader community – I will do this in a respectful way.”
And the Prime Minister, who had left the door open to supporting a bill to effectively ban trans people playing women’s sport earlier in the week, appeared to walk that back to note it was a private members bill, which he personally supports.
But of course the greatest impact of Albanese’s own goal is that it proved a distraction to the other big story that broke on Day 1 of the campaign – the secret payout to Education Minister Alan Tudge’s ex-lover worth well over $500,000.
When legal fees are included, former Liberal staffer Rachelle Miller’s claim could end up costing taxpayers nearly a million dollars.
It’s a funny old business considering that the Prime Minister insists Mr Tudge was “cleared” of any wrongdoing.
In a separate inquiry that was established to examine a narrowly focused set of allegations that he bullied his former staffer – claims he denies – there was no finding of wrongdoing, although the report noted Ms Miller did not participate.
That story isn’t over yet. Perhaps, you could call it unfinished business.
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