The polished everyman image Anthony Albanese projected at the federal election is proving to be a completely different beast full of contradictions, writes Vikki Campion.
The official welcome for regional leaders gathering in Singapore for this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s most significant defence summit.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will deliver the keynote address at the summit tonight.
Leaders will hold meetings throughout the day today.
The Prime Minister pretends to be a republican but runs off with royalty at every opportunity.
He says we need to stop bullying, but he degenerates into name-calling when he has nothing else to say.
He persistently tells of his public housing upbringing but forgets his University of Sydney degree, spends more time in the billionaire Lindsay Fox-protected compound and on the private prime ministerial plane than in the Alice Springs battleground.
At least Zegna-wearing Paul Keating was proud of his head-kicking ways and didn’t pretend to be otherwise – unlike our chameleon shapeshifting Albanese.
He creates the image of the son who sympathises with struggling single mums, but how many of them are in private boxes at the tennis, walking red carpets, clinking crystal at the opera or drinking champagne inside the Bird Cage at Melbourne Cup?
Before he was PM, he was claiming flights at the pointy end of the plane, and chauffeured cars to events that he was gifted corporate tickets to attend, including semi and grand finals at the NRL and AFL, Australia vs India at the SCG, and Blues Fest. He is a moth to the flame of red carpets and events of more interest to the social pages than policy, and better than some members of the royal family at getting inside the palace.
When will Anthony Albanese let his true colours show. Picture: David Gray/Getty Images
Not enough to have tea there, he has invited King Charles and Queen Camilla, Prince William and Princess Kate to tea here. As constitutional monarchs, they hardly need the invitation.
He says he is staunchly culturally Catholic, with endearing memories of the Sisters of Mercy nuns that educated him at primary school, but he has almost had a Cistercian vow of silence when it comes to the ACT government’s forced acquisition of Calvary Hospital, founded by the Little Sisters of Mary, uttering not a syllable of support for them.
He is more worried about getting off-side with the Canberra Greens than standing up for the nuns that nurtured him in his early life.
While the Sisters of Mercy were teaching him, the Sisters of Mary cared for the sick in Canberra.
Barely a whisper has come from Albanese about the heavy hand of a territory government’s compulsory acquisition of a faith-based hospital, putting a chill through faith-based organisations across the nation as it is seen as a litmus test for what is coming their way.
If some of those strong ladies who gave up their lives for vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to educate inner suburban boys in the 1970s were to return today, they would pull Anthony aside for a quiet chat on his poor marks on Calvary Hospital.
Anthony Albanese is enjoying all the trappings of his office, writes Vikki Campion. Picture: AAP Image/Lukas Coch
He tries to assuage empathy from his life experiences, but his log cabin story says more about his mother’s strength than his.
His introduction to parliament this year was a speech about “setting the standard”.
He wanted a “respectful workplace” that upholds “equality, fairness, decency and respect for all”.
Since then, he has met questions about his government with dismissive, shooing motions and sneers, goading jibes and name-calling that would be banned from high school debate.
“Respect for all” apparently only includes the Climate-200 funded crossbenchers and Labor.
It does not extend to Coalition women – who he recently referred to in the chamber as “lightweight” and “useless”, resorting to mansplaining to female former ministers about how government works.
Respect does not extend to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton who the Prime Minister has called, since his Respect at Work speech, “the old boofhead” – even though Dutton is seven years younger.
Anthony Albanese labelled Opposition Leader ‘the old boofhead’. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman
Given that he has been in parliament since last century, and a former leader of the house, if Albanese does not know what’s respectful, he should have some idea of what is allowed in the chamber and what is considered unparliamentary.
His slurs on Dutton bear a stark similarity to his jibes to Tony Abbott – of whom he repeated, “in your guts, you know he’s nuts” until the phrase finally made it on the banned list of unparliamentary expressions, a resource collated and used by Speakers since 2009.
It was deemed: “Highly offensive for the Leader of the House to cast a slur over people with a mental illness.”
Yet he is the first to run to the virtue police when he believes the slight is against him.
He was upset over “it won’t be easy under Albanese” which he saw as an attack on his Italian heritage.
But he thinks nothing of ridiculing campaigners for the No case in the Voice debate as “chicken littles” and claiming: “It’s only a matter of time before they tell us that the Voice will fade the curtains.”
With Albanese you can have everything: the feminist who mansplains; who speaks of a gentler parliament while delivering a dismissive, name-calling one; the republican taking pride of place at the royal coronations and swearing allegiance to the King; the beer-drinking battler who prefers a high-flying lifestyle in private prime ministerial planes than on the ground forming policy with the Aboriginal communities and single mums he claims to represent.
A chameleon can change colour but will never stop being a lizard.
A political animal can claim whatever you want to hear but will always be a political animal.