It’s only day three of the campaign and already there has been a turning point. It’s a result of Anthony Albanese’s failure to name the unemployment and cash rates but it goes well beyond a tactical error and distraction.
The 2022 campaign has now undergone a strategic shift: the main election debate is now about the economy: exactly where Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg want it to be.
Since the Opposition Leader’s tactical blunder on Monday, the economy has been front and centre for the Opposition Leader and Labor frontbenchers as Albanese has tried get his campaign back on the rails and restore some personal credibility.
Even a tried and true Labor strength of Medicare and a vow on Wednesday to “strengthen Medicare” was sidetracked into Albanese’s increasingly shrill defences of his record and economic credentials.
This is because there is now a shift in focus and strategy to a full-on economic debate.
The basic assumption for months before the election was called was that if Labor could concentrate on the Prime Minister’s perceived failings and unpopularity with a frustrated electorate the ALP was on a winner.
But, if the argument is to be about economic management and recovery after the global pandemic and recession, the Coalition is far more likely to win thanks to world-beating employment and growth figures.
On Wednesday Jim Chalmers, Labor’s Treasurer if the ALP wins, issued a challenge to Morrison that if he wants a debate on the economy “to bring it on”.
“So if Scott Morrison wants his economic record to be a big part of the election campaign, we say bring it on,” Chalmers boldly declared.
This was just before his leader once again was subjected to scrutiny about his economic knowledge, his accuracy on various essential figures and his claim he was an economic adviser to the Hawke Government.
Well, this is exactly what Morrison and Josh Frydenberg want, and given this first week of campaigning is curtailed for Easter, it’s difficult not judge the first week a victory for the Coalition against the odds and polls.
Some Labor MPs take solace in the fact that Albanese’s big blunder occurred early in the campaign rather than later and believe the Easter truce declared for Good Friday and Easter Sunday will give him time to reframe his campaign and get back to the ground he wants to fight on.
But, because Albanese has continued to dig a hole for himself on economic and experience claims – overreaching as he tries to fill a curriculum void in the six weeks of a campaign instead of having done so in a three-year term as Labor leader – there is a real danger what may have been a one-day, one-week horror will bleed into the rest of the campaign.
This is particularly the case since Morrison and the Treasurer – and Shadow Treasurer – want the economy to be the central debate.
Albanese’s “brainfreeze”, “ignorance”, “gaffe” and mind “going blank” is more than a simple journalistic “gotcha” moment about grocery prices because it is leading to a strategic shift in the campaign and one that favours the Coalition.
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