Day 2 and it’s time for The Redemption Song

When the election date was announced, Anthony Albanese quoted from the Ramone’s ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ – “Hey ho, let’s go”.

And after his mistake in not knowing the Reserve Bank cash rate, or the official unemployment rate, suggested another song of the day: Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’.

The song of the day should probably be more along the lines of ‘Redemption Song’ (Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer version, of course).

But best to leave the song choice of the day to Albanese. And I think he should keep doing this throughout the campaign, and hopefully end with The Saints’ ‘Know Your Product’ as a homage to Chris Bailey, who died earlier this week.

A few people have asked me if these mistakes mean it’s the end of the campaign for Albanese, and my answer is: “no”. Not in itself, but it will cause other problems for Labor’s campaign.

Here are the bad points: it happened on day one of the campaign, and that sets up the tone for the rest of the campaign. Obviously, it wouldn’t be good if it had occurred closer to the election day, but it would have been much better on day two of the campaign, or the Thursday just before the Easter weekend.

The only positive for Labor at this point is the mistake occurred during school holidays; it’s early in the campaign; owning up to the error might give him some credit to the people that really don’t care about this kind of issue; it might create some negativity for Albanese for the people who probably wouldn’t be voting for him anyway, and by the time votes start being cast on 9 May, this might have been forgotten about.

But the problem for Albanese is the people who are unlikely to forget: Scott Morrison and the conservative media which, to be frank, is pretty much all of the mainstream media. By the end of day two, the ABC was still running with the story; angry journalists decided to put Albanese straight into the naughty chair and started asking the serious questions: “Is Albo up to the job?”, “Albo-nesia makes for a horror Labor start”, “Testing times for Labor” (offset by headlines such as “PM hopes his can-do attitude pays off” – no bias there).

There’s another issue behind Albanese’s mistake, and it hasn’t really got much to do with the mistake itself: media management. I looked closely at that media conference yesterday and it seems there were about 20 journalists – 20! – with their assorted camera people, microphones – shouting through their questions and interrogations. Albanese looked flummoxed and, as we can see with his answers, was flummoxed.

Why were there so many journalists? They really are like a pack of rabid dogs, so who was the Labor media strategist who allowed that to happen? Morrison’s media appearances are tightly-managed affairs, with perhaps three or four journalists present, usually chosen by Morrison. Albanese needs to have as much media coverage as possible, but the media conference in the seat of Bass was an uncontrolled mass of mayhem. He should follow Morrison’s strategy of avoiding the problems before they arrive.

There’s no question Albanese should have been able to recite those figures he was asked of – he probably did know, but couldn’t get the figures out under the rapid-fire questions he received – but where was the strategy to deal with these situations?

It would have been better for Albanese – if he didn’t know the number – to say, “hang on, I’ll just check, because I don’t want to give you the wrong figure”, turn around and ask Katy Gallagher – who was standing next to him – or Google it on a mobile phone, and then give the response. It might have looked clumsy, but it would have avoided much grief.

Has the Labor media team practiced the ‘gotcha’ response strategy? Have they really got the right strategies in place to deal with these campaign tricks the media thrusts upon the party leaders? Based on what happened on day one, possibly not.

Björn Borg was one of the greatest tennis players in the Open era, and perfected the art of “being in the zone” where, win or lose a point, he’d forget about what just happened, and move on to the next point. The theory is, if a point is lost during a game and the player harps on about it, or tries to over-analyse it or gets frustrated by an avoidable mistake, the loss of energy or concentration – even by 1 per cent – will distract from the focus for the next point. Conversely, the exuberance of winning a point creates a false sense of confidence, also reducing concentration levels, and affecting the performance in the next point or game. It’s the cumulative effort during an entire match that results in a victory. Win or lose a point: just forget about what’s just happened.

My advice to Albanese: channel the thinking of Björn Borg; day one has been lost badly, but it’s time to forget about it, as though it never happened. There are 41 other days of the campaign: the cumulative effort is what matters.

So, how to win over the media?

Part of me feels Albanese should do some really dumb shit – perhaps, shear a sheep; drink a schooner and place it on his head; play bingo; drive a tractor – even better, drive an army tank; wash a women’s hair; hammer some nails… because that’s what the mainstream journalists want to see. For the media, elections are time for – as Paul Keating once said – the switch to vaudeville. All that’s missing is the monkey and organ grinder.

In their world, that’s the hallmark of a real prime minister: the everyday man, the guy who tells what he thinks we need to know, not what we actually need to know. The guy who has a “Scomo” beer tin manufactured for him (an empty can, without beer inside), because he gave this particular firm a generous grant of $1 million. Who’s got the time to analyse an almost $1 trillion national government debt? Or $1.2 billion paid out in compensation over Robodebts that didn’t exist?

Or why Morrison lies at every opportunity, even when he doesn’t need to? Or the rape of a Liberal Party staffer, just 50 metres away from the prime minister’s office? Or the total neglect of every issue related to climate change?

Fuck that. Give the journalist another empty “Scomo” beer can, and fill it up again with Kool Aid. That tastes much better.

The media loves the convenient idiot. The media thrive on Morrison. He is definitely their man. The media will never support Labor, even at the best of times. Some people have pointed out to me the unfairness of this situation, but it has always been like this within the mainstream media, although the ABC has provided more of a balance in the past. These are the rules of the game, and Labor – and Albanese – know what these rules are.

And based on what occurred on day one, the media has become more brazen with their bizarre and insignificant questions: the focus of the day was whether Albanese would stop political appointments to the Australian Human Rights Commission, and if he could name the Human Rights Commissioner. By the way, her name is Lorraine Finlay, and Albanese didn’t know her name. To repeat what John Howard said, “so what?”.

You just know the media fix is on when this sort of rubbish is thrown at Albanese: a government organisation the media has never shown any interest in, a person who is of little interest to the electorate, all of a sudden, becomes an important institution on day two of an election campaign, and Albanese is rubbished for not knowing the name of the Human Rights Commissioner that no one really gives a flying fuck about.

What’s next? A spelling bee? A question about Pythagoras theorem? A wall map where Albanese has to identify all the countries of the world and their respective flags? Day two of the campaign, and the media are already to write about “how boring the campaign is” and “God help us if Albanese is going to announce a song of the day for the next 40 days”.

Elections are important for the future direction of the country, and whichever party forms government will then affect many different groups of people all around Australia – for better or worse. For many political journalists, all of this is a big joke: to them, elections are about the democracy sausage at the polling booths, the “gotcha” questions, and who’s better at shearing a sheep.

If they think the campaign is ‘boring’, they should all just piss off, do something better with their lives, and get the people who are actually interested in democracy and understand the value of elections, to write their material.