Tom Minear: Labor shouldn’t try to be too clever in this campaign

Anthony Albanese wants to be spontaneous and authentic on the campaign trail but he can only win the upcoming election if he is relentless in prosecuting his preferred messages.

A day after Anthony Albanese forgot the unemployment rate and the Reserve Bank’s cash rate, Labor wasn’t in the mood for any more hits to their economic credentials.

So when the Herald Sun revealed the Coalition’s latest attack - that the opposition’s aspirational policies could cost $302bn over a decade - opposition finance spokeswoman Katy Gallagher came out swinging.

“Completely untrue, wrong, rubbish,” she said.

The Labor leader backed her in, saying that just because a policy was included in the party’s platform, it didn’t mean it would be implemented by a Labor government. That’s true. But it doesn’t make it unreasonable to ask questions about Labor’s spending plans.

For instance, the platform lists an aspiration to increase foreign aid to 0.5 per cent of gross national income. Opposition treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers has promised Labor will “do better than the government”. But how much better? Voters are none the wiser.

Similarly, Albanese has previously vowed to consider increasing the rate of the JobSeeker unemployment benefit in every budget, saying “everyone should be above the poverty line”.

To make that happen, the payment would have to be increased by $24 a day. But on Tuesday, opposition assistant treasury spokesman Andrew Leigh said Labor had no plans to review the JobSeeker rate, let alone increase it.

It was the government’s costing of Labor’s childcare policy that particularly infuriated Gallagher.

“I haven’t got a clue how they got to $63bn over 10 years,” she said.

“They’ve dreamt up this massive number.”

Opposition finance spokeswoman Katy Gallagher came out swinging. Picture: Toby Zerna

She maintained Labor’s plan would cost $5.4bn over four years. But that figure conveniently ignores the fact that Albanese has repeatedly promised a universal 90 per cent subsidy, once it has been examined in government by the Productivity Commission.

That is no aspiration - it is in their policy document. And while it is an incredibly popular idea, it will also be incredibly expensive, and Labor will have to find the money to pay for it. Gallagher would do well to tone down the outrage and explain how.

Labor’s $2.5bn aged care policy also has a gaping hole for their commitment to lift the wages of workers. Opposition frontbenchers rightly argue that figure will be determined by the Fair Work Commission, but that doesn’t mean they can expect to avoid detailing how they will foot the bill - and neither can the government, for that matter.

The maths on Albanese’s biggest campaign commitment so far - a $135m pledge for 50 “urgent care” facilities at GP clinics to take the pressure off emergency departments - seems similarly slippery.

They are supposed to be open at least 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and yet Labor won’t say how many staff this will involve or when the clinics will all be operational. It is hard to see how $2.7m per site over four years will be anywhere near enough money.

The fact is that by abandoning their sweeping revenue-raising agenda from 2019, the opposition is having to be more circumspect and crafty with its spending this time around.

Albanese’s desire to be spontaneous and authentic should have been tempered by campaign hardheads preaching discipline and concision. Picture: Toby Zerna

There is no better example than the $45bn price-tag for its three priciest pledges – the National Reconstruction Fund, the Housing Australia Future Fund and the Rewiring the Nation Corporation – which won’t hit the bottom line because they are off-budget funds.

This is politically savvy. But when the economy is the central issue of the campaign, as Albanese already learned the hard way, Labor should be careful not to be too clever by half.

That’s a good lesson for Labor’s broader campaign strategy as well.

On Sunday, in his opening press conference, Albanese spoke for 33 minutes and took 14 questions. In an obvious dig at Scott Morrison’s shorter doorstop that morning, Albanese boasted that he had faced questions from journalists “almost every day” this year and was “available … to talk to anyone who wants to talk to me”.

Albanese had convinced himself – without his team intervening – that he was prepared for the scrutiny of the campaign. The very next day, confronted by the travelling press pack for the first time, he made an embarrassing gaffe when asked about key economic figures.

“He froze when he stepped into the headlights,” a senior Labor figure said.

By Wednesday, Labor had changed tack, with Albanese at first planning to abandon his daily press conference and then only fronting the media for eight minutes. Journalists were suitably annoyed, but it should never have come to that.

Albanese’s desire to be spontaneous and authentic – to be the opposite of Morrison – should have been tempered by campaign hardheads preaching discipline and concision.

Transparency is undoubtedly important, and journalists will do their jobs regardless, but Albanese can only win if he is relentless in prosecuting his preferred messages.

That’s what the PM has done since Sunday, backed by tactical moves to pressure Labor. This offers little to voters in the way of vision, which is the irony of Morrison’s suggestion that Albanese is the small-target in this election. But it’s brutally effective.

The Easter break comes at just the right time for Labor to reassess and retool its strategy. Albanese has a strong story to tell; he just has to make sure Australians are hearing it.

Tom Minear is national political editor