Branch-stacking scandal: Anthony Albanese’s mistakes under pressure

Anthony Albanese can’t hide from the tough questions and federal implications of the Victorian branch-stacking scandal, and is making mistakes under pressure.

The Opposition Leader keeps duck-shoving questions about his Victorian colleague Anthony Byrne’s involvement in the covert taping of the damning conversations that has led to the implosion of Premier Daniel Andrews’s Labor cabinet and tried to limit the implications to the state ALP.

But the dramatic action in an Albanese-led national executive taking over candidate selection for the next Victorian and federal election, not due for two years, makes a mockery of the notion it doesn’t impact on federal Labor.

Albanese can obviously see the threat posed by thousands of false memberships and what is a full-out factional war fighting for control­ of the ALP in Victoria, with insidious undertones about the strength of his own leadership.

At the same time, Albanese’s reliance on using parliamentary cover and tactics to attack Scott Morrison and undermine his standing, especially over bushfires, is failing because of errors of fact and tactical misjudgments.

While he was quick to join the Victorian Premier in seeking sackings and expulsion for disreput­able behaviour associated with branch stacking, Albanese has been slow to address the role of his federal colleagues in what is clearly an internal political sting.

For two days, Albanese has tried to avoid persistent questions about the extent of federal Labor involvement, at the very least covert­ recordings in the office of the deputy chairman of the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security.

But, when every Labor MP stands up, the media want to know what it means for federal Labor and how it took the media to reveal such bad behaviour that the nationa­l executive is taking over in Victoria.

Trying to fight back and exploit Morrison’s previous mistake of going on holiday during the summer­ bushfires, and crank up the by-election campaign in Eden-Monaro, Albanese asked why a couple of beef producers in Cobargo on the NSW south coast had been “left behind” and didn’t receiv­e a bushfire recovery grant.

He was dead wrong and looked rushed and sloppy. Sticking to his theme, the Opposition Leader than asked about failure to clear debris from bushfires in Eden-Monaro and was slapped down for using out-of-date figures.

Labor’s bid to seek to amend child-sex-offence legislation by removing­ minimum mandatory sentencing “on principle” was a disaster on two fronts. Labor introduced mandatory detention of asylum-seekers almost 30 years ago and later mandatory sentencing for people-smugglers.

The Coalition wedged Labor and the Greens in the Senate and insisted on no amendments. When something big goes wrong the little things start to go wrong too and it’s all a result of pressure.