Election 2022: Albanese seems reliant on a frontbench shield

Labor leader Anthony Albanese with frontbencher Chris Bowen. Picture: Liam Kidston

Anthony Albanese’s latest policy blunder is a damaging development for the Labor leader.

It now goes to the issue of competence.

A pattern is emerging of a leader appearing to be not across his brief, not across policy, aloof to fundamental macroeconomics and reliant on his frontbench as a political shield against these shortcomings.

The latest stumble further strengthens the Coalition’s claims against Albanese that he is expecting to sail into government under the shadow of Scott Morrison’s unpopularity.

The risks of a small-target approach are now being realised for Labor strategists. Albanese is coming under scrutiny and is being tested in ways that he never was as a leader prior to the campaign.

This is an unsustainable campaign position for Labor if Albanese continues to be exposed at this level.

Slip-ups like Thursday’s failure to articulate Labor’s NDIS plans in government are amplified in a relative policy vacuum – which this campaign has become.

In isolation it was bad enough. The NDIS is a key feature of Labor’s social policy agenda. Albanese’s failure to identify the six pillars of the policy when asked is an indictment on his ambitions to govern.

And it is now a growing list.

Albanese’s first week of the campaign was punctuated by gaffes and bloopers, headlined by his inability on day one to identify the unemployment rate and the official cash rate.

The damage this caused for his personal standing was substantial. The Labor leader’s approval ratings fell to their lowest level of his leadership as a consequence.

His third week was spent largely in isolation with Covid.

In his first full week back on the campaign, he has stumbled once again. This is all on Albanese. It is not a failure of his campaign team. It is his to own and his to remedy.

But it raises the legitimate question over his use of the frontbench to assist him in answering questions from the travelling media pack and whether he can handle the pressure-cooker environment of an election campaign.

Albanese’s claim that it was a tactical decision to showcase his team begins to lack credibility when they are required to step in and answer basic questions on Labor policy that he is unable to.

It also risks denting the Labor leader’s confidence again heading into the second leaders’ debate on Sunday.

If Albanese keeps this up, the election choice will become a question of the devil you know and the one that doesn’t know the most basic of things.