Andrew Bolt: Albo’s election campaign could be dead after leaders’ debate

Anthony Albanese has already used up eight of his nine lives in one week — so will he again fall flat at Wednesday’s debate?

What an implosion.

Anthony Albanese’s disastrous election campaign could be dead by Wednesday, just 10 days after it started.

On Wednesday the Labor leader holds his first election debate with Prime Minister Scott Morrison – when Albanese has already used up eight of his nine lives in just the first week of the campaign, and started his second week with yet another blunder.

Asked on Sunday by a reporter if he supported the Morrison government’s Operation Sovereign Borders to stop illegal immigrants, “and if so do you support the retention of temporary protection visas”, Albanese firmly answered “yes”.

But just five minutes later, he had to backtrack yet again.

He’d heard only half the question, he said lamely.

His yes should have been no.

The hearts of Labor MPs around the country would have frozen.

Dear God, does this guy have a clue about his own policies?

Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese will enter their first election debate on Wednesday.

They’d now know that one more mistake in Wednesday’s debate could finish off a Labor campaign that’s already exposed Albanese as clueless on economics, deceitful about his experience, confused over details, limited in vision and flustered under pressure.

I’m not kidding about the eight lives he’s used up already.

Life one: Albanese greeted the calling of the election by waffling for half an hour – talking even about patting puppies – instead of giving voters a crisp message about why he should be Prime Minister.

Life two: Albanese had no idea on the first day of the campaign what our unemployment rate was – our most critical economic statistic.

Life three: Albanese also didn’t know the cash rate, which helps determine your mortgage rate.

Life four: Albanese ludicrously waved around his economics degree, completed nearly 40 years ago, as proof he knew “what makes the economy ticks”.

Life five: Albanese falsely boasted he “was an economic policy adviser to the Hawke Government”, when records show he was just an electorate officer for a far-Left junior minister in charge of local government.

Anthony Albanese’s disastrous election campaign has imploded. Picture: Toby Zerna

Life six: Shocked by his mistakes, Albanese cut his press conferences short – Sunday’s lasted just four questions – making him look shifty and scared.

Life seven: Albanese falsely claimed his promise to create 50 urgent care clinics had been “fully costed” by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office.

Life eight: Albanese said he supported turning back boats of illegal immigrants, something he’d once opposed, but added this meant offshore detention wouldn’t be needed, forcing him to later clarify that he hadn’t meant to rule out that successful policy.

Eight mistakes like that in just week one is astonishing, and suggests the Labor MPs who privately complain Albanese is intellectually lazy aren’t just bitching because they’re factional rivals.

And look how generous I am.

I’m not even including Sunday’s mistake – Albanese’s second on his own border policies – as final mistake number nine.

There’s no mistaking now the panic in Labor circles, with six weeks of this campaign still to go, and that makes Wednesday’s debate more critical than any we’ve had in years.

This will tell every politician and journalist watching whether Albanese just had first-week nerves or is a first-class dud.

Journalists like to sneer that these debates make no difference.

Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott at the 2010 leaders’ debate.

But in 2007, 2.4 million Australians watched Labor’s Kevin Rudd debate Prime Minister John Howard and seem like he was fresh and on top of the details. (Oh, how they were fooled.)

In 2010, three million people watched Tony Abbott debate Julia Gillard, and saw he wasn’t the troglodyte they were told.

Abbott came within a whisker of winning an unwinnable election.

Wednesday’s debate won’t have an audience that big, but it will include nearly every political journalist.

They’ll watch Albanese like hawks and ask: is he really up to this? Does he just make mistakes, or is he the mistake?

His excuses will be over.

Albanese has had a short Easter break to regroup from last week’s disasters.

His media allies in the Nine newspapers meanwhile used that time to deflect attention from Albanese’s pratfalls by bizarrely elevating Morrison’s support for a “toothless” national integrity commission as the most important election issue of all, bigger even than running the economy.

(”Morrison’s position on a corruption watchdog alone makes it hard to back him,” declared The Age on its front page, clearly panicking at Albanese self-destruction.)

So can Albanese use this week to reset the debate?

Or, in the heat of a televised debate with Morrison, will he again fall flat on his face and confirm the worst?

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Albo’s election campaign could be dead after leaders’ debate