Andrew Bolt: Farcical scrambling shows Anthony Albanese not ready to lead

Anthony Albanese has been making wild promises in a panic that would smash the economy, and then fibbing to hide his incompetence. Surely the penny is dropping with voters.

When did a Labor or Liberal leader last look so unready to be Prime Minister? Mark Latham, maybe?

But Albanese! Prime Minister Anthony Albanese … How can this be?

Surely the penny is now dropping with voters, after Albanese’s farcical scrambling over the past few days.

We already know Albanese started this election campaign thinking unemployment was much higher than it actually is.

That turned into a pattern. In his nervous press conferences, Albanese has repeatedly assumed this economy is worse than it is, meaning he’s got the wrong plans to “fix” it.

For instance, he then claimed more people now relied on casual work, when there are actually fewer.

He also said there were more than twice as many people juggling three jobs than there really are.

And ask Albanese the cost of all his promises, he refuses to tell, or can’t.

Ask Albanese the cost of his promises and he refuses to tell — or can’t. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

All that we know is that it’s even more than the Liberals’ promises, just when inflation is roaring back and we need to cut our debt, not add to it.

But it was not until this week that Albanese also got hopelessly exposed in making crazy promises he can’t keep. Boy, did his Labor colleagues freak.

Albanese had already got away – just – with promising to put a nurse in every aged care home around the clock, when in fact we can’t find enough already, as one of his frontbenchers, Mark Dreyfus, admitted.

But now the whole Albanese circus his driven into a ditch.

Albanese’s big pitch is that everything is going up under the Liberals except your wages, implying that under an Albanese government your wages will rise as fast as prices. Labor ads hammer that claim.

But this was always fakery. No Prime Minister can simply order wages to rise.

In Sunday’s debate, Albanese’s fraud was laid bare when reporter Chris Uhlmann asked: “To summarise, you cannot guarantee that real wages will rise?”

Albanese ducked: “We will try to do what we can.” No promises at all, because Albanese has been selling moon dust.

Other journalists were now waking up to his con, and on Tuesday Albanese was asked another direct question – and this time panicked.

Has anyone ever been as unprepared to be prime minister since Mark Latham?

Journalist: You said you don’t want people to go backwards. Does that mean you support a wage hike of at least 5.1 per cent to keep up with inflation?

Albanese: Absolutely.

Absolutely? A 5.1 per cent wage rise would be lovely for people on the minimum wage, but disastrous for many small business owners who must pay their wages and are already struggling. It would also add to the inflation that’s too high already.

Albanese’s answer was so obviously wrong that his minders quickly briefed journalists that their boss hadn’t actually heard the full question.

Yeah, right. They gave that same pathetic excuse when Albanese falsely claimed he supported temporary protection visas.

Campaign spokesman Kristina Keneally even berated a Sky News presenter for asking about Albanese’s support for a 5.1 per cent wage rise.

“That was a misstatement of what was said,” she snapped. Don’t believe your lying ears!

Even the next morning, another Labor spokesman, Tony Burke, was still refusing to confirm Albanese really would ask Fair Work Australia to raise the minimum wage by 5.1 per cent: “I’m just not going further into that.”

You could sense Labor’s terror. Oh, no! Albanese has stuffed up again!

But Albanese was now trapped.

If he admitted his mistake, he’d prove he’s truly clueless on the economy he wants to run.

He’d also be admitting he’d been hoaxing voters. By not backing a wage rise as high as the inflation rate, he’d confirm that even under Labor, prices would still rise faster than wages.

So Albanese just bluffed. In his press conference on Wednesday, he insisted he stood by what he’d said, but avoided repeating that figure again – a wage rise of 5.1 per cent. He also wouldn’t promise to include that figure in a formal Labor submission to Fair Work.

But by pretending his mistake was actually considered policy, Albanese was forced to add to his shame by defending it with one dumb claim after another.

No, a wage rise that big wasn’t inflationary. Ha!

No, a big rise in the minimum wage wouldn’t flow into penalty rates and awards. Really?

What a frightening insight into our next Prime Minister – making wild promises in a panic that would smash the economy, and then fibbing to hide his incompetence.

Three years of an Albanese government sound exciting. That is, if you’re into disaster porn.