Eyes forward, smile fixed on his face, the Prime Minister pushed through the media scrum.
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That morning in Perth, Scott Morrison had fallen victim to the second numbers stuff-up of the campaign. The JobSeeker rate is $46 per day, not $46 per week.
His explanation hissed out of the side of his mouth, barely perceptible to the flock of cameramen, his smile unflinching.
"I misspoke," he said.
Well after Morrison's car had departed, journalists huddled over a phone, straining to hear what had been said.
Eventually, it seeped into media reports: the Prime Minister says he misspoke. But there was no public mea culpa to be blared on the nightly news. Morrison's disciplined, image-obsessed campaign rolled on.
From coronation to dogfight
Weeks ago, Morrison couldn't take a trick.
Colleagues' character assessments, alleged past indiscretions, and new accusations of absenteeism during natural disasters produced relentless negative headlines.
The budget, Morrison's last pre-election sales pitch, was instantly buried by Liberal senator Concetta Fierrevanti-Wells blasting him as a bully, liar, and "unfit to be prime minister".
Days later, Michael Towke went public with claims Morrison had weaponised his Lebanese heritage to bulldoze through a 2007 preselection battle in Cook.
But after a sluggish start to Anthony Albanese's campaign, it is increasingly clear what some had framed as a Labor coronation procession is in fact a dog fight.
No doubt Albanese's sluggish start has given the government a glimmer of hope. Races naturally tighten. Incumbency is usually an asset.
Morrison's personal standing has been battered by the perception his interest ends when the cameras go dark.
But the very traits angering a huge voter bloc - his front, his tendency to squirm out of questions - may be keeping him viable in a six-week race.
Jobs, jobs, jobs
His campaign continues at frenetic pace, his plane zig-zagging across marginal seats and time zones.
Two days in Western Australia was a whirlwind, from breakfast with mining executives to BMX track upgrades in marginal seats. A trip to Boothby, South Australia was thrown in on the way to Wednesday's debate in Brisbane.
Up to four events - or "jobs", as his media minders put it - each day are stage-managed down to the most minute details. Most put him in front of cameras, though not questions.
Pre-arrival briefings occasionally include where the Prime Minister will walk, almost to the step. A tour through an Adelaide factory was peppered by a media handler pointing out the next spot to take pictures, just metres away. The messaging is just as relentless.
Jobs, jobs, jobs. National security. In 2019, Labor had too many plans. Now, it has none at all.
"This election is about the future of our economy," Morrison begins, regardless of the setting.
But when pressed on government sore spots, he makes an artform of answering the question he wished he was asked.
Questions about a federal ICAC are reimagined as questions about priorities. And that's easy to answer: "Jobs, jobs, jobs". Answers on social service cuts inevitably return to the economy, because someone has to pay for it. What starts as a query on pork-barrelling quickly segues to Anthony Albanese's time working for Tom Uren in the 1980s.
When frustrated journalists implore him to return to the topic, he pulls the next trick out of the bag.
"If you'd just let me answer your question," he says, brow furrowed. Then he carries on in much the same vein.
Muscle memory
There is no Speaker to force him to keep him relevant to the question, a fact which seemed to allude him on Sunday.
A tick emerged as Morrison's answer rose above the din of an increasingly indignant press pack.
"The issue, Mr Speaker," he said, before stopping himself to chuckle.
"There you go, I'm back in Parliament."
It was the third time he had labelled the journalist "Mr Speaker" in just a few minutes, but the first he'd noticed himself doing it. Made by Joe Biden, that mistake would have armchair psychologists opining about senility.
But a man so single-mindedly focused on the end goal was simply reverting to muscle memory. In question time, Morrison speaks through heckling from opposite benches as though it's not there. His goal is not engaging opposition MPs, but the cameras sitting behind them. "Mr Speaker" is a verbal crutch, a moment to gather his thoughts amid the baying cries opposite.
At press conferences, he stares down the camera as he emphasises his point, rather than the journalist asking the question. Interjections rarely throw him off course.
When he's looking to run down the clock, journalists are told he has "time for one more". His final answer on Friday lasted six minutes, his answer expanding beyond the scope of the question.
'There's a boom mic'
In 2015, Tony Abbott landed himself in hot water.
The then prime minister, fresh from a trip to a Pacific region under threat from climate change, joked about delays to the schedule.
Standing next to him, and confident they were out of earshot, a joke popped into then immigration minister Peter Dutton's head.
"Time doesn't mean anything when you're about to have water lapping at your door," he quipped. Abbott chuckled.
It was reckless from Dutton, and feckless from Abbott. But the third man in the frame is often forgotten.
Without breaking his cheery demeanour, the man who would beat Dutton to the prime ministership three years later alerts them to the danger lurking above.
"There's a boom [microphone] up there," Morrison mutters, surveying the room as though he said nothing at all. The conversation had been recorded, and would soon be aired.
The same man was on show as he conceded he'd misspoken in Perth: acutely aware of the cameras, the optics, and of who his target audience is.