AARON PATRICK: Blowback to Anthony Albanese’s cheaper coffee claim a sign of the PM’s great vulnerability

Maybe the Prime Minister’s Office thought there would be a neat symmetry putting Anthony Albanese on social media spruiking lower coffee prices on international coffee day.

Whatever they were thinking, the coffee commercial backfired. Mr Albanese’s folksy TikTok-like video on Thursday assuring people they would save “money every time you tap” was smashed by expert and conventional opinion.

Sydney coffee personality Destiny Choutis, whose cafe and roasting business is in the Prime Minister’s Grayndler electorate, said she had little choice but to raise prices to recoup the now-banned 1.3 per cent charges for debit and credit card payments.

“Of course we’re going to have to,” she told The Nightly.

On X, the video had received two-and-a-half-thousand comments by Friday, most of them critical, based on a sample of several hundred. Similar blowback occurred across other social media sites, including more than 15,000 comments on Facebook, suggesting the Prime Minister tapped into a deep vein of cynicism — towards himself.

The responses included one from Liberal leader Angus Taylor accusing the prime minister of lying.

Mr Taylor must have thanked God for an opportunity to remind voters of what has become the defining problem of the Albanese Government’s second term: out-of-control prices that are making almost everyone poorer.

Daily ritual

Coffee — the ritual of millions — may be the perfect political example of the problem. Almost every regular drinker knows their cafe latte’s price. A 50¢ hike isn’t going send them broke, but the daily habit makes it more visible than a hike in the gas bill or a pair of jeans.

For the millions of indebted Australians, it was a sobering week. The interest rate hike will cost the average mortgagee about $1356 a year. That’s just one of what could be five rate rises in 2026.

From the Prime Minister’s perspective, you could see the thought process behind the coffee video. With inflation out of control, Mr Albanese’s political advisers presumably wanted to promote a cost-of-living measure that came into effect two days after the Reserve Bank brought down the hammer on borrowers.

There were two main problems with the public relations plan. The most important was that the ban on debit and credit-card surcharges is theatre. History has proven, again and again, laws are impotent in the face of economics.

If parliaments could legislate lower bank charges, everyone would enjoy fee-free banking. In other words, portraying the policy as making life cheaper was political bullshit.

It was either a sign of the Prime Minister’s confidence in his persuasive powers, or ignorance of business, or both, that led him to overreach. Which is the second main reason it was a mistake.

Since the May Budget’s breaking of taxation promises, a perception has spread that Mr Albanese can’t be trusted to tell the truth — a view that the coffee fib won’t help. A poll published in the main Nine newspapers, which are far from politically conservative, less than a month ago found 57 per cent of voters do not trust Mr Albanese.

Only a quarter said they did, a remarkably low figure for a political leader who won one of the largest parliamentary majorities in history last year.

The euphoria of that victory is long gone. Now that most voters are sensitive to the possibility their prime minister might be untruthful, it is surprising Mr Albanese risked adding to the distrust by making a claim that can and will be easily disproved in many cases.

But there was one statement that he made on the video that was definitely not a lie.

“So whether you’re at the supermarket, paying bills or buying a cup of coffee, the price you see is the price you pay,” he said.

And those prices are uncomfortably high for many Australians.