THE FRONT DORE: It’s the economy, stupid. For Albo and Jim, it’s the stupid economy

Bill Clinton’s campaign famously coined the phrase “it’s the economy, stupid” to define the 1992 presidential race.

For Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers right now, heading into election season, they’ve tweaked it: “It’s the stupid economy.”

The PM and his people talk a lot. Some of it makes sense. Most of it is designed to distract from what everyone else outside of Canberra is obsessed by — the economy.

Not the stats and the spin. The real economy. The household P & L: How so little is trickling into family bank accounts, and how much of it is rushing back out again. It’s basic.

Most people do not have the luxury to overthink too much when it comes to the household budget. But Australians are fond of a plan. A plan for the day. The week. Dinner. Hold on to enough of that money and they might come up with a plan for a holiday, or a new car.

Australians wouldn’t mind hearing a bit of a plan from old Albo.

This is the greatest finger-pointing government in modern history. They have no explanations and no answers.

We’ve heard more from the PM’s office this past week about whether his second wedding is on (last weekend’s papers) or off (this weekend’s papers).

Political translation: the internal tracking poll through the week did not go well on the question of: “How do you feel about the PM getting married?” Answer: “How does the PM feel about having his honeymoon in opposition?”

The latest hot take from the Lodge brains trust is that all this wedding talk is a bit of a distraction before the election. So it’s off. For now.

Most blokes who are batting, like Albo, would be wise to go earlier, before the dust settles, while you’ve still got a good job. You just never know. Put a ring on it pal.

Maybe just do it one weekend out the back of the Lodge, keep it to yourself, family and friends, don’t invite Women’s Weekly over for the photoshoot, and keep Kyle and Jackie O off the guest list.

When he’s not talking about the wedding, Albanese is talking about Peter Dutton.

He flew into Perth on Sunday and bee-lined it down to Collie, the WA town losing its coal mine.

Dutton wants Collie to come back to life by hosting a nuclear power plant. Albanese might have a plan for Collie, who would know? But for now, the next best idea is to make the town very, very angry. At Peter Dutton’s plan.

Albanese also took the opportunity to instil the fear of God into West Australians, a people uniquely obsessed with the GST, by launching a bunch of online scary ads claiming Dutton was opposed, during Cabinet deliberations, to lifting the State’s share of the consumption tax. Six years ago.

And that must be his secret plan today. He’s coming after your GST sandgropers.

Risky territory for Albanese, a man notorious for espousing some cringeworthy crap in his earlier days in politics, when he actually opposed a GST, negged on capitalism generally, and was all for an inheritance tax and any other great ideas to “hit the top end of town”.

It’s fair to say Albanese likes his new stuff better than his old stuff. But amusingly, his retort in 2022 to the revelations of his eat-the-rich political DNA could not be more fitting today: “It is a sign of absolute desperation from a divided, dishonest and incompetent government“, he said of attempts to trawl over his long-forgotten socialist libations.

Albanese is playing superficial, banal and tiresome politics.

What the Prime Minister doesn’t want to seriously discuss is the economy.

And with good reason, for a bloke desperate for another term to plonk his arse in the back of C1; no Adam Bandt you cannot sit in the driver’s seat.

Our economy is on life support right now.

Unlike a lot of what the Government wastes its time and our money on, the economy is one of those quaint little things it can properly influence. Get out of the way, and great things can happen. Get all busy in everyone’s business, and we end up here. Albo and Jim.

Whether we have a say in it or not, dopey, deadbeat government decisions affect business, which in turn affects workers, and that has an obvious flow-on effect at home. On their family, their kids. It strikes at their health and, naturally, over time, their future.

We don’t talk about it enough, the reality, the mums and dads, the battlers and breadwinners that make up Jim Chalmers’ precious “economy”.

Canberra is mostly utterly oblivious. They don’t work in the real world.

When Albanese dons a hard hat and high-viz, as he did on Sunday, he’s play-acting. It’s a game.

Policies, for want of a more precise word, are crafted to deliver maximum political mileage, while minimising political damage. The greater good is a bit player in this mockumentary.

Even the Treasurer would prefer to talk about Peter Dutton than the economy. Run the focus group lines to get the headlines on Dutton. Not the economy.

Chalmers summons his best vituperative invective for Dutton.

He’s “the most divisive political leader that I have seen in my lifetime and this is a deliberate choice by him, it’s not some accident”. “He divides deliberately, almost pathologically, and that sort of division in our leadership, in our society, right now is worse than disappointing — it’s dangerous.”

Chalmers uses the prefix “Dr”. Most people who are not wankers and have a simple PhD in politics, rather than a medical degree, choose to stick with “Mr”. It avoids confusion. And is certainly a more accurate, and broadly accepted, description for an arts degree.

Chalmers earned his title by writing a thesis on Paul Keating. So he is an expert on pathological, divisive, maybe dangerous, politicians after all.

When attacking Dutton doesn’t work, Chalmers adopts another strategy: he pretends that as Treasurer he doesn’t really run the economy, someone else, anyone, please, does.

Last year it was Vladimir Putin.

This month it’s the governor of the Reserve Bank, Michele Bullock.

Overnight, facing an ugly set of numbers in the national accounts, the official data measuring the state of the economy, Chalmers unloaded on the RBA.

“With all this global uncertainty on top of the impact of rate rises, which are smashing the economy” Chalmers expects the economic growth will be officially “soft and subdued”.

This is not my doing. This is all her. And them. Those people out there, running the globe, and hammering my precious.

It’s terrifying. Neither Chalmers nor Albanese take any responsibility for the state of the economy, or anything else for that matter.

This is the greatest finger-pointing Government in modern history. They have no explanations and no answers.

You don’t need a PhD in macroeconomics or a finance degree from Macquarie University to instinctively know what the official, but rarely discussed, figures actually show: as measured on a micro, household-to-household, level economic growth has been going backwards. The overall figure, artificially engorged by a flood of migrants, masks the reality.

We are, and have been for some time, effectively in a recession.

Politicians spin. It’s naïve to think otherwise. But spin only works when it’s not obvious to everyone that the spin is actually complete bullshit.

Raygun can talk a brilliant game about her breakdancing credentials. Sensational. Until the world sees her dance.

Chalmers can fool everyone into thinking he can handle the economy like a modern Paul Keating. Until we check the label on his suit.

And Albanese can charm his legion of loyal left wing loyalists into thinking he’s the political re-incarnation of Bob Hawke.

Until we see him govern.