Federal election 2022: Mark McGowan says Anthony Albanese criticism over gaffes unfair

Mark McGowan says the relentless quizzing of Anthony Albanese over his election gaffes was unfairly targeting the Labor leader and letting Scott Morrison get away with blue murder.

Mr McGowan said the media should focus more on the mistakes of the Prime Minister during the campaign.

“I just think it can be quite unfair, these sorts of attacks all the time (on Mr Albanese),” Mr McGowan said.

“Why don’t they (media) ask him what the capital of Uzbekistan is?

“You can’t know every single fact, at every single point of time.”

The WA Premier said Mr Albanese “would answer numerous questions in which he has it all correct, which never gets reported”.

“It becomes this game to try and find something you don’t know,” Mr McGowan said.

“I know the Prime Minister hasn’t been able to answer a whole bunch of questions but the media doesn’t seem to focus on that.

“He got it wrong on the amount of JobKeeper payments and so forth.”

After failing to remember the unemployment or interest rate during week one of the election campaign, Mr Albanese made national headlines this week for not being able to provide journalists with the detail of Labor’s NDIS policy.

While Mr McGowan has batted away Mr Albanese’s stumbles, internally among senior Federal WA figures concerns are growing that the gaffes could cost Labor in WA as it attempts to wrest three seats from the Liberals.

Labor only holds five of the 15 Federal WA seats. “We are shaking our heads, saying ‘this is another disaster’,” a WA Federal Labor source said.

“He just keeps mucking up. It doesn’t bode well for WA.

“People don’t like Scott Morrison, but Anthony Albanese is failing to inspire (voters).”

They fear Albanese is not cutting through to voters.

“People aren’t inspired to change their vote,” the source said.

“They might not like Scott Morrison but they are not entirely convinced around changing their vote to Albanese. There is still an opportunity — with two weeks to go anything can happen.

“But that window is fast closing.”

Meanwhile, Mr McGowan has walked away from his December prediction that Federal Labor could win as many as five seats off the Liberals on May 21.

In December he nominated the Liberal-held seats of Pearce, Swan, Hasluck, Tangney and Moore as possible WA Federal wins.

Asked whether he still stood by those predictions, Mr McGowan said: “They (Federal Labor) have got some very good candidates.

“I don’t want to speculate on something like that, which I don’t think is wise.

“I was probably unwise to do it back at Christmas.”