Paul Bongiorno

The high commissioners could have knocked on the doors.

But when the prime minister turns up, it gives it weight.

And it also says that we're taking this extremely seriously.

And I think that's why he flew directly back from Malaysia into Geelong this week to say, I'm here.

I want reassurances that what is happening here is being dealt with in the best possible way.

Well, it is indeed.

And I think that also we've seen historically governments lose elections rather than oppositions win them.

And you can't necessarily count on the opposition continuing to be as hopeless as it has been in the last year or so.

Yeah, well, what I've heard, which is quite interesting, really, was that Australia's two biggest supermarket chains, Coles and Woolworths, were very worried in the very early days, the first week of the crisis, that a run on supermarket supplies would leave them incapable of keeping up with the demand.

So they came to Albanese and they said, look,

we've got to calm the place down.

And that was the real purpose, I was told, of Albanese going with that bland statement.

Now, a lot of people say, look, if you're going to have an address to the nation, you've got to say, I'm the Prime Minister and the world is about to end, otherwise don't bother, you know, otherwise just buy an ad.

Whereas the real point was, I'm here, I'm the Prime Minister and the current situation doesn't demand panic.

because Albanese knows, as we all know, how long this lasts and what its impact will be.

He's not trying to pretend that we haven't got a crisis on our hands, but the best way to manage it is we've got supplies now, we're confident that we have even more than we usually have for another month at least, so let us just do prudent business as usual.

And that

That was explained to me as the reason why we got that rather bland appearances from the Prime Minister.

Well...

What I made of it was that it was an act of sheer desperation and in grave danger of damaging a consensus in this country that eschews racism, that looks for multicultural harmony, that looks for national unity rather than cheap shots and appealing to what you might call base prejudice.