Former prime minister John Howard has made a swift retreat from his defence of Anthony Albanese’s stumble on the campaign trail.
Mr Howard on Tuesday declared the Opposition Leader should have been on top of the unemployment rate after he initially dismissed Mr Albanese’s error.
Mr Albanese on Monday couldn’t name the official reserve bank cash rate or the national unemployment rate when asked by reporters on the hustings on the first day of the official election campaign.
Mr Howard brushed off Mr Albanese’s mistake when he was stopped by journalists in the Perth electorate of Hasluck later that day, saying: “Is that a serious question? Okay, well Anthony Albanese didn’t know the unemployment rate. So what?”
But Mr Howard had changed his tune by his Tuesday morning appearance at a leadership event held by The West Australian newspaper.
“He should have known that figure, let’s not muck about. Anybody who wants to be prime minister should be on top of that,” he said.
Mr Howard, the Liberal prime minister from 1996 to 2007, made similar comments on Perth’s 6PR radio.
“If (Mr Albanese) had a reputation for being on top of the economic argument it probably wouldn’t have mattered,” he said.
“One of his problems is that I can’t think of an economic or major political issue that he’s really championing.”
Mr Howard experienced his own televised pre-election stumble over interest rates in an interview with A Current Affair before the 2007 poll.
Asked at the time if he could nominate the reserve bank’s official rate, Mr Howard answered: “It’s 6.25 per cent”.
Then opposition leader Kevin Rudd – who went on to win that year’s election for the Labor Party – correctly quoted the figure of 6.5 per cent in a separate interview later that night.
Mr Albanese was quick to apologise after his gaffe on Monday, telling reporters in Tasmania he had 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,” he said.
“I won’t blame someone else, I’ll accept responsibility. That’s what leaders do.”
The unemployment rate is at 4 per cent, and the reserve bank cash rate is at a historic low of 0.1 per cent.
