The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, says he “accepts responsibility” for a gaffe on the first day of the federal election campaign when he couldn’t state the national unemployment figure or the official cash rate.
Albanese was asked on multiple occasions if he knew the figures during a press conference in the marginal seat of Bass in Tasmania at the start of the six-week campaign.
“The national unemployment rate at the moment is, I think, it’s five point … four … sorry, I’m not sure what it is,” Albanese eventually said.
Labor’s finance spokesperson, Katy Gallagher, was then asked to step in and she confirmed the unemployment rate was 4% and the cash rate was 0.1%.
The opposition leader is expected to continue on the hustings in Tasmania on Tuesday morning, while the prime minister, Scott Morrison, will be campaigning in marginal seats in Sydney.
Bass is held by the Liberal MP Bridget Archer on a 0.4% margin and is being contested by Labor’s former MP for the seat, Ross Hart.
Albanese had initially attempted to sidestep the question about the RBA’s cash rate, which has been at 0.1% since November 2020, saying: “We can do the old Q and A stuff over 50 different figures.”
“The truth is that … the reserve bank have said that there’ll be multiple interest rate increases – regardless of who’s in government.”
In an attempt to cauterise the mistake – which the Liberal party promptly made into a campaign advertisement attacking Albanese’s readiness to govern – Albanese later apologised saying he was “human”, but how he responded was a “test of character”.
“Earlier today I made a mistake. I’m human. But when I make a mistake, I’ll fess up to it, and I’ll set about correcting that mistake,” Albanese said. “I won’t blame someone else, I’ll accept responsibility. That’s what leaders do.”
He said his mea culpa was a mark of how he would approach the role if elected prime minister – seeking to draw a comparison with Morrison.
“Will I be perfect? No, but I’ll tell you what I’ll be doing is this: if I ever do make a mistake, I’ll put my hand up. I’ll own it. I’ll take responsibility, and I’ll set about fixing it. That’s what I did today, and that’s the way that I would approach being prime minister of this country,” he told Sky News.
Labor’s campaign spokesperson, Jason Clare, backed Albanese, saying “politics is not a pop quiz”.
“Aussies are fair dinkum people. We don’t get everything right but when you make a mistake, you say ‘Sorry, I stuffed up, I will fix it’. That is what Albo did today.”
The deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, also defended Albanese, telling the ABC “elections aren’t memory tests, they are tests of leadership”.
However, the slip-up gave ammunition to the Liberal party’s campaign, which has been seeking to paint Albanese as an economic risk.
Campaign spokesperson Simon Birmingham said the error showed that Labor “can not be trusted”.
“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,” Birmingham said in a statement. “If you don’t know what the unemployment rate is, you can’t be trusted to keep Australians in jobs.”
Morrison, who was unable to answer a similar question about the price of bread and petrol at the National Press Club earlier this year, said the election was a choice between “strong economic management” and Labor – who “can’t be trusted to manage money”.
“0.1% is the cash rate, it’s been there for some time,” Morrison said when asked to cite the RBA’s official rate.
“The unemployment rate, I’m happy to tell you, is 4% and is falling to a 50-year low.”
The prime minister was campaigning in the marginal NSW seat of Gilmore, held by the Labor party’s Fiona Phillips on a 2.6% margin. He announced a $40m roads package for the Shoalhaven region alongside the Liberal party’s candidate, former state government minister Andrew Constance.
Constance, who criticised Morrison at the time of the 2019-20 black summer bushfires saying he “got the welcome he deserved” when greeted by angry locals in Cobargo, would not be drawn on the earlier conflict between the pair.
“We can’t reverse history here. The reality is, to the PM’s point, I am going to be fierce in my representation of the people of Gilmore. I won’t sit there as a wallflower, I will call it how it is,” Constance said.
Morrison said he had been in Cobargo on a “difficult day” for the shell-shocked community, but he was happy Constance was on his team “because he calls it straight”.
The prime minister was also on the defensive about the status of former education minister Alan Tudge, who Morrison claimed had stood aside from the frontbench, but who actually remains in cabinet.
Morrison said Tudge was not receiving a ministerial salary but was “technically” in cabinet because he “still has his warrant from the governor general”.
“Alan has taken his own decision for family and health reasons to stand aside. He’s not being paid as a minister and I look forward to him returning, because what he’s been doing in education has been very important,” Morrison told the ABC.
Morrison was also asked to comment on reports that Rachelle Miller, the former Coalition staffer who was in a relationship with Tudge, had received a payout of $500,000.
The prime minister said that it was “a private matter involving sensitive issues” and he had no visibility over the arrangement struck between Miller and the Department of Finance.
“No one can make any assumptions about any findings, because there have been none that have been presented to me which suggests any impropriety on behalf of Mr Tudge,” Morrison said on Monday.
