It may just be that the moment of the election campaign that mattered most was also the same moment that was most roundly condemned as “gotcha” journalism:
Labor leader Anthony Albanese was asked straight up: What’s the unemployment rate and what’s the “RBA rate”. He didn’t answer the second question at all and fumbled on the answer to the jobless rate. Later he fronted the media and apologised for getting it wrong.
How could a Labor leader not know the unemployment rate? If he didn’t give two hoots.
The Saturday Paper further exposes this delusional Albo on the weekend:
Brian Mitchell, a backbencher from Tasmania and a member of a caucus economics committee, asked the treasurer at Tuesday’s party room to meet with the committee to discuss the cost-of-living crisis and the need for the government to expand its relief measures.
Mitchell, who clings to his seat of Lyons with a margin of less than 1 per cent, says the burden of fighting inflation is falling too heavily on the 30 per cent of the population who have mortgages. He says wealthier Australians, many of whom are actually benefiting from higher interest rates and contributing to inflation with their spending, are not pulling their weight.
The backbencher baulks at making suggestions on how these Australians could do more. Tighter tax concessions or even a fairer income tax system were left dangling. Mitchell told The Saturday Paper: “That’s up to the treasurer and better economic brains than mine.”
…While MPs did not question Albanese on the government’s economic settings at the party room gathering, in his pep talk the prime minister said, “caucus should be proud of the government implementing election commitments that are making a real difference to the lives of Australians particularly on cost-of-living pressures”.
It is precisely on this point that another Labor MP, Jerome Laxale, who is similarly on an ultra-thin margin of one point in his Sydney seat of Bennelong, is urging a review of the application of these policies.
Laxale says they have been tightly targeted and welcomed by many people but “we need to start looking at expanding eligibility of those programs – cheaper medicines, fee-free TAFE and electricity rebates – to a larger cohort of people”. He says by doing so the government would also be helping to contain inflation because treasury analysis has shown these measures had already had a quarter of a per cent deflationary impact.
Laxale told The Saturday Paper he was speaking out for his constituents and ensuring their concerns were firmly on the treasurer’s radar. He says cost of living is hitting in middle-income areas and he is encouraging the government to look at it in the run-up to the next budget.
…The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, says he won’t be making major announcements or treating the midyear economic and fiscal outlook (MYEFO) as a mini-budget with new relief measures. He will take the customary opportunity to update key forecasts. Next year’s budget, however, will play a critical part in the Albanese government’s re-election strategy.
Laxale recognises his suggestions would have an impact on the budget’s bottom line. But while Albanese and Chalmers are both keen to have another surplus or near surplus, he says it is for them to juggle these competing demands.
This is very unsettling stuff for Labor backbenchers. Regardless, there’s another massive surplus coming on the back of overblown commodity prices. The government can absolutely afford to expand subsidies dramatically.
And it should. The two major supports are for power bills and rents, the price spikes of which are purely the result of Albanese Government blundering.
Sitting back and telling the party room that they should be “proud” of crashing living standards and doing nothing more to correct them is a tin-ear to make Tony Abbott proud.
Worse, both suggest that Mad Albo and Chicken Chalmers have no idea what they are doing:
As it turns out, the first question of the election campaign was the last word on Albo the Disaster.
