A Man with Few if Any Redeeming Qualities

Forgive me, for this is an unashamed polemic. Gratuitous and nasty. Right, that’s the hook done and dusted.  Now, let’s get on with it.

One tends to be instinctively antipathetic to political opponents, even allowing that you might agree with some of their policies.  It’s a visceral, not an intellectual, reaction.  You will probably notice how it can even extend to physical appearance — or is it my imagination that his smile is a  weird rictus?

It’s not universal.  Gough Whitlam, until recently our worst prime minister, was a hard man to dislike.  All (or most of) his disasters were made with good intentions. Disliking Paul Keating, on the other hand, was a doddle, and continues to be so.

Albanese, however, is in a different league.  The Office of Prime Minister has seriously exposed this hollow man.  As he continues to pile lie upon equivocation upon blame-shifting upon bluster, I have found it easier and easier to dislike him.  With his recent moral vacuity on Israel and the ICC, he has now achieved the ultimate nadir. He is contemptible.

Some might quibble with my choice of words and opt, instead, for detestable.  But they are not the same.  I will explain the difference later.

My contempt for him is not visceral.  It is an intellectual response to the contempt in which he, clearly, holds the Australian people, me included.  His contempt is manifested in the pathetic and laughable defensive response he proffers to any hard question.  People dislike being taken for fools. Here are some examples, first from the last election season.

Karl Stevanovic: Will you please answer the question. Will you be increasing taxes?

Albanese: I’ve answered the question. We will be announcing our measure on multi-national tax evasion.

This is a Prime Minister whose only discernible vision for Australia, apart from platitudes and ‘fighting Tories’, was the Voice.  From Hansard 31 Jul 2023:

Ms LEY: My question is to the Prime Minister. This month the Prime Minister told Ben Fordham that the Voice ‘is not about a treaty’. But in May the Prime Minister said that treaty and truth telling are very much a part of the next phase, if you like. And one of the things that a Voice to Parliament would be able to do is to talk about Makarrata—the need for agreement making and coming together after a conflict. Why did this tricky Prime Minister say one thing to one group of Australians and completely the opposite to another?

Mr ALBANESE: I thank the member for her question and I thank whoever it was who interjected about my T-shirt because, yes, Ben Fordham has exposed the fact that at a Midnight Oil concert I wore a Midnight Oil T-shirt. I know! Hold the front page! At the Oil’s last ever concert I wore an Oils T-shirt. What I said on Ben Fordham was that the referendum isn’t about a treaty and isn’t about truth. It’s about one thing. It is about voice. It’s about recognition and it’s about listening to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people so that we get better results. That’s what it’s about. But the opponents of the Voice—you wonder why. The member who asked the question said this on Insiders on 23 July: firstly, ‘I want to see constitutional recognition of our First Australians.’ Well, we’re all agreed then. So tick, tick.

From Hansard Augn 3, 2023:

Mr DUTTON: At Garma this weekend, will the Prime Minister tell participants that, despite last year giving them ‘a solemn promise to implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart, in full ‘ through Makarrata treaty-making and truth-telling, his position is now, as he told ABC radio yesterday, that he has no plans and sees no need for a national treaty? Is the Prime Minister’s problem one of competency, or does he just say whatever he thinks people want to hear?

Mr ALBANESE: I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. I once again invite him to go to Garma, to actually talk with Indigenous Australians and to move away from his dirt unit and sit in the red dirt there in Arnhem Land. There he can explain his position on the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Let’s leave it there on the Voice, despite there being further and copious examples of albofuscation. Albanese must know he isn’t even fooling himself with these smugly delivered half-smart responses. So, how many of us does he think he is fooling?  Just how dumb does he think we are?

How about those Stage Three Tax cuts? From Crikey! in Jan of this year:

The prime minister reaffirmed the stage three tax cuts, to come into effect from July 1, will still go ahead. “The government’s position hasn’t changed … inequality is an issue and the government has looked at ways in which we can improve that position”.

Jan 24, 2024:

My determination and my job is to get the best outcome for Australians. It’s to respond to the circumstances which we confront … My job isn’t to say, ‘I’ll just wring my hands about cost-of-living pressure that people are feeling’. My job is to respond, to seek advice, and then to make a difference. To make the right decision, not the easy decision.

That was quick, but then, he was only just getting into his stride.   Here, courtesy of the ABC, from the detainee debacle:

 Mr Albanese this morning criticised the independent board’s decision to remove the monitoring device.

“I think that’s a wrong decision by that board, which they make the decisions independent [of government],” Mr Albanese said.

“It is an outrage that this occurred.”

We know that decision was made by a ministerial delegate on the advice only of the government-appointed (not independent), laughingly titled Community Protection Board.

And finally, Albo on the ICC decision, roundly condemned by the US and other of our allies, to seek arrest warrants against Israeli PM Netanyahu:

“I don’t comment on court processes in Australia, let alone court processes globally in which Australia is not a party,”

Not skipping a beat, he then went straight into commenting on the matter of Julian Assange, now before the UK Supreme Court.

But this one, as reported by Sky News, really takes the cake:

Speaking at a press conference in Brisbane on Thursday … pressed unrelentingly on the matter, the Prime Minister eventually said the ICC’s arrest warrant was “up to” the Howard government to “explain”.

He said the court was “signed up to of course not by my government but by the Howard Government when Alexander Downer was the foreign minister, so it’s up to them I think to explain those decisions at that time.”

Albo has form in blame-shifting but in the above he plumbs new depths.

But we were forewarned.  Who can forget how much he stole from The American President.

Albo: In Australia we have serious challenges to solve, and we need serious people to solve them.

Michael Douglas: We have serious challenges to solve, and we need serious people to solve them.

Albo:  Unfortunately, Tony Abbott is not the least bit interested in fixing any of them.

MD: Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving them.

Albo:  He’s only interested in two things.

MD:  He is interested in two things.

Albo:  Making Australians afraid of it.

MD: Making you afraid of it.

Albo: And telling them who’s to blame for it.

MD: And telling you who’s to blame for it.

For Albanese, ‘sorry’ really does seem to be the hardest word.

Finally, to my semantic question.   I see detestation as dislike taken to its logical extreme.  I see contempt as pity taken to its logical extreme.  Unfortunately, Albanese lacks the substance to be detestable, so he can never aspire to be in the same league as, for example, Paul Keating or even his own Energy Minister Chris Bowen.