Quiet day to kick off Labor’s week without Albanese

It’s tempting fate to suggest that any particular day of an election hasn’t been particularly eventful, and no doubt as soon the subeditors hit publish, news will drop that Scott Morrison is, in fact, a dual citizen on account of his hitherto unnoticed Chinese heritage. But ultimately the most interesting thing to happen in politics today actually happened last night.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese chose an inopportune time to finally contract COVID-19, dragging him off the campaign trail for a week and making the day of whoever at The Herald Sun had been sitting on “Albo queasy” for a headline (guys, “Albo sneezy” and “Albo wheezy” are right there).

The impact this will have on Labor’s campaign remains to be seen — Albanese obviously can’t travel for seven days but, symptoms allowing, there’s nothing stopping him from going on talkback or holding virtual press conferences as Prime Minister Scott Morrison did when he contracted COVID. And while Albanese’s fortune had improved this week with a solid showing at the first leaders’ debate on Wednesday, there’s also a sense that a chance to reset while the Labor leadership team take the spotlight off him might not be the worst thing. And as unnamed Labor sources told the Nine papers, better he has to isolate for a week now than on May 14.

Elsewhere, the business of politics continued, with Labor hammering Morrison on the intelligence failures that saw Australia blindsided by a pact, revealed back in March, between China and the Solomon Islands: “This has happened on Scott Morrison’s watch. This is an epic fail when it comes to foreign policy. Scott Morrison will do everything he can today, and I expect for the next few weeks, to try to blame someone else for this,” campaign spokesman Jason Clare told reporters in Sydney.

Leader in the Senate Penny Wong, in Western Australia campaigning with Swan candidate Zaneta Mascarenhas, hit a similar note, accusing Morrison of using tough rhetoric on China to distract from his domestic failures.

And certainly Morrison’s response to the saga has been to attack Labor’s supposed softness on China. Today he leapt on reports in The Australian (which whirred reliably to life as soon as it became apparent that the issue, on the record since March, was going to start causing Morrison some headaches) on a speech that Deputy Labor Leader Richard Marles had made in Beijing in 2019. Crikey noted earlier today that Marles is relatively low profile for a deputy party leader. In Albanese’s absence, he might want to brace himself for a lot more of this kind of attention.