Anthony Albanese has downplayed rhetoric that a trainwreck press conference on the first day of the election campaign has already cost him the election.
While on the hustings in Tasmania, the Labor leader was asked if he knew the official Reserve Bank cash rate and the national unemployment rate.
He could not answer either question.
“I think it’s five … point … four. Sorry. I’m not sure what it is,” he said in response.
Labor’s finance spokeswoman Katy Gallagher was then asked whether she knew what the unemployment rate and cash rate were.
“The Reserve Bank current rate is 0.10. And the unemployment rate's at four per cent,” she said.
Mr Albanese later apologised for the embarrassing gaffe, telling reporters he “made a mistake”.
“I’m human. But when I make a mistake, I will fess up to it and I will set about correcting that mistake. I won’t blame someone else, I will take responsibility.”
In a sign of how seriously Labor took the fumble, Mr Albanese later fronted up for an interview on Sky News.
“I do know the official cash rate. It’s point one. But the thing that matters to people is their interest rates that they pay and no one out there is paying point 1 per cent on their mortgage either,” he responded.
Asked if this could be considered the day he lost the election, Mr Albanese told host Andrew Clennell he was “being melodramatic”.
“You are being melodramatic. People make mistakes and when it comes to figures, quite often. I don’t want to get into the Prime Minister’s mistakes that have been made,” the Labor leader said.
“You know, people make mistakes. That happens. I face up to it, I’m accepting responsibility for it. And that’s it.”
But he denied reports he had apologised to his colleagues for the error.
The two figures the Labor leader was asked to name go directly to the cost of living, a major issue this campaign.
Graphs show how Australia’s unemployment figure – which currently sits at four per cent for the first time since 2008 – has fallen to a near-historic low.
Unemployment Figures
Mr Albanese also failed to answer what the official Reserve Bank cash rate is – despite it having been a record low 0.10 since November 2020.
Australia's Cash Rate 2022
Later in the morning, the same questions were put to Scott Morrison, while he was campaigning at Culburra Beach in the Labor-held marginal seat of Gilmore.
“0.1 per cexjmtzywnt is the cash rate, and it has been for some time,” he said.
“The unemployment rate I’m happy to say is four per cent, falling to a 50 year low.
“It came down from 5.7 per cent when we were first elected. More importantly, as we went into the pandemic, we were facing unemployment rates of around 15 per cent. Now it’s four per cent.”
Mr Albanese was also asked how his government will help ease the burden of mounting costs.
“All the measures we have put in place are about putting downward pressure on inflation and interest rates,” he said.
“It seems to me that if we can get more agreement between employers and unions when it comes to making sure that profits increase and wages increase, you can do that if you lift productivity.
“That and measures like our child care policy is welfare reform.”
