Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese made his first major campaign blunder after he failed to cite the unemployment and cash rate when asked at a press conference in Tasmania this morning. He later admitted he made a mistake and that he should have known the answer.
Albanese found support from an unlikely ally in former prime minister John Howard. He responded “so what” when told Albanese couldn’t rattle off the numbers. Howard was caught in a similar situation when he stated the wrong interest rate figure during an interview on A Current Affair during the 2007 election campaign.
The opposition leader spent the rest of the day trying to reset the narrative, making an afternoon appearance on Sky News. Asked by political editor Andrew Clennell if it was the “day you lost the election”, Albanese said: “You are being melodramatic, Andrew. People make mistakes.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Scott Morrison backed a campaign by one of his handpicked candidates to ban transgender women from playing women’s sports and left open the possibility of legislating on the issue.
The Australian Electoral Commission wants close contacts of COVID cases to be allowed out on election day so they can vote, and is working to allow telephone voting for people isolating with the coronavirus.

Latest Posts

6.39pm on Apr 11, 2022

Greens leader dismisses Albanese stumble

By Cassandra Morgan

Greens leader Adam Bandt has dismissed criticism aimed at Anthony Albanese, after the Labor leader’s stumble on the unemployment and cash rate figures.

Speaking on ABC Radio Melbourne, Bandt said: “In this context, I think we’d rather talk about the issues than whether someone knows the number or not.”

Greens leader Adam Bandt has dismissed criticism of Anthony Albanese. Paul Jeffers

“Sometimes, you might be able to recall the answer, sometimes, not,” he said.

“I guess the real test for me is what approach would someone like [him] take if he was in a position of power, and what approach does the incumbent take.

“Let’s not forget that the current prime minister has willfully misrepresented a number of things during the course of his time – things that he, I think, knew were wrong but went ahead and said them anyway …

“The same standard needs to apply not just to someone having a lapse about whether they’ve forgotten a particular statistic, but also, about those broader questions of trust and whether you’re prepared to tell the truth.”

Bandt said both the Liberal and Labor parties were saying they wanted more coal and gas, “at a time when we need less”.

“So we’re going to need more Greens in the next parliament because that’s the only way we’re going to say, let’s stop opening up coal and gas projects,” he said.

At the start of Bandt’s interview with ABC, he said he was caught up in delays at Melbourne Airport, which have been blamed on technical faults and staffing shortages.

5.45pm on Apr 11, 2022

‘So what?’ Albanese finds unlikely ally in Howard after blunder

By Hamish Hastie

After his interest and unemployment rate stumble this morning, Labor Leader Anthony Albanese has found an unlikely ally in former Prime Minister John Howard.

Howard was in Perth kickstarting the campaigns of Swan candidate Kristy McSweeney and Hasluck MP and Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt when he was asked whether it was bad that Albanese didn’t know the nation’s unemployment rate, which sits at 4 per cent.

Former Prime Minister John Howard on the campaign trail in Perth.Kate Geldart

He responded incredulously.

“Is that a serious question?” Howard said.

“Anthony Albanese didn’t know the unemployment. Alright. So what?”

View post on X

Howard was then asked if he knew what the unemployment rate was and replied it had a 3 in front of it.

Wyatt then stepped in and said it was coming down.

Howard himself made a similar blunder at the 2007 federal election campaign when he incorrectly stated the interest rate during an interview on A Current Affair.

5.27pm on Apr 11, 2022

Fight for marginal Chisholm begins with sports funding duel

By Clay Lucas

The battle for Chisholm, Victoria’s most marginal seat, has begun with both Labor and Liberal candidates promising millions of dollars to rebuild sporting clubrooms at a popular Blackburn South park.

Chisholm is held by the Liberal Party’s Gladys Liu, on a margin of just 0.6 per cent. Labor’s Carina Garland is trying to take back a seat held by the ALP for the six elections until 2016.

On Saturday, Garland met cricket and soccer clubs at Mirrabooka Reserve and promised $2 million to rebuild clubrooms there. On Monday, Liu met the clubs and promised $3 million.

“If it’s a tie, we will take $5 million,” joked Drew Sinclair, the president of the Blackburn South Cobras cricket club.

Stuart Baird from Blackburn Newhope Football Club, which also plays at the reserve and uses the clubrooms, also joked that members of the two sporting clubs were “all single issue voters; our fear is a hung parliament”.

Whitehorse Council has been in discussion with both clubs about rebuilding the rooms for several years, and Liu met the football club last November to discuss funding for the project.

“The local clubs in our communities have been so persistent in their requests for funding and so passionate about the needs of their members,” she said.

Garland, however, said that despite knowing the request for new clubrooms had been around for some time, it had taken Liu three years since being elected to make the promise.

Liu was “scrambling to fix three years of inaction, not because she cares about locals, but because she is desperate to hang on to her job”.

Labor has also promised $3 million to upgrade the Mount Waverley Reserve, also in Chisholm and home to 38 cricket and 16 Australian rules teams. Garland said it would improve the sporting pavilion there, providing men’s and women’s change rooms, more storage space and better social facilities.

4.55pm on Apr 11, 2022

‘It’s not a memory test’: Plibersek defends Albanese after gaffe

By Daniella White

Labor education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek has come out in defence of Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese after couldn’t name the cash or unemployment rate in the first major blunder of the election campaign.

Appearing on ABC this afternoon, she was quizzed on what the unemployment rate is and was able to name it correctly.

Tanya Plibersek has defended Labor leader Anthony Albanese.Dominic Lorrimer

But she defended Albanese’s blunder and said he had owned up to his mistake.

“Elections aren’t memory tests, they are tests of leadership,” Plibersek said.

4.22pm on Apr 11, 2022

Are you smarter than a politician?

We saw the first major stumble of the election campaign today when Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese couldn’t cite the country’s unemployment and cash rate.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison made a similar blunder a few months ago when he couldn’t name the price of a loaf of bread, a litre of milk or petrol.

Do you think you could do better? Take our quiz to find out.

3.51pm on Apr 11, 2022

Derryn Hinch to run for the Senate again

By Angus Livingston

Veteran broadcaster Derryn Hinch will run for the Senate in Victoria again, after he spent three years as a senator from 2016 to 2019.

Hinch announced his run in a statement on Monday afternoon.

Veteren broadcaster Derryn Hinch will make another run for the Senate. Alex Ellinghausen

“And so it is on. The ScoMo versus Albo battle for government. I will be running again for the Senate in Victoria for the Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party. And we will be contesting some Lower House seats,” he said.

Hinch said he will campaign on sacking weak judges, creating a sex offenders register, bringing in staff ratios and quality food for aged care, and ending animal cruelty.

3.22pm on Apr 11, 2022

Albanese seeks reset after unemployment rate gaffe

By Lisa Visentin

In a bid to clear the air on what has become the main talking point of day one of the election campaign, Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has again addressed his unemployment rate gaffe in an extended interview with Sky News.

Asked by Sky News political editor Andrew Clennell how the misstep occurred, Albanese said it was a mistake and “I’ll own it”.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese made his first major campaign blunder on Monday. Alex Ellinghausen

“You can come up with a whole range of reasons. There’s a whole lot of figures around,” he said. “Of course, the average unemployment rate under this government is 5.7 [per cent]. Under us it was 5.1.”

Clennell: “I don’t want to get melodramatic here, but is this the day you lost the election?”

Albanese: “You are being melodramatic, Andrew. People make mistakes.”

Earlier today in a press conference, Albanese was left stumped when asked to cite the national unemployment and the Reserve Bank’s official cash rate. Unemployment is at 4 per cent, and the RBA cash rate is at a historic low of 0.1 per cent. The latter has not changed since November 2020.

On the cash rate, Albanese told Sky: “I do know the official cash rate. It’s 0.1. But the thing that matters to people is the interest rates that they pay and no one out there is paying 0.1 per cent on their mortgage either. The cash rate feeds into interest rates, of course but we have a government that’s presided over a trillion dollars of debt with not much to show for it.”

Albanese sought to use the Sky News interview to frame the blunder as a test of character.

“The key test of character, Andrew, is that when you make a mistake, do you own it? Do you set about fixing it and then do you accept responsibility for it? I accept responsibility.”

The interview also included a light exchange between the pair, as Clennell asked when Albanese would release the details of his plan to tax multinational companies – the only tax reform measure Labor says it will pursue if it forms government.

Albanese: “We’ll announce that Andrew. We’re at day one. We’ve got six weeks and we’ve got to fill the six weeks Andrew. Otherwise, you’ll be bored after a few days.”

Clennell: “Well pretty good start today.”

Albanese: “We want to keep you interested. We want to keep you focused.”

Clennell: “I’m interested, don’t worry about that.”

2.54pm on Apr 11, 2022

Liberals quick to jump on Albanese blunder through social media

By Nick Bonyhady

The Liberal Party has capitalised on Anthony Albanese’s blunder this morning in Tasmania, where the Labor leader revealed he did not know the unemployment or cash rates.

On Facebook, the party’s digital team created a 17-second video of Albanese’s exchange with journalists featuring the tagline “it won’t be easy under Albanese”. By 2.30pm it had almost 19,000 views.

Conservative activist group Advance Australia also posted a clip of the exchange.

The Liberals, who were widely seen as winning the digital campaign at the last election, have previously made hay out of Albanese refusing to address a question from a voter who interrupted a press conference.

Capitalising on big political moments is increasingly important for the parties on social media because microtargeting voters with paid ads has become more expensive than in previous contests.

It is not clear whether the Liberal Party has put money behind their latest video and it is not running on Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s public Facebook page, the party’s Twitter account or TikTok page.

2.33pm on Apr 11, 2022

Clive Palmer backtracks on Greens preferences remark

By Lisa Visentin

Back on the United Australia Party, mining billionaire and Senate hopeful Clive Palmer has walked back his comments from last week about his personal inclination for the Greens to be preferenced ahead of Labor and the Liberal Party in the lower house.

The party chairman made the surprise remark following a speech to the National Press Club last week, where he was asked how the party would use its how-to-vote cards to direct its supporters to preference the parties.

Clive Palmer from the United Australia Party ahead of his address to the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra last week.Alex Ellinghausen

“I think I’d put the Greens ahead of Liberal and Labor, that’s my personal perspective, because they haven’t been in government and they haven’t been responsible for this debt,” Palmer said, after his speech heavily criticised the Morrison government’s record debt levels.

He has since claimed his comments were “taken out of context” and called media coverage of the issue “fake news”, as he confirmed that UAP would put the Greens last on its how-to-votes in the lower house.

Election 2022 LIVE updates: Anthony Albanese addresses unemployment rate gaffe; Scott Morrison continues campaign in NSW

Key Posts

How the day played out