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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Katharine Murphy

Never mind the bollocks: Albanese’s non-gaffe on immigration was just media hysteria

Labor Scott Morrison Anthony Albanese Bernie Sanders PBO
Anthony Albanese
‘The core objective for Morrison and his amplifiers between now and 21 May is telling voters Anthony Albanese is Bernie Sanders in a better suit who knows bugger all about the economy.’ Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Folks: we need to talk about gaffes. It’s now a matter of record that Anthony Albanese stumbled badly on day one on the hustings after a brain fade about the latest unemployment figure and the official cash rate.

I understand a lot of readers and viewers couldn’t care less about whether or not the Labor leader can recite statistics like a pet shop parrot. This point is fair enough. Sometimes I wonder why we journalists care about it, given a pop quiz is not a test of anything substantive, because anyone (as Adam Bandt put it memorably this week) can actually Google it.

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