QandA: I don’t think Scott Morrison is an inclusive leader, says Anthony Albanese

Labor leader Anthony Albanese has sharpened his attack on the government for failing to control national borders in a wide-ranging appearance on QandA on Monday.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese on Monday’s QandA.

Nothing was off limits on Monday’s QandA that saw Anthony Albanese face an array of questions from all corners, but some answers were left for a later date by the Labor leader.

Spruiking his party’s position on childcare, he chided the Prime Minister for failing to take control and allowing state premiers to raise internal borders.

Mr Albanese, who in recent weeks has been sharpening his attacks on the government, had a simple answer when asked if Scott Morrison was a better leader than him: “No”.

“I think there are real weaknesses in his approach. I don’t think he is an inclusive leader. I think he has set up a National Cabinet process that began well, but since then he has been trying to fight with each of the state premiers who happen to be Labor,” he said.

He said he would work differently with the states.

“I would have been more constructive. The relationships have broken down. They broke down when the Prime Minister would say one thing in the meeting and a different thing out there publicly,” he said.

“If the Prime Minister had have been consistent, he would have been critical about the South Australian border being shut, the Tasmanian border being shut, as well as New South Wales, WA and Queensland.”

Tonight, @AlboMP is taking your questions on #QandA. Tune-in at 9.35pm AEDT on @ABCTV and iview. pic.twitter.com/VdAULjAo4J

— QandA (@QandA) October 11, 2020

In the sparse studio audience was his old friend Alex Bukarica, who he met on a bus on the way to Sydney University.

“To understand Anthony, you really have to understand his background and where he has come from. He has had one of the toughest upbringings of any person I know,” he said.

“He understands what it’s like to do it tough. He has got a great heart, and I just think the more people will know him, the more chance they have to interact with him, they will know him better and understand why they should vote for him.”

Mr Albanese noted how far he’d come from being a paperboy and working at “Maccas” and

Pancakes on the Rocks.

“I haven’t run a business, that’s true, but I’ve come up through my working life, I’ve always paid my way,” he said.

Can Anthony Albanese convince swinging voters to return to Labor ahead of the next election? #QandA pic.twitter.com/19LnvPzxxC

— QandA (@QandA) October 12, 2020

David Beins, a lapsed Labor voter in the audience, asked how Mr Albanese intended to win back a legion of like-minded voters, saying he needed to be inspired.

“Bringing up the emotion and being more passionate about what you believe in will make a big difference,” Mr Beins told the Labor leader.

Mr Albanese, channelling the energy of his budget reply, said he was passionate for equality for women, noting the Labor Party had shepherded many of the recent big reforms of modern Australia.

“We make the big changes,” he said.

“When we were in government for a short time, less time than the current government has been there, (we had) the National Broadband Network, which they trashed, of course, but are now having to fix up and try to retrofit, paid parental leave, the apology to the Stolen Generations, action on climate change.”

Disillusionment was a theme of several questions, with one person criticising the ALP’s branding of the “Morrison recession” as only feeding a drive not to want to vote.

“It sort of panders to the worst in people that are quick to judge,” said Mick Leahy, noting how both sides were causing voters to lose faith in politics.

“I don’t want to vote for, ‘Go the Sharkies!’ And I don’t want to vote for the Morrison recession,” he said.

But Mr Albanese said the branding was fair, particularly given the government’s use of the term “Keating recession”.

“Why is it legitimate to call it the Keating recession? Why is it legitimate to speak about Labor’s debt as the global financial crisis,” he said.

“I will make this prediction to you: When we have a first quarter of economic growth, if it is in this term, Scott Morrison will calling it the Morrison recovery.”

They don’t call it the “Rudd recession” because there wasn’t one!
This is unlike just about every other country in the western world which fell into recession.
Kevin Rudd’s policies avoided a recession in Australia.
Morrison’s policies have not avoided a recession in 2020#qanda

— Stephen Koukoulas (@TheKouk) October 12, 2020

Mr Albanese, addressing criticism that he and the opposition had “disappeared from people’s minds” during the pandemic noted it “had been a challenge”.

When asked if it was a mistake to have stepped back from challenging the government, he said “it was the right thing to do”.

“People have wanted the government to succeed because we’ve been in a pandemic. So the political debate has been very different this year,” he said.

“Doing the right thing by the national interest is always the right thing to do, and we are in circumstances whereby it just wasn’t appropriate so that we, for example, said with each of the packages, we said, we have problems.

“We put them forward constructively. It was Labor who put forward wage subsidies and opposed originally by the government. They increased the Newstart allowance and called it JobSeeker and then the queues formed because that was a signal to business that it’s OK to lay people off because they would be looked after.”

Mr Albanese noted it was scandalous the degree to which companies who had received government payments had at the same time spent up big on advertising.

“We think there are issues there whereby some companies, you would be aware, when you pick up your paper, they have 16-page wraparounds, but they are getting JobKeeper, they’re getting public subsidies,” he said in reference to Harvey Norman advertising on many metro mastheads.

“That is, the design of the wage subsidy system has seen a whole lot of people miss out who

needed it, and other companies who get substantial benefit from it clearly are doing very well.

“My concern isn’t people who are getting it. My concern are people who are being left behind.”

What impact would Labor’s childcare plan have on low-income families? #QandA pic.twitter.com/8v295oztv2

— QandA (@QandA) October 12, 2020

Mr Albanese came armed to the QandA grilling with an arsenal of Labor announcements in line with those made last week in his budget reply, but he refused to be drawn on the party’s position on the Stage 3 tax cuts that form the final piece of Josh Frydenberg’s tax package.

However, he implied the government may look to cancel them as a way to pay for their proposed spending package.

“We will have a whole lot of savings that we will make,” he said, “the Stage 3 tax cuts are $130 billion. Josh Frydenberg on Insiders on Sunday said the reason why they weren’t brought forward was they wanted to get bang for their buck. So, saying they wanted to get bang from the buck from Stage 3 tax cuts (were) from Josh Frydenberg’s own words.

“My concern isn’t the fact that the government spent money, it is that it hasn’t spent money wisely. $100 billion of new spending last week on Tuesday, adding up to a trillion dollars of debt and that will rise to $1.7 trillion by 2030 and there will be nothing to show for it.”

When grilled on his climate policies, Mr Albanese pointed to his past role in pushing climate legislation through the parliament.

“I have been a guy who has been around a while, who wrote our climate change policy that we put into place from 2007,” he said.

“There is now no energy policy. Last year there was a 50 per cent decline in investment in renewables, according to the Reserve Bank.”

He said that he supported interim emissions targets on the road to zero net emissions by 2050, despite the recent internal ructions in some parts of his party over climate targets.

“Labor’s position is that you need to transition towards zero net emissions by 2050. We know that,” he said.

Mr Albanese refused to support the petition, pushed by former prime minister Kevin Rudd, demanding an inquiry into media concentration.

“Kevin has raised legitimate issues, and he is within his rights as a former prime minister to do so,” he said.

“He is particularly focused – it’s not a broad focus – it’s on Murdoch, on News Corp, and it’s something that we have to deal with, I think in terms of, we tend to get coverage that, in my view, from time to time – and I expressed it directly to them, isn’t really fair.”

But he said Mr Rudd’s efforts would likely achieve little.

“It is a bit like complaining about the referee in a footy game. It might make you feel OK, it doesn’t change the outcome or change the result,” he said.

“There is no point, in my view, in terms of short-term, looking at just complaining about that. I from time to time – I’m not Josh Frydenberg, I don’t ring editors every day – from time to time I do it if it is particularly over the top.”

Mr Albanese said he believed in actively engaging with media that didn’t align with his politics.

“I used to go on Andrew Bolt’s program. Andrew is not someone who is a Labor voter,” he said.

“I believe in putting my argument and sometimes people would complain, if I write opinion pieces in News Limited publications, I will continue to do so. I will continue to take every opportunity I have to talk to the Australian public through whatever media vehicle, accepting that some of them have a different balance and that’s the way it is.”

Hamish seriously just asked where was the evidence Sky after dark presenters are biased against Labor!!!! Peta Credlin, Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones... #QED #Qanda

— Ged Kearney (@gedkearney) October 12, 2020