Adam Bandt explodes at journalist who asks him about wages.
We’re just four days into an election campaign and we’ve had almost as many “Gotchya” questions, that is, a question that aims to catch a politician out.
The iconic one so far is when Anthony Albanese didn’t know the unemployment rate – something we’re still talking about. We break down why that moment and so many other gotchya moments, dominated headlines – Why Are We Still Talking About Anthony Albanese’s Slip Up?
Scott Morrison hasn’t had his own moment during the campaign yet, but he did have his own run-in with a gotchya question at the National Press Club last month when asked about the price of bread.
So now, it’s onto the leader of the third biggest party.
Watch: Google it mate
“Google it mate”.
— Tina Quinn (@TinaMQ) April 13, 2022
Greens leader @AdamBandt clearly fed up with “gotcha” questions at today’s @PressClubAust, saying that elections should be “a contest of ideas” as opposed to a fact checking exercise on stats, while laying out Greens policy. pic.twitter.com/0ZQfWnzLWD
Bandt quizzed on wages
The moment Mr Bandt was asked one of these gotchya questions was also at the National Press Club.
On Wednesday he delivered his vision for the next Parliament, which we’ve broken down for you – The Greens Federal Election 2022 Policies.
After giving his address, Mr Bandt is asked a number of questions by journalists about things like voting preferences, Indigenous issues and power-sharing with Labor, Mr Bandt’s attention was turned to the wage price index. Specifically what IS the WPI.
Sound familiar? Yep, it’s just a much harder, much more obscure version of the question Mr Albanese was asked.
Leader explodes
Whether or not Mr Bandt knew the answer, we’ll never know.
What we do know is he wasn’t happy Larry.
He told the reporter, Robert Mizen from the Australian Financial Review, to “Google it”.
But he didn’t leave it there.
“If you want to know why people are turning off politics, it’s because of what happens when you have an election that increasingly becomes this basic fact-checking exercise… This is what happens,” he said.
“Elections should be about a contest of ideas. Politics should be about reaching for the stars and offering a better society and instead, there are these questions that are asked about ‘can you tell us this particular stat’ or ‘can you tell us that particular stat’ and those questions are designed to show that politicians are somehow out of touch and not representative of everyday people.”
Mr Bandt said a “better way” of showing that politicians were or weren’t in touch with people would be with questions about the passing of laws including lifting the minimum wage, putting dental and mental into medicare and creating affordable housing.
Learn more about The Greens policies via greens.org.au.
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This article was first published on So Perth – Why Are We Still Talking About Anthony Albanese’s Slip Up?