Two easy numbers for Albo to recall: 1-nil. That’s the score

The risk for ANthony Albanese is his inability to identify the cash rate and the unemployment rate, at worst, now comes to define the rest of the campaign. Picture: Sky News

Anthony Albanese’s spectacular economic own goal is serious and won’t be easily erased.

And it can’t be dismissed as simply a mistake. The Labor leader didn’t know the answer to two basic questions that are fundamental to the economic recovery and the livelihoods of millions of Australians.

If there were any two numbers people would expect a prime minister to know, it would be these.

The risk for the Labor leader is that his inability to identify the cash rate and the unemployment rate, at worst, now comes to define the rest of the campaign.

At best it becomes a prominent feature of the Coalition’s central premise – that Labor can’t be trusted to manage the economy.

The Coalition advertising campaign has been given a gift on day one.

Labor frontbenchers courageously defended their leader, claiming that a campaign wasn’t a memory test.

But this misses the point.

From Labor’s point of view, they now have a genuine crisis.

The damage is compounded for Albanese because of the small target strategy that Labor has chosen to adopt around the leader.

In the absence of a full picture, failures like this can fill in the blanks.

At a time when Labor is still introducing Albanese to voters, after 26 years in parliament, voters still aren’t sure who he is.

Albanese’s pitch is that he is ready, he’s up to the job, and Labor knows what it’s doing when it comes to economic management.

Given Albanese is a blank canvas, this is the message that voters will now hear and see.

Trying to maintain an argument that Albanese is a safe pair of hands when he can’t nominate the unemployment rate won’t engender confidence in his grasp of what is at stake.

Not knowing what the official cash rate is undermines Labor’s entire narrative on cost of living when a period of higher interest rates is on the horizon.

Labor’s campaign strategy will doubtless now be in furious revision.

Albanese will now spend the first week on the defensive. To get beyond it, he is likely to bring forward announcements that Labor had planned to keep up their sleeves.

This was a serious blunder and goes directly to the question of competence.

People may be sick of Morrison and are considering giving Albanese a go, but things like this will put doubt in undecided voters’ minds that he is up to the task.