Election media insights: Labor's first stuff up

David Bradbury had a rough interview yesterday

If you read yesterday's piece, you'll have seen the Coalition take an early lead in the "stuffing up media interviews" stakes.  

Always a hotly contested area in every election, it was clear that it wouldn't be long until a Labor candidate screwed up too.

In fact, K-Rudd predicted this!  When asked about yesterday's atrocious interview with Mr Diaz from Greenway, Rudd didn't lay in the boot.  Instead he was quite reserved.

He said: "I understand the Liberal candidate for Greenway had a few challenges yesterday. I'm sure some of ours will at some stage or another.

"That's just life in an electoral campaign. If you've been through as many as I have you've seen anything happen."

Well played, Mr Rudd.  He knew one of his own team would screw up sooner or later, and by not attacking the Liberal candidate he was protecting himself against seeming hypocritical when one of his team followed suit.

Well, it was lucky he did, because a few hours later the Assistant Treasurer, David Bradbury, a candidate in the hotly contested seat of Lindsay (also in western Sydney) made a stuff up of his own.

Bradbury was interviewed on Smooth FM (what a great name!) by veteran journalist Glenn Daniel who accused Mr Bradbury of twisting Joe Hockey's words (like Bradbury's the first politician to do that!) on a possible interest rate cut.

Bradbury responded to these challenges by accusing the journalist of being a Liberal party advocate.

It's pretty embarrassing for Bradbury as the one thing you don't want to look like when being interviewed is being a) a policy lightweight, and b) having a glass jaw.

Bradbury looked like both and he's since admitted he 'had a bad day'.

Yes David, you did.  And on a margin of just over 1% you don't want any more such bad days.

What's the lesson here for all you budding spokespeople out there?  Don't get flustered.  Remain calm. 

But, above all, don't feel you can just give slogans at the expense of answers.  First you answer the question then you steer the conversation where you want it to go.

As for the rest of the campaign, let's see who stuffs up next!