WENDELL HUSSEY | Cadet | CONTACT
Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese is under fire today, after making a significant blunder on the first full official day of election campaigning.
After months of guerilla campaigning, the Leader of the Labor party has hit the election trail at full speed, by fumbling through the employment rate and the cash rate in a morning interview.
When asked about the reasonably significant figures which a leader of a nation should probably be across, Albanese guessed the unemployment rate was 5.4%, before stating he wasn’t sure what it was.
The unemployment rate is 4% – if you believe the recent changes in measuring that statistic and don’t take into account half a million overseas workers are about to flood the employment market after two years of closed borders.
That blunder has caused the media to perform a strong u-turn, causing an end to their embargo on mentioning his name, with a flurry of headlines about the morning misstep.
However, while the unemployment rate blunder changed the tune of the media, it’s the confusion of the cash rate that has raised the most eyebrows.
When asked what the cash rate was, Albanese seemed to explain to reporters the ‘cashie rate.’
“Oh, that rate is basically just 10% off whatever the price you’ve negotiated, if you pay with cash,” said Albanese.
“Because you take the taxman out of it ya know. Better for both parties”
“You want to me to explain the case rate too? Well basically that one is if you pay with a case of beer,” he continued, with confused reporters looking around.
The Reserve Bank of Australia describes the cash rate as “the market interest rate for overnight loans between financial institutions. It serves as a benchmark for interest rates at which funds can be lent or borrowed in financial markets, including for different sources of bank funding, such as wholesale debt and deposits.”
More to come.
