Federal election campaign: Sharply contrasting fortunes for Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese on first day

While Anthony Albanese was wilting under the pressure of basic questions, Scott Morrison was settling into a familiar rhythm.

While Labor leader Anthony Albanese was wilting under the pressure of basic questions on Monday morning, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was slipping into the same comfortable rhythm that characterised his last election campaign in 2019.

After a blitz of TV and radio interviews on Monday morning, Mr Morrison visited a canning business in the marginal electorate Gilmore, held by Labor’s Fiona Phillips.

Nothing remarkable happened, and that is precisely the point.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese struggled to answer basic questions. Picture: Toby Zerna

Mr Morrison did a quick tour of the facility, checked out a novelty can label with the theme “ScoMo’s Strong Economy”, uttered one of his notorious lame dad lines (“A full strength brew on the economy!”), and then spent a 20-minute press conference repeatedly pivoting to his core message about the election being “a choice” between two “teams”, as opposed to a referendum on his own performance.

In other words we saw some classic, low-risk campaigning, with Mr Morrison very much sticking to his talking points.

“A full strength brew on the economy,” Scott Morrison says, as he brandishes this election-themed can label. The lameness of the election campaign has begun #auspolpic.twitter.com/9oM20CYS98

— Sam Clench (@SamClench) April 11, 2022

There were potential pitfalls for the Prime Minister. The man standing next to him, local Liberal candidate Andrew Constance, had previously slammed his response to the bushfire crisis in early 2020. Mr Morrison’s government was preparing to give Alan Tudge’s former staffer and lover, Rachelle Miller, a payout of more than $500,000 in taxpayer dollars.

This while Mr Tudge technically remains a member of Mr Morrison’s cabinet, set to fully return to his role as Education Minister after the election.

That issue lingers, and will undoubtedly rise to the forefront again in the coming days, as it should. But today, at least, he got through it.

The closest thing to a hairy moment came as Mr Morrison left the venue, and his car zipped passed a routine group of protesters who were awaiting him outside.

Scott Morrison’s car swiftly moved past the dozen or so protesters. Picture: Jason Edwards

Mr Morrison’s only other formal stop of the day, a visit to an advanced manufacturing centre in South Nowra, was even less eventful.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that both sides have started the campaign at a noticeably modest pace. Mr Morrison and Mr Albanese both finished their final events around lunchtime.

(A happy by-product of that light schedule is that I’m writing this from a comfy hotel room and not a cramped bus seat. Huzzah.)

Of course, it only took Mr Albanese one campaign stop to derail his own message. At a press conference in Devonport, Tasmania, he was unable to answer simple questions about the RBA cash rate and unemployment rate.

Conveniently for Mr Morrison, that fed into the government’s existing argument that the Labor leader is too inexperienced in economic matters.

The Albanese trainwreck unfolded a short time before Mr Morrison’s own press conference in Gilmore. Confronted with the same questions – and, undoubtedly, having been briefed on them by his staff – Mr Morrison had no trouble answering.

So, we have seen quite the contrast in fortunes for Mr Morrison and Mr Albanese on the first full day of campaigning. But how much will it matter?

Imagine, for a moment, that this election is a rugby league match. Mr Albanese just fumbled the opening kick-off, while Mr Morrison completed an unremarkable, workmanlike set of six without dropping the ball.

We’re only two minutes or so into an 80-minute match. Those two minutes will not decide the result. But they will affect the two teams’ morale.

Labor, having approached kick-off with such confidence, has now realised it really could blow this, and the Coalition has received an injection of belief. Maybe a repeat of 2019 is genuinely possible, if Mr Morrison can keep grinding away with that consistent, efficient, low-error style of football/campaigning.

As our political editor Samantha Maiden reported earlier, Mr Albanese was not fooling himself in the aftermath of his mistake. He told Labor colleagues he “f***ed up” and it “won’t happen again”.

That would be easier to belief if this unforced error had come after weeks of error-free campaigning. Instead it happened at his very first press conference.