James Morrow: No way to sugarcoat horror show start to Albo’s campaign

Labor is not out of the fight but Anthony Albanese’s small target strategy is now threatening to make him disappear altogether after a testy eight minute grilling, writes James Morrow.

Anthony Albanese rocked up to this election with all the confidence of a VIP Lounge punter convinced that after a string of losses he was due a win.

Four days in and he is starting to look like that same guy running through excuses for what happened to the rent.

After experiencing the worst “I don’t like Mondays” moment since the Boomtown Rats when he couldn’t name the unemployment rate, two warring facts became desperately clear.

One, that the opposition leader was terribly rattled.

And two, that he desperately needed a reset.

Guess which one won?

It’s been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day on Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s campaign trail. Picture: Toby Zerna

The plan was to roll out an announcement for urgent care centres, move the focus from personality to policies, and get the campaign back on safe Labor ground where they always do a better job of looking after you than the Coalition.

It was not to be.

“Rattled” was already beating “reset” when, on Wednesday morning, Albanese’s minders said he wouldn’t be taking any questions or holding a press conference about the health announcement.

After the travelling press pack arced up Mr Albanese consented to a press conference, presumably hoping for a few friendly questions about how great Labor was for promising to take pressure off hospitals and being the party of puppies and kittens.

This turned out to be wishful thinking.

Mr Albanese walked out of a press conference without answering journalists’ questions in Melbourne on day three of the federal election campain. Picture: Sky News

After only six minutes of questions about Mr Albanese’s claims to have been an economic advisor to the Hawke government, whether his urgent care centres were just a re-heated Bill Shorten policy, and whether he’d apologise for implying a voter who tried to speak to him was connected to a supposedly racist campaign, “last question” was called.

After eight minutes it was all done, with Mr Albanese coming away looking testy and defensive.

Having been running a small target strategy, the sense was more that this was a guy who wanted to disappear.

Where's Albo? Anthony Albanese becomes the incredible shrinking man after his unemployment rate gaffe on the campaign trail this week.

There is a lot to say about this, not the least of which is that the campaign is barely ten per cent over and most voters are still not seriously tuned in to the fight – there is still plenty of time for Labor to recover and romp it in.

It is still a seat by seat fight, and if Coalition backers are thinking about popping the corks early they should put the bubbles back on ice.

But there is no getting away from the fact that Mr Albanese has had a shocking start to the campaign, and that people are beginning to wonder if the past few days heralds bigger problems with strategy, staffing, and perhaps even the candidate itself.

One senior Labor figure admitted as much, saying that while the situation was not “irretrievable” there was no way to “sugarcoat how bad this week has been”.

There’s no sugarcoating it: Anthony Albanese has had a terrible start. However, the race is far from over. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Flavio Brancaleone

The performance also seemed to confirm what Coalition figures have long whispered, which is that under the sustained light and heat of a campaign, Mr Albanese’s small target strategy would come undone, as would the details behind the policies.

But the biggest issue the past few days have revealed is that Labor’s whipsawing between making this election about personality on the one hand – “vote for us, ScoMo’s a jerk” – and policy on the other reveals that neither effort is quite hitting the mark.

Recall all the work that has been put in to sharpening up Mr Albanese’s image, right down to the modern specs and the well-tailored faintly blue shirt carrying a finely patterned silk tie he wore Sunday to suggest a shift away from the “pollies’ uniform” favoured by most male MPs.

Yet the most recent Newspoll found that on the preferred prime minister question Mr Albanese had fallen three points while Scott Morrison, whose mere mention on Twitter is enough to trigger aneurisms, went up one.

Former PM Kevin Rudd and The Leader of the Australian Labor Party, Anthony Albanese, tour the Southbank Collective Markets, South Brisbane. Photographer: Liam Kidston.

Meanwhile on policy, Mr Albanese says all Labor’s policies have been costed, that they are new and not reimagined ideas from campaigns past, and that everything can be paid for by cracking down on multinationals fiddling their tax.

But when asked about tax, the opposition ducks admitting how much might be raised by such a crackdown (experts say in the neighbourhood of $1 billion, hardly enough to pay for aged care reforms alone) and refuses to commit to a tax cap.

Again, it is not insurmountable, but it is a big problem.

Remember, the last time Labor came to power in its own right was 2007.

Kevin Rudd, himself a factionless cipher, was helped into office by the inevitable “it’s time” factor John Howard suffered after more than a decade in the chair.

An ongoing hum of leadership chaos (was Peter Costello really promised a handover?) did not help, and the Coalition’s last roll of the dice over-reach on WorkChoices gave Labor and the unions something hard and specific to campaign against.

Today, Mr Albanese does not have any of those advantages.

Easter and Anzac Day will see Christmas truces to the trench warfare of the campaign. If Labor is serious about winning, they need to use them.

Originally published as James Morrow: No way to sugarcoat horror show start to Albo’s campaign