Pretty incredible, when you think about it, that it’s taken this long for Anthony Albanese to get Covid.
The Labor leader has been campaigning intensively around the country for many many, months, and would have had countless near misses in terms of close contacts. But the inevitable finally happened. The Labor leader tested positive for Covid on Thursday at the end of week two of a six-week campaign.
What happens now, in terms of basic logistics, is a function of how sick Albanese gets. If his symptoms are mild, he’ll continue with the campaign plan, but virtually, as Joe Biden did in the United States in an effort to avoid getting infected.
But the downside risk is, if his symptoms are bad, Albanese will need to disappear from view just at the point he was finding his campaign legs.
Australian voters are used to presidential-style doubleheaders during election seasons, so the obvious thing to do at this point would be pass the baton to Richard Marles, Labor’s deputy leader.
But Labor’s campaign spokesman, frontbencher Jason Clare, made it clear on Friday Marles would not be deputised as the Albanese stand-in. What would be happening is the shadow frontbench would be stepping forward.
Clare didn’t say this, but there’s a view Marles isn’t the focal point the Labor campaign needs at the point of going negative about Morrison – which is the point the campaign has now reached. Labor’s deputy leader is not a natural attack dog and he doesn’t always land the message.
Clare told journalists on Friday the team would be stepping up. “I see this an opportunity, I got to say. Not only do we have a better plan, we have a better team.”
Persisting with that opportunity point, Clare was asked whether or not Australians seeing more of the prime minister over the coming week because of Albanese’s absence on the hustings would prove a positive or a negative for the Labor campaign.
“I think it’s a positive for our campaign,” Clare said Friday. “The more they see of Scott Morrison, the more they will realise this government has run out of puff.”
The official rationale was voters seeing more of Morrison would be a plus, because what they’d see is a prime minister shadowed by internal disputes and weighted by his record. This would help Labor’s core objective, which is to make this contest a referendum on Morrison.
Familiarity would foment voter contempt in other words. “I think the real problem is the Australians know Scott Morrison too well,” Clare said.
Of course this is hope, not truth, speaking.
The truth is no one knows how this development will shape an election result in four weeks’ time – not Clare, or Albanese, or Morrison, or the campaign directors. This is an unknown unknown.
Right now, the Labor campaign is just relieved this has happened now, after Albanese recovered from a bad start to be judged by viewers to have won the first leaders’ debate midweek and before the official campaign launch next Sunday in Perth.
The 2022 campaign right now is still in practice laps because a large number of Australians are having their first real holiday in two years, taking advantage of the school holiday break before another Covid winter.
That’s part of the reason Morrison sought a six-week campaign, understanding the country would not be focused or plugged in to the contest for the duration because of Easter, school holidays and the Anzac Day long weekend.
The campaign acceleration point is after Anzac Day.
If Albanese can be back on his feet by the end of the coming week the vacuum will be short, and on the plus side of the ledger, he will not have to risk manage getting Covid in the closing weeks of the contest, where ubiquity and momentum will matter.
We can end with a couple of conundrums. Campaign strategists are always obsessed with winning the nightly television news. Albanese’s absence will make it harder for the networks to structure the daily package around the contest. But the thinking at this point is Labor will deploy a principal spokesperson in the wild each day to ensure the networks have their vision.
Then there’s the question of how Morrison campaigns against an empty chair, or a chair with a temporary occupant.
Morrison bludgeons in campaign mode. He’s the bluntest of blunt instruments.
But the changed campaign conditions will require a bit of nuance.
It will be interesting to see whether be continues in his opponent’s absence to be a bulldozer, or whether Australia’s campaigner-in-chief has the dexterity to execute a step change as well.