Anthony Albanese addresses the National Press Club

REPORTER (1993): Dr Hewson had to fight his way through anti-GST demonstrators.

JOHN HEWSON (1993): I need to know exactly what type of cake to give a detail answer…

PAUL KEATING (1993): This is a question for Dr Hewson, is it taxable? Is it GST-able and the answer is, it is!

PAUL KEATING (1996): Go and get a job.

RAY MARTIN (1996): Do you apologise to those young people you told to go get a job?

PAUL KEATING (1996): That was, I didn’t say go get a job.

JOHN HOWARD (1996): You did. Somebody is putting words in your mouth, are they?

PAUL KEATING (1996): No, no.

JOHN HOWARD (2004): How are you, Mark?

MARK LATHAM (2004): Good, good. How are you?

JOHN HOWARD (2004): I’m very well.

LAURA TINGLE, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: There has been an exasperation in this election campaign with the media and gotcha questions and stories about gaffes.

But past elections show how powerful one moment or one line can be in shaping perceptions and if Anthony Albanese wins on Saturday, it will be despite such moments.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, OPPOSITION LEADER (April 11): The national unemployment rate at the moment is, I think it’s 5.4 – sorry, I’m not sure what it is.

LAURA TINGLE: The Opposition Leader was seen to have won all three of the leaders’ debates.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: When you have been a minister, we have had the Port of Darwin sold to a company connected with the Chinese Communist Party.

LAURA TINGLE: All these things make different impressions on voters. They also make impressions on the journalists reporting on elections.

Less than a week ago, an opinion poll in The Australian suggesting Labor would win an 80 seat majority saw journalists travelling with the leaders framing questions about winning to the Opposition Leader, and about losing to the Prime Minister.

Today, new polls show the lead has narrowed. The election is now very tight. Expectations have changed again.

All of that made today’s appearance at the National Press Club all the more important for Anthony Albanese.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I am seeking the honour of serving as prime minister of the best country in the world.

LAURA TINGLE: Today there were two topics at the top of the campaign agenda: a renewed focus on falling wages but also Labor’s budget costings.

SCOTT MORRISON: The shadow treasurer is running around saying a couple of billion dollars here and there over a year is not much, it’s not a big deal. Well, it is a big deal, Jim. It’s a very big deal.

LAURA TINGLE: It was the issue of costings which yesterday produced a campaign image which played large on the television. Anthony Albanese was shown walking away – or running according to some – from a press conference where, he protests, he had already answered 18 questions.

REPORTER: Mr Albanese, will your deficit be higher or lower than the Coalitions?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I don’t want to disappoint you for Thursday.

LAURA TINGLE: By this morning, the government was claiming that its estimates were that Labor’s policies would cost $25 billion more than the government’s over four years.

Labor is not denying that they will spend more than the government but is arguing it is a quality spend, rather than spending on pork-barrelling.

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: We’ve got a trillion dollars in debt. And so, the Australian people aren’t focused on press conferences or the timing of costings release – they’re focused on whether or not they can feed their kids under Scott Morrison.

LAURA TINGLE: Labor argues the late release of costings is just what the Coalition did in 2010 and 2013 but this sits uncomfortably with its pledge for better standards and accountability.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: We have released with every policy, with every single policy, we have released how much it would cost over the forward estimates.

LAURA TINGLE: The government announced yesterday that it would save $1 billion by imposing constraints on public service spending.

Today, the Opposition Leader announced three quarters of a billion dollars of savings from putting some of the funds that the government distributes to target electorates back into the budget where it says it can be better spent on delivering services and that there would be more savings to come.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Yesterday, they stood up and said, we’re going to gut the public service even more. Well, you know what that leads to – Robodebt.

It doesn’t save money. It costs money, because you take humans out of human services, and it has devastating consequences for real people! It costs lives.

Lives! As well as over a billion dollars to taxpayers.

LAURA TINGLE: The other new piece of information today was about wages, the so-called wage price index rose by just 2.4 per cent for the year compared to 5.1 per cent inflation – once again confirming that real wages are going backwards – one of Labor’s major charges against the government.

SCOTT MORRISON: Wages will rise for all of the reasons that I have said, wages will rise because of unemployment coming down.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: A fall of 2.7 per cent. What a hit. This delivers the biggest cuts to real wages in more than 20 years.

LAURA TINGLE: At the beginning of the campaign, Scott Morrison said the election should not be a referendum about his government but about a choice for the future.

At its end, Anthony Albanese seems to agree.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: The choice Australians have to make this Saturday is which party can be trusted to solve these problems?

The Liberal government that created them, a Prime Minister who denied them and then blamed them on someone else?

Or a Labor Party, driven by a determination to learn the lessons of the pandemic, to face up to the big challenges confronting our country and to bring people together to build a better future.