Albanese squirms over economics background

Voters expect political leaders, especially prime ministers, to be authentic about who they are and what they stand for. The idea of an impostor leading the nation would be anathema. In trying to dig himself out of a hole because he did not know the unemployment rate and the Reserve Bank cash rate, Anthony Albanese has invited media scrutiny of his economic credentials.

He told journalists he “became an economic policy adviser to the Hawke government” after four years studying for an economics degree at the University of Sydney. He repeated that assertion on Wednesday. But the minister he served, Tom Uren, had no economic role in that government. The Opposition Leader’s parliamentary biography lists his job with Uren as research officer.

The reformist centre-right Hawke government, in which Paul Keating was treasurer, had one of the best economic records of any post-war government. Its groundbreaking reforms – floating the dollar, financial deregulation, tariff cuts and early labour market reform – set the nation up for years of growth. Subsequent Labor leaders and treasurers pledged to emulate it. Few did so. But Mr Albanese has pledged to govern in the style of Mr Hawke.

Serving as a Hawke government economics adviser should boost a Labor leader’s economic credentials – unless he happened to be a noted opponent of its reforms, as Mr Albanese was years ago. Troy Bramston revealed in his book Bob Hawke: Demons and Destiny: “Anthony Albanese, a delegate to the national conference, was among those in the Left who voted to return to a regulated ­exchange rate. Albanese opposed many of the major reforms of the period, from fiscal consolidation and privatisation to cutting tariffs, ­exporting uranium and introducing HECS.”

Mr Albanese’s spokesman says he was employed as an economist by Uren, who was minister for local government, territories and administrative services between 1985 and 1989. It was not an economic portfolio. Uren, like Mr Albanese, was part of Labor’s Socialist Left faction. He was also a critic of much of the Hawke-Keating reform agenda. Uren’s memoir, Straight Left, did not refer to Mr Albanese as an economics adviser. But it mentioned that when Uren employed him, “some of my comrades on the Left said, ‘Oh, you’re putting a young Trot on your staff’.”

Mr Albanese is sensitive about some of his earlier political ideas, including the resolution he put to the 1991 ALP conference calling for an inheritance tax. He quoted a pamphlet, The Case for Death Duties, distributed by Britain’s Fabian Society. In the past three years, Mr Albanese has moved to the pragmatic centre, dropping Bill Shorten’s big-tax agenda. He has mocked efforts to scrutinise his past economic positions. Yet, curiously, he draws attention to them, prompting further media inquiries. In February, he even tried to table one of his university essays. He is defensive about the government’s claims that he lacks experience in an economic portfolio. Labor’s ad, released on Saturday, highlighted his Sydney University economics degree.

All of which has shifted the focus of the campaign to where Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg want it – to their contention that Mr Albanese would not be a safe pair of hands leading the economy. Mr Albanese cut short Wednesday’s press conference after promising to answer all questions. As US inflation hit a 40-year high of 8.5 per cent and New Zealand lifts interest rates, it is in the national interest that jobs and the cash rate be front and centre of the campaign.