Anthony Albanese, a man born to a single mother was on Monday sworn in as Australia’s prime minister after victory in Saturday’s federal election.
Anthony Albanese, 59, was raised in public housing in a working-class Sydney suburb by his mother on a disability pension. He was born after a fling between his mom, an Australian of Irish heritage, and his Italian father on a voyage from Sydney to Southampton, England. His parents went their separate ways, and Albanese was in his 40s when he tracked down and met his father for the first time in 2009.
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Known as “Albo,” he inherited his interest in politics and the Labor Party from his mother. After becoming the first in his family to finish high school and go to university, Albanese was first elected to parliament in 1996.
‘DJ Albo’, Albanese is also an amateur DJ, having played highly-publicized sets during his political careers. In 2016, Albanese played a charity event in Melbourne ahead of that year’s election – ending with a sing-a-long to Iggy Pop’s The Passenger.
As of Monday afternoon, Albanese’s Labor Party had 73 seats in the 151-seat lower house, ahead of the outgoing Liberal-National Coalition on 54. The party is still short of the 76 needed for an outright majority, but the result in nine seats are still in doubt.
But despite being a member of parliament for more than two decades, he does not yet have a high profile at home, and is virtually unknown overseas. He will make his diplomatic debut on Tuesday in Tokyo for a summit with leaders of Quad group — U.S., Japan, India, and Australia.
In 2007, Albanese served for three years as Australia’s first federal infrastructure minister in then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Labor government. In 2013, he was appointed as deputy prime minister in the second Rudd government, but only held the position for 83 days as the party lost the next election to the Liberal-National coalition.
Albanese has worked energetically on human rights issues since the start of his career, and is known as a defender of the rights of immigrants and Australia’s free health care system. He pushed from 1998 to pass a bill to grant same-sex couples the same superannuation benefits as heterosexual couples. The legislation passed in 2007.
During the campaign, Albanese said he would work to alleviate the pain of the rising cost of living, which has been hardest on vulnerable groups. He accuses the coalition of poorly handling the rise in inflation, saying: “The cost of everything is going up except for wages.”
Labor pledges to deliver tax relief for more than 9 million Australians through tax cuts that would benefit everyone with incomes above AUD$45,000 ($31,000). The party has pledged to increase the low-and-middle-income tax offset by AU$420 this year. It also promises to build 30,000 new social and affordable housing units over five years.
Gender equality is a key issue in the election. Since the coalition came to power in 2013, Australia has fallen in the global gender gap rankings to its worst-ever placing of 50th of 156 countries worldwide, according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2021.
Albanese has tried to appeal to women by floating the idea of closing the gender pay gap and improving their career options, and has attacked the coalition, saying “women are being left behind” under the Scott Morrison government.
Albanese will now come under pressure to both keep his promises and alleviate the pain of inflation.
During a televised debate between Albanese and Morrison on May 11, Albanese said Labor would only support a 5.1% pay rise for Australians earning the minimum wage of $20.33 an hour, and not to the 2.7 million others whose pay was set by industrial award.
“Mr. Albanese is making a lot of promises… What we haven’t heard is how he’s going to pay for them during this election campaign,” Morrison said in the debate.
Albanese has also endorsed Australia’s controversial policy to turn back asylum-seekers arriving by boat — a reversal of his previous stance.
John Wanna, a professor of politics at the Australian National University, casts doubt on Albanese’s leadership qualities.
“Right from the very beginning of the campaign, he said that he wouldn’t run away from things, he wouldn’t avoid things and he’d answer questions,” Wanna told Nikkei Asia. “And then he spent most of the election campaign not doing that.”
According to a Newspoll survey on the candidates’ character traits, Albanese scored higher than Morrison on the question of trustworthiness and likability, with 44% and 51% support, respectively, compared to 40% and 44% for Morrison.
Morrison scored higher on the question of experience and decisiveness, with 70% and 48%, respectively. Albanese scored 59% and 46%. (FT)
