Former Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has jumped to Anthony Albanese’s defence after his successor’s disastrous start to the 2022 federal election campaign.
Mr Albanese was left red faced on Monday after he could not state the national unemployment rate or the cash rate to reporters during a press conference in northern Tasmania.
But Mr Shorten does not think the blunder will cost Labor voters because ‘this election is a leadership test, not a memory test’.
‘Albo is not the first politician to make a mistake, nor will he be the last,’ Mr Shorten told the Today show on Tuesday.
‘There are 42 days in this election. Labor will have good days and the Liberals will have bad days and vice versa.
Bill Shorten has weighed in on Anthony Albanese’s major gaffe on Monday, arguing the last person to have never made a mistake was Jesus
‘The point is who has Australia’s best interest at heart.’
Host Karl Stefanovic pointed out the monumental gaffe has been touted as the worst start to an election campaign in Australia’s history.
But Mr Shorten doubled-down on his rebuttal, suggesting the last person to have never made a mistake was Jesus.
‘It was a mistake which I know Albo didn’t want to make, but he’s come out and taken responsibility for it,’ he said.
‘The last person who never made a mistake – you know, we are celebrating Easter – it was 2000 years ago.’
Mr Shorten conceded that ‘yesterday was a difficult day for Labor’, but argued Scott Morrison ‘has given us a difficult three years’, citing the prime minister’s notorious blunders through out his term.
‘You know, he “didn’t hold a hose”, he went to Hawaii went the country was on fire, the vaccine rollout, you couldn’t get a rapid antigen test,’ he said.
Anthony Albanese (pictured on Monday) could not name the national unemployment rate or the cash rate during a disastrous first press conference of the election campaign
‘You know, performance actually counts and we have had three years of under performance.’
Support for Mr Anthony has not only come from within his own party – but also from across the political divide.
Former Liberal prime minister John Howard also defended the Labor leader’s stumble when approached by reporters later on Monday.
‘Is that a serious question? Okay, well Anthony Albanese didn’t know the unemployment rate. So what?’ Mr Howard said.
Mr Howard, who served as PM for 11 years, suffered a similar gaffe during an interview with on A Current Affair during his 2007 pre-election campaign.
Asked for the reserve bank’s official rate, Mr Howard incorrectly answered 6.25 per cent, with his political rival – and subsequent successor – Kevin Rudd providing the correct response of 6.5 per cent during an interview later that evening.
Monday was the first official day of the federal election campaign after Mr Morrison on Sunday visited the Governor-General to set the polling date for May 21.
John Howard (pictured with his wife Jeanette) emphatically defended Mr Albanese’s blunder when approached by reporters in Perth later on Monday
Speaking to reporters, Mr Albanese was asked if he knows what the cash rate is but dodged the question by saying: ‘We can do the old Q and A over 50 different figures’.
The rate has been at a historic low of 0.1 per cent since November 2020.
Mr Albanese was later asked what the national unemployment rate is. He tried to guess but got it wrong.
‘The national unemployment rate at the moment is… I think it’s 5.4… sorry. I’m not sure what it is,’ he said.
The unemployment rate is four per cent, the lowest since 2008.
Journalists quizzed the Labor leader on the figures in a press conference in the marginal seat of Bass in northern Tasmania, a day after the election was called.
Shadow Finance Minister Katy Gallagher was able to answer both questions correctly.
Mr Albanese attempted to answer before admitting he did not know and apologising
Coalition campaign spokesman Simon Birmingham immediately seized on the blunder.
He said: ‘If you don’t know what the interest rate is, you can’t be trusted to put the right policies in place to keep them low.
‘If you don’t know what the unemployment rate is, you can’t be trusted to keep Australians in jobs.’
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was in the southern NSW marginal Labor seat of Gilmore with Liberal candidate and former state minister Andrew Constance.
Asked the same questions, he said: ‘0.1 per cent is the cash rate, it’s been there for some time.
‘The unemployment rate I’m happy to say is 4 per cent… it came down from 5.7 per cent when we were first elected.’
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was in the southern NSW marginal Labor seat of Gilmore with Liberal candidate and former state minister Andrew Constance
Mr Morrison falsely claimed the unemployment rate has hit a 50-year-low. In fact it was also four per cent in 2008.
The Prime Minister was also grilled about his disastrous visit to the nearby town of Cobargo where he forced an upset local woman to shake his hand after the 2019 bushfires.
Asked if he would apologise, he said: ‘I already have. That was a difficult day.
‘As I moved through that community. It was in trauma. It was shell-shocked.
‘There were those exchanges that day, but there are many other exchanges that day which were very different.’
Mr Constance had criticised the PM at the time, saying he got the welcome he deserved from furious locals after returning from his infamous holiday to Hawaii as the nation burned.
Labor is ahead by six points on a two-party preferred basis, according to the latest Newspoll.
The gap has already tightened from 10 points three weeks ago.
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