Anthony Albanese, neat dark-blue suit, white shirt, designer glasses, all smiles, seated outside Banjo’s Bakery Café amid a circle of nurses talking about the need to pump some money into the state’s terrible health system and to give primary care staff the respect they deserve.
We were in Devonport’s Rooke Street mall, the AH Pease shoe store and Best and Less opposite, down a bit the Devonport books n gifts, pink furbies and Trent Dalton in the window, then JeansWest and the century-old jewellers, and mostly elderly couples outside the coffee shops, Miller shirts and pink knitwear, sun beating down on the pinkish mall flooring, and it was all going swimmingly.
The nurses were loving Albo — they’d want to, having been steered here by nursing union types — and he was relaxing and getting into it. “They can spend millions on advertising but they can’t spend some money on nursing training,” he said to furious agreement. They talked about aged care and the crisis in it. Albo listened carefully as a nurse inspector talked of the terrible conditions she saw going round the homes, and Albo emphasised Labor’s plan for change. This was great!
Then, a sudden look from him. A slight rise from the chair. He had been caught short, clearly. Mid flow in midflow, as it were. Must have been insistent cos he rose from his chair quickly with a muttered excuse, scurried into Banjo’s — surprising one of his security detail sitting in the window and halfway into a giant hotdog — and scurried out again. Banjo’s clearly lacked what country Australia once called “comfort station facilities”. Helpful senior-citizen locals then got into it when they realised the purpose of his walkabout within the walkabout.
“There’s one over the road and around the corner near Belle and Beau hair.”
“No, the one in the baby shop’s nearer.”
“Not if you take a dog-leg round the lane…”
By now he was bounding off, advisers and security scurrying to catch up, mind whirring I bet. How to appear leaderly while looking for a place to do a number one? Stride purposefully, I guess, remind yourself that as bad as this looks the alternative would be worse.
He disappeared into a building and by the time he came out the travelling press had arrived off the bus, a phalanx of cameras charging up the mall, and he could look like he was striding purposefully to meet some supporters. A lucky break.
He’d earned it. This was a couple of hours after he’d made the cash rate/unemployment rate gaffe in Launceston, first kick-off of the campaign. Look, I hate to do it to team red, I’d much rather be eviscerating the other side, but things have already hit a a rough patch when the takeaway victory of the day is not pissing yourself at Banjo’s Bakery Café.
In the interim, a woman from a bank was giving an impromptu press conference for such press as had arrived: “Security is my issue. We’re not some little hobbits down here, only thinking about local issues,” she brayed. “What about China? What about the power of the UN? I watch the cable news channels, all of them and ….” and a shaggy bloke in a black T-shirt, a mobility vehicle, and one and a half legs, Dave, came up to Chris Lynch, tall, big-shouldered, bald, Labor candidate for Braddon: “Yeah, Chris, I can’t get a GP appointment for five weeks for me mum. I’m her full-time carer now.” Dave was without plaint or rancour. Lynch talked to him with genuine warmth, said he’d see what he could do, and when Dave was gone, just shook his head in rue. “He’s his mother’s carer…”
Team Albo’s instincts were right enough. Start at the most marginal electorate in the country, at one of its swingingest booths — Invermay, just north of the Launceston CBD — and then move up to Devonport in Braddon, a strong labour harbour town, sitting on a 3.5% or so margin for the sitting Liberal, both places doing it very tough. Launch a specific health promise — two specialist ear clinics for the state of a type of which they have none — making your general commitments clear, while also giving a few hundred or thousand parents something very specific to vote for.
Bridget Archer has a margin of 280 votes in Bass, and almost no one lasts more than a term here. It’s like the Somme. Labor is hoping to add Archer and Braddon MP Gavin Pearce to the roll.
Then, jaysus, that gaffe. Your correspondent had not heard about it when the Devonport walkaround occurred. Later, watching it on TV in the bar at the Argosy motel. I saw how awful it was. Left Twitter was trying to spin it as nothing much, but that is desperate. Yeah, stupid gotcha questions, but it’s the unemployment rate, for chrissake. Yes, you should know this. Brain freeze? Brain fart? Don’t have them.
Poor Albo. He was trying to get that out of his head all the rest of the morning. No wonder he looked a bit subdued at the start of the encounter. And it didn’t help that someone in the advance team had helpfully bought cake for the nurses, so there was a plate of sliced-up lamingtons and danishes placed in front of him. Because that’s just what a man who’s dieting through 20-hour days wants to see: bite-size carbs within reach, day-glo bright in the sun.
So, strategically, yes, but tactically? Team Albo’s travelling show needs a tightening up. You gotta ask your leader before he starts on a walkabout if he needs to use the boom-boom room. You gotta know where they are before you get there. If the whole purpose of the exercise is for visuals and word-of-mouth, no detail should be too, well, pissy, for attention.
The policy? Well, look, before the cameras got there your correspondent threw out a question for anyone to ask Albo: what one simple thing would you want a new Labor government to do for the Tasmanian health system straightaway? Because the system is a disgrace, a crime, with these waits for a GP appointment, 500 days for pain-relieving surgery, beds made out of layers of towels in emergency rooms. Australians are dying in Tasmania of conditions that other Australians would survive. (It’s worse for First Nations people, here and elsewhere, of course. But it is very, very bad here.) The state government has stripped money from what the system needs in order to build up budget surpluses, and the federal government hasn’t filled the gap.
There wasn’t much of a groundswell of anger and demand, to be truthful. This was a Labor-friendly crowd, and Tasmanians, for all the bravado that appears to surround, and issue from, Jacqui Lambie, can be a reserved lot. But Albo wasn’t offering any cris de coeur either. Modest promises is the program. Specialist clinics, and a bit more for nurses. There’s more in Labor’s detailed program, but it’s interesting they weren’t that keen to tubthump the table with it.
Albo used a short 30-second stand-up as he left to try to spin the gaffe: “This morning I made a mistake … When I make a mistake I don’t try to cover it up or blame someone else … That’s what leadership is.” That was about as good as could be got. (That evening, people would marvel at John Howard’s dismissal of it, “support from an unlikely quarter”. You’re kidding, aren’t you? The gaffe had run its course, had its effect. Howard knows ScoMo will do something like it eventually. It’s a six-week campaign. When he does, it can be immediately written off. By the Old Rodent himself.) Just before he left, though, Albo really turned the thing neatly, still surrounded by attentive nurses.
“You know I had a car accident a while back, and it was a little serious, and I was in the hospital and I realised I was in the same room my mum had been 20 years earlier for a condition. She didn’t come back out, but she got the very best care and so did I, and I thought that’s what so great about Medicare, that a pensioner and a man who might be prime minister get the same treatment.” And that was getting the double on the flip, and it was moving and true enough, and what we want to see more of, team Albo, and also, tighten it the f*** up.
The crew nipped out of the mall, a few others followed for a while, Dave on the mobility, before they climbed into the black cars and were gone.
couldn’t care less. He’d have to be overheard admiring Czar Putin before I’d think he was worse than Morrison
Albo should take a lesson from Scummo. If SM doesn’t know the answer he would say that people are not interested in xxxx but are more interested in yyyyyy. Albo should have changed the question to underemployment or training.
He doesn’t know how to. He is tired and weak. He is a dead man walking. He is a shell of a man who is without a partner since his split up with Carmel Tebbutt. Divorced political men always look like they have lost a dollar. He looks and sounds like Simon Crean. Forget Mark Latham and Bill Shorten. I was a bit off comparing Albo with them. He is Simon Crean reborn. He lacks Morrison’s advertising quick speaking. He lacks Morrison’s sales pitch. Why should a man whose union of which I am a member be giving the ALP membership fees or donations and having this incompetent pocket over $300,000 per annum while just having sold his negatively geared investment property in Marrickville for over $2 million. He doesn’t deserve it. As a working man and a union member I deserve better.
In my view, Albanese “doesn’t know how to” or would find it difficult to “take a lesson from Scummo” simply because he’s not cut from the same cheap and nasty cloth as Morrison and I think there’s plenty of people who value that. I certainly do.
Then what the hell is he doing in politics. I want a winner or someone who loses with honour. I see no honour in Albanese. Just the character I have described above. If he is not nasty he had better get bloody nasty, effectively and soon.
Not the point. I want decency and empathy and good character just as much as I want to see a bit of grunt or aggression when needed from a potential leader. Maybe Albanese badly wanted the leader job 3 years ago but not so much the PM job. He’s not entirely with it, his mind doesn’t seem to be on the job. How can you say something is costed when it’s not (yesterday) if you want to be taken seriously. Hope I’m wrong as I really want a Labor government.
I presume you are so bitter and angry you would rather the scumbag gets another term?
Just because someone isn’t impressed with labor doesn’t immediately mean they’ll vote for the loathsome LNP. I personally think Labor’s policies are crap and don’t address what this country needs right now, but there’s no way I’ll vote for the Morrison and his crew. I don’t even know the liberal in my area.
my point exactly!
Mainly he lacks Murdoch, Sky, Nine, Seven, etc.
Obviously your preferred information source.
That’s not the question….the real question is……
…when will the Canberra bubble question pop?
The smart arse press pack (with some exceptions) are sniffing for blood, anything which will provide a headline. Note that in yesterday’s scenario there was no report of a journo asking him about Labor’s employment policy – perhaps someone did but we’ll never read about it or see the TV footage.
Nor did his story about being in the same hospital room as his mother make the news. Albo is up against it.
Lay off the coffee Albo. That’s the tip. And learn by rote the unemployment rate. It’s mentioned freakin’ everywhere in the print and electronic media anyway. Don’t forget the cash rate (‘near zero’ is probably good enough for the press, who don’t know what it is to two decimal places either).
Let’s put all this down to opening night nerves and a febrile media pack.
Nerves?
Not as if he’d been in parliament for 36 years so cut him some slack, still on training wheels.
…or even 26 years.
Well I’m glad that’s sorted. I’ll be back again tomorrow to remind others of your gaffe, but I’ll generously label it a ‘training wheels’ issue.
How about more than half way through his third decade in parliament?
Even better, speaking in real terms i.e. trends that change over time vs. obsession with static ‘lines in the sand’ one day that will change the next; it’s the nature of data.
While quoting unemployment rate- why not add how it is calculated to show what a meaningless bit of rubbish it is!
Bizarrely I hadn’t heard Albo speak until yesterday and that was by accident. I read what he says and generally what others say about him. I’m a living Murdoch talking point. I hate that.
I want to feel confident this is a done deal – I want Morrison and his sharp elbowed mates flushed. I hope Albo grows into the role and starts to sound the part.
If a rusted on Labor bloke like me is taken aback what happens when those who respond to marketing, spin and gotchas get hit with “what to think” from Murdoch?
I keep wanting Penny Wong for PM but she keeps ruling it out. And hey it’s Albos turn.
I am not sure about Penny Wong. She opposed same sex marriage under Rudd and Gillard and her performance justifying it on Q&A appearance with a “Well, well…the party room opposes it” will be used against her. Plibersek is another touted as a potential leader but in a Q&A in 2019 just before the last federal election, she arrogantly didn’t answer a question from the audience which I don’t think endeared herself to many people and let undecideds doubt her and Shorten as numbers 1 and 2 in leading the country. You either appear publicly like on Q&A and answer questions or you like Abbot and Morrison, don’t appear on them and still retain some support. Remember, the election is yours to lose.
Well I was in the UK then so missed the action. I’m guessing there is more to it than you’re letting on –
Clever, Metal ‘Guru’. Influential teacher?
Stripped bare . . . Penny Wong, Rudd and Gillard, Plibersek, Shorten and: “or” you like Abbott and Morrison? Coincidental or not; comment beautifully constructed.
When Wong said “party room” she obviously meant Joe De Bruyn and the SDA.
Another thing many forget about Wong was how tepidly she performed as environment/climate Minister under Rudd’s first term. Showed a palpable lack of passion and interest in the portfolio and resorted to meaningless techno-babble under questioning.
Apart from her pusillanimity on SSM, Wong killed, burned & buried any respect one might have had for her judgement by describing Sen. Birmingham as “…a good friend from uni days and someone I can work with“.
With friends like that, one doesn’t need a enema.
You don’t watch TV either? I too heard Albanese for the first time, when I looked for and found the video yesterday. I was surprised at how striney he sounded. I though it bizarre that a Labor leader didn’t know the unemployment rate thinking it was still 5 point something. It definitely wasn’t a good look for either Albo or Labor but definitely confirmed once more that Labor doesn’t care less about the unemployed.
Nope don’t watch tv at all – we’ve had striney PMs before – even a female one. I haven’t seen the gotcha encounter and have to agree with John Howard – specifically, so what?
At least he wasn’t asked “does a woman have a uterus?” Which is the standard UK gotcha.
I’m sure there’s someone you can vote for from the LNP who cares passionately for the unemployed and knows every number – BTW what’s 3 month LIBOR compared to etc etc…
It actually says nothing about Labor’s views on the unemployed. Albanese knows that the unemployment rate is currently a Liberal talking point, so he will not have dwelt on it. He knows that there is not a great deal that any govt can do about the economy. But he is concerned about there being jobs in the future, and that the unemployment benefit is liveable.
You think that unemployment would the central focus of a political party that claimed to represent labour.
Well actually, there is a great deal that a government can do about the economy. It’s called Keynesian economic policy was used before Labor turned neoliberal.
Krudd chose that to deal with the GFC and we sailed through unscathed.
Those which chose austerity took a decade to recover and some, such as Britain, still have not.
Yeh. Stupid English.
It was also bipartisan economic policy between 1945 and sometime in the early 70’s.
I get the feeling the right faction didn’t like Rudd’s response to the GFC. I’m betting Swan was totally against it. I’d also speculate that it was reason Rudd had to go in the eyes of the reigning right faction, in favour of the far more compliant “marriage is a union between a man and woman” Gillard.
Swan spoke about this quite a lot, their advice from the economists was go early and go big and that is what they did and it worked. More or less the same formula was followed by the current Govt in 2020 – pump the economy with cash and take whatever steps are necessary to avoid destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs – which would have been destroyed due to the imposed lockdowns. Once jobs are destoyed and the link between employees and their employers has been broken the damage will take years to repair – as was seen in the UK etc.
Except LNP 2020 were profligate!
Agree on your historical point as well as Krudd’s defenestration, certainly re the Right’s view.
the continuing mystery is why Gillard went along with the Machine which she’d opposed most of her political life prior to that.
Had she continued that stance as DPM she could have become, in due course, a superb PM rather than merely a good one in minority government.