Gosford pork: Albo and Jase a ratings dud

The zingers came thick and fast at a media conference by Anthony Albanese and Jason Clare in Gosford on the NSW central coast. In between promoting Labor’s housing policy, the pair were there to help the Labor candidate for Robertson, held by the Liberals on a 4% margin.

Alas the shindig was a bit of a mess, and a timely reminder of why real people don’t watch these things (and rightly so: let the media pick the corn out of the cow dung). 

Housing spokesman Clare, Labor’s emerging star, is Generation X but he entertained the media pack with decidedly Boomer references. We were back at the Montreal Olympics of 1976 with his reference to ‘’a backflip worthy of Nadia Comaneci.’

Albanese made this gravitas-heavy slam at the government: ‘’They don’t think about legislation, they think about wedge-islation.’’

Back to Clare:  “I reckon in the cabinet room there’s sour cream and sweet chilli sauce, there’s so many wedges there. You remember that scene in Happy Days when Fonzie jumps the shark? This is Scott Morrison, more baloney than a New York deli.”  

Then, as a way to bolster the case for everyone owning their home, Clare made an uneasy pivot to family history:

My grandfather rented all this life. Never owned a home. When he died, he died in intensive care, and he was in intensive care for three weeks. Now, the only reason we had enough money for the coffin and for the funeral is because he was in intensive care for three weeks and his pension accumulated.

If the fun was over, it was even more over when a reporter challenged Albanese:

Given Labor’s focus on affordable housing, wouldn’t a fair way of dealing with it be for people like you, Mr Albanese, who own three or four properties, to sell two, to create a bigger pool of housing which would lower prices, at the moment you and others are getting tax breaks on properties?

What was the response? What did the man who won’t shirk responsibility, the man who will always turn up in a crisis, do? Well, he initially yielded the microphone to Clare, who had referred in un-prime ministerial terms  to ‘’Albo’’ and to ‘’the boss’’.

After much argy-bargy the reporter tried the topic again. Albanese’s response:

I heard the question, you yelled it a few times. Yes, I have a home I live in in Sydney and one in Canberra, and I have an investment property. This policy is not about any individual. What it’s about is actually a part of our entire program in terms of assisting housing policy in this country.

Fair enough, but telling a female reporter she’s yelling? There would be meltdown in the Twitterverse had it been Morrison or Joyce.

And the candidate, Gordon Reid, barely got a word in, at least in the televised bit.

Stop press: Jim Chalmers just said: ”Scott Morrison saying he is not focusing on the politics is like saying Homer Simpson is not focusing on the donuts.” OK, Boomer …