Election 2022: Anthony Albanese war games debate tactics

Anthony Albanese has held mock debates behind closed doors ahead of his first face-to-face clash with Scott Morrison in Brisbane on Wednesday night.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese in Brisbane on Tuesday. Picture: Toby Zerna

Anthony Albanese has held mock debates behind closed doors ahead of his first face-to-face clash with Scott Morrison in Brisbane on Wednesday night, which he hopes will reset his gaffe-prone campaign and boost morale in Labor ranks.

The Opposition Leader has spent weeks preparing for the first of three expected campaign debates, using senior colleagues to act as the Prime Minister in simulated test runs.

After a week dominated by mistakes, Mr Albanese set up a campaign base in his Brisbane hotel at the weekend for rolling meetings and briefings with top advisers and shadow cabinet ministers. Mr Albanese performed a similar role-play with Bill Shorten ahead of the 2019 election debates.

With Mr Albanese in Queensland since Friday, Mr Morrison has blitzed battleground seats in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.

Senior Liberal strategists said they expected Mr Albanese to perform better in the one-hour debate compared with recent press conferences, where he failed to name the unemployment rate and was forced to correct comments on Labor’s border security and health policies.

As both leaders try to win back undecided voters and disillusioned supporters who have flocked to independents and minor parties, Mr Morrison will go hard on Mr Albanese’s “small target” strategy and Labor’s health and education policies.

Mr Morrison is prepared to return serve on character attacks dished out by Mr Albanese, who is under pressure to repeat the historic trend of opposition leaders winning campaign debates.

The Labor leader will focus on the government’s response to cost of living pressures and labour shortages, press Labor’s claims that the government would expand its cashless debit card to pensioners and amplify his climate change, renewables, economic recovery, childcare and aged-care policies.

The leaders will deliver opening and closing statements, with questions asked by Sky News chief anchor Kieran Gilbert and an audience of 100 undecided voters chosen by Q&A Market Research.

The Australian understands both Coalition and Labor campaign headquarters have been struck with Covid-19 cases, putting pressure on measures to protect key figures from infection.

After Newspoll revealed 29 per cent of voters were backing minor parties and independents, Mr ­Albanese said “polls would come and go during the campaign”.

“I’ve been underestimated my whole life. My whole life has been one whereby I haven’t got a leg up. I have fought for everything that I have got.

“I will continue to put forward a really strong agenda for Australia’s future. And that will contrast with this government that have nothing to say about the present, ignore it (and) pretend this isn’t happening.”

With the Coalition behind Labor on primary and two-party-preferred votes less than five weeks out from the May 21 election, Mr Morrison said voters would make a choice between his government’s experience and a “Labor government supported by the Greens”.

“Over the next five weeks, people will be seeking to make that choice. It’s a choice between a government that you know, and a Labor Party that you don’t, who has had three years to tell you what their economic plan was, and they can’t even remember what the unemployment rate is,” Mr Morrison said.

He warned voters that a hung parliament scenario would deliver a “very uncertain and unstable outcome for Australia.”

“What they need is the stability and certainty that we have been able to deliver over these past three years.”