When is a gaffe front-page news? When it’s day one of a six-week election campaign and nothing much else has happened apparently.
As we cover elsewhere in Crikey today, yesterday Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese was asked what the current interest rate level and the unemployment level were and he came up empty-handed on the numbers.
It drew comparisons to Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s start-of-the-year brain fart when he couldn’t tell reporters the price of bread, petrol or RATs. But are these mistakes cut from the same cloth? The public reaction to them suggests not.
Let’s travel back in time to February 1. Omicron is on the rise, people’s Christmas and new year have just been wrecked by the evil strain with the Digimon name, and Morrison has already told reporters a porkie about this Aussie bloke (him) casually swinging by a pharmacy in Terrigal to pick up a RAT. (Turns out Morrison gets all his RATs free, and the Terrigal pharmacy stop happened in a chauffeur-driven car, without the PM actually setting foot inside said pharmacy. Oops!)
The people are pissed off and Morrison’s “everyday bloke” schtick is wearing thin. Then it gets absolutely blown apart when he can’t put a price to a loaf of bread. How unAustralian is that?
Former Liberal prime minister John Howard, reporters were quick to point out, used to carry an up-to-date list of cost-of-living prices around in his folder for such a time as these.
The general consensus (online at least) was, yes, it was a bit of a gotcha question, but Morrison couldn’t have done a better job at illustrating how out of touch he was with voters if he’d told them to eat cake.
So what was different about what happened yesterday with Albanese? Weirdly, he had a few things working, if not exactly for him, then not against him.
First, as Bernard Keane writes elsewhere in Crikey today, yes, it’s a question he should have absolutely known the answer to. But not being able to rattle stats and figures off the top of your head is (a bit sadly) quite relatable. Almost like Kevin Rudd’s trip to a strip club in New York City, it just kinda makes him seem normal. Plus Albanese apologised later the same day (the same day Morrison couldn’t name the price of milk he also refused to apologise for not doing more about the COVID-19 situation).
Second, Howard (hello again!) told reporters he didn’t think it mattered a bit that Albanese didn’t know the unemployment rate — nothing like a bit of support from across the aisle.
Third, if you look at stats about leader’s “share of voice” yesterday, Albanese was in the lead. Not bad for a man who we’re constantly being told is a cardboard cut-out with no vision or personality.
Albanese dominated headlines yesterday and while it wasn’t all good (David Crowe in the SMH made some huge claims about just how bad this would be for Albanese), not all of it was bad. In fact, just the fact that the Labor leader’s gaffe brought back memories of Morrison and the price of bread shows that not all gaffes are equal, but in an election campaign they’re all on the table.
As Christopher Warren wrote in Crikey, for the media the election campaign started yesterday. But the pollies have been preparing for it for the past six months — and so have voters.
Voters have long memories? I don’t think so. If they did, this LNP government would never have been re-elected at the last election.
This might say less about voters’ memories than about the fact that they don’t really care about questions of competence, integrity and ethics. They’re fine with lies, arrogance, corruption and lack of empathy. And should they have any concerns – a tax cut will help take the edge of.
The gaffe is the stuff of inside the beltway junior journalists. How about some analysis of policy and competency to govern rather than trivial pursuit?
Listened to RN this morning where it was rehashed ad nauseam and this afternoon and we are still going on about it.
Excuse me, my lawn needs mowing, and I am going to listen to Spotify. If this is what the media want to concentrate on, so be it.
Focus on the unfortunate goofs ( of both parties ) and not policies for the next six-week and we will have another three years of Scotty from Marketing, rather than a well-run hard-fought, policy-driven campaign, rather than the presidential style we are being presented with.
There is a “…policy-driven campaign..” on offer?
Where? Which party?
I’d volunteer to work ’till I drop for such a Unicorn.
Media and Liberal lackies repeating the propaganda that people do not know who Albo is.
He was out helping during the bushfires – not flying to another country or saying he does not ‘hold a hose” – he was helping volunteers feeding fire fighters
He was on the ground during the floods, not banning media coverage of his walk and talk with victims
If people do not know Albo – it is because the media did not tell Aussies about his actions
You are repeating the same untruth – that “..he was helping volunteers feeding fire fighters.” on an earlier thread – the old, constant repetition, tactic from pre WWII.
The only mention that I could find was in the Hawkesbury Gazette, Dec 20, 2019 –
Mr Albanese joined Macquarie MP Susan Templeman at Bilpin District Hall, speaking to residents and volunteers and serving breakfast from early this morning.
There was this comment from Stephen Shields, a NSW firefighter who had returned from fighting the Bilpin fire in western Sydney.
“I was at the Bilpin fire Thursday night , when we were released around 6am there was no breakfast waiting for us at the staging area at Bilpin Community Hall and we were told to go to McDonald’s North Richmond ( on our nearly 3hr trip north home )to get a feed.
On the way out on the Bells Line of Road at Kurrajong at a roadblock, here was Albo and staffers and Comcar and a TV OB van waiting to do a interview obviously.
Seems they waited for Albo and the journos to arrive at the Bilpin Hall to start serving breakfast for Albos ” feeding weary firefighters” photo op.
How predictable is this? Crikey says Morrison not knowing the price of bread really matters, while Albanese not knowing the unemployment rate doesn’t matter at all. And the evidence to support this view? None whatsoever! I sincerely hope both gaffes mean nothing because the media doesn’t get any lazier than when they play economic Hard Quiz.
I think there’s a lot more nuance going on in this article. They’re putting forward the argument that Morrison’s gaffes were possibly more consequential, because they were everyman stats, he was explicitly posing as an everyman, and he accepted no blame.
“Gaffes” as judged by the media?
What does that same media think about the stacking of the AAT?
Or the “Wisdom of Solomons Blunder”?
How many gaffes has that media made in not rating those sort of government malfeasance – not worth their passing on to us rubes?