Albos old and new

Aside from the Prime Minister himself, I'm perhaps the most qualified person for the title of “Anthony Albanese expert”. It took a lot to get here, and in August 2022 I almost lost my best chance to claim legitimacy.

I was standing on the stage of ABC's Southbank studio in Melbourne, the words HARD QUIZ blaring in red and white all around me, cameras rolling for the quiz show's eighth season. Tom Gleeson's familiar hairless head swivelled to me. "Luca."

My only competitor was Meg, a lovely echidna vet. For her expert subject, she'd chosen echidnas. Just my luck. But she'd already got a question wrong. And I'd scraped through a round on shoes, then Stephen Bradburyed the general knowledge segment, seeing off two tough challengers along the way.

Tom's voice boomed through the studio: "If you get this right, you are tonight's Hard Quiz Champion."

This was the moment. I’d correctly answered all nine Albanese questions Tom had thrown my way. With one more right answer, I’d win the show and go ten for ten.

"At age 12, Albanese was involved in his first successful political campaign, in which he helped organise what kind of strike?"

My best bet was a protest against Whitlam's dismissal. I was wrong. The answer was a rent strike.

Plenty of people have since told me they would have got that question right. The truth is that young Anthony didn't help organise anything in that rent strike. He just handed out leaflets. But it didn't matter, because my claim to Albo expertise was crumbling.

Then the echidna expert got her question wrong, and I got another go. "For the final song of his [2016 Melbourne] set, DJ Albo played a song by which artist?".

Sigh of relief. I knew it instantly. Iggy Pop. I don't even know who Iggy Pop is. But I knew all about DJ Albo. I won, the show was over, I cemented my title. My Albanese Instagram account, @albo_archive, picked up a few hundred followers. And I promoted the Albo character into 500,000 living rooms, thereby continuing a project that's been ongoing since the late 1980s.

Ever since he entered public life, Anthony Albanese has tried to control what voters imagine when they hear his name. He has succeeded so completely that he has even transformed the very name that they hear. People know their Prime Minister is called Anthony Albanese, but they’re just as likely to call him Albo.

When I started my Albo account in 2021, I set the account name not to 'Anthony :)', nor 'Albo pics', but 'Who is Anthony Albanese?'. This was awful for engagement. I lost hundreds of potential followers because anyone who searched 'Albo Archive' without an underscore couldn’t find the account. But the question was worth asking because the answer has constantly shifted. Like all of us, Anthony the person has changed and grown over his life. But ‘Albo’, the public-facing character, has modulated sharply, and this modulation has been actively produced by Albanese for political benefit.

Back in the ‘90s, Albo was a brawler. Young Albanese’s activism continued from his first rent strike into student politics and Sydney's Labor circles. By 1989, he’d risen through the ALP ranks to become Assistant General Secretary of the NSW branch. Only weeks after taking the job, he got himself in the papers by demanding the Hawke Labor government force down interest rates and raise taxes on luxury goods. By 1992, the Herald had run a profile on this “odd man out,” the only left faction official in a party machine controlled by the right. The article was more interested in Labor's factional divisions and distractions, but it illustrated these through a young man called Anthony with thick skin, a hard head, and a sharp tongue. Albanese found that being the outsider was the path to the public's attention.

Albanese the apparatchik couldn’t publish his own story, but he could project it, para-autobiographically, through his passionate political performance. Journalists wanted to put Anthony Albanese in the papers whenever NSW Labor was tearing itself apart. They liked the young half-Italian with crooked teeth, in his ill-fitting suit and bedraggled tie. There was nothing ‘establishment’ about him. Papers headlined “THE MAN WHO PLOTTED LABOR RIGHT'S DOWNFALL.” Albanese was threatened with a knife at a branch meeting in 1992, and every subsequent newspaper reference to this made him look tough as anything.

Albanese projected this image into the media even more effectively after his election to federal parliament in 1996, acting as a rhetorical bomb-chucker for the opposition with the imprimatur of then-leader Kim Beazley. Albanese sunk his teeth into the role, eviscerating prime minister John Howard as a “whingey kid in his sandpit.” He stood up in parliament, year after year, sledging Howard in colourful speeches that kept him on the media’s radar. Albanese’s recurrent efforts to win equal superannuation rights for same-sex couples, acting on his own rather than under party auspices, kept his lone-wolf reputation intact. His bills failed each time, as he knew they would, but he’d made his point. With a parliamentary team and title behind him, Albanese moved from rolling with the punches to throwing a few of his own.

But upon becoming a parliamentarian, Albanese had to start to shift this tough image in pursuit of local popularity and a promotion to the frontbench. Brawler Albo used to love to dress like shit and “look really bombed out” walking down Marrickville Road, as he told the Canberra Times in 1996. Now he had to sharpen his look and take the edge off his speeches. He had to be a hardworking local member.

And he succeeded. The Member for Grayndler generated a massive local profile. As a child, I might not have known what electorate I was in, but I knew Albanese was my MP. Orange corflutes sporting his black-and-white portrait were everywhere come election time. The local member was universally known as Albo. He handed out awards, gave speeches, and lobbied for new and better school buildings. Constituents liked that he got in the mud with them (even advocating to clear the toxic sludge from Cooks River). Albo MP won Grayndler ten times straight.

*Image credit: Anthony Albanese / Facebook*

Albanese built the same reputation in the Parliament. When Labor won government in 2007, he became responsible for getting legislation through the House of Representatives, which meant he had to collaborate with everyone from Tony Abbott to Adam Bandt to Bob Katter. He had to shift from provocative and jagged to gentle and cooperative. By the time the Rudd-Gillard civil wars arrived, the transformation was clear: the former tough factional schemer was tearing up on TV, pleading for the infighting to end. Hardworking Albo got laws made and kept the party afloat. When Kevin Rudd retook the leadership, Albanese was rewarded. He was introduced to the nation as “Deputy Prime Minister Albo”.

So Albanese’s first transformation of his public persona had succeeded. Albanese had achieved everything he could have dreamt of. He had reached national prominence, at the height of his career, dominant in the ALP. We might consider the Albo project to have here reached its natural conclusion.

But when Labor lost government in 2013, Albanese’s priorities changed. He decided to go for the ALP leadership and reach for a still-greater political legacy. He began promoting a new image — specifically, a 1985 photo of him tagged #hotalbo. His brooding, youthful visage with an earring and shaggy hairdo went viral on Twitter and became the centre of his campaign for the Labor leadership. It won him the popular vote, but rival Bill Shorten won the parliamentary vote and took the crown. Albanese had started transforming his persona too late to achieve his political aim. Undeterred, he pressed on to the next step for the Albo character: the Cool Dad.

Cool Dad Albo played AFL for charity. He got a leather jacket and a cavoodle named Toto. He DJd at clubs and pubs (and cafes…) around the country, admittedly with no more than a Bluetooth speaker and Spotify on shuffle. This Albo was a family man, who spoke about his mum Maryanne and, with the release of his biography, his Italian father Carlo. The book and accompanying media circus revealed for the first time the story of the MP’s absent dad and the pair’s reconciliation before Carlo’s death. Albo now had a family tree and (more importantly) dad lore. And he kept drip-feeding the public photos of his Camperdown days, because every cool dad has a sick photo collection from their younger years.

Like his brawling and hardworking previous personas, Albanese’s latest performance had a political purpose. Appearing cool and cultured consolidated his appeal against Green challengers in his young, left-wing electorate. But boosting his public image also set him up to succeed Bill Shorten. Although Albanese had lost the leadership election, he stood ready to swoop should Shorten come up… short. Every mangled zinger that the Opposition Leader put to broadcast only sharpened the divide. Nerdy Bill didn’t play footy. Shady Shorten had nothing on Albo the Aussie Everyman.

The Cool Dad image was an advertising masterstroke. It became self-reinforcing, as local brands and businesses tried to cash in on inner Sydney’s political sensibilities. A local brewery named a beer after him, and a local shopping centre put the Hot Albo photo up on the wall of a public toilet. Journalists covered Albanese’s every move, hoping to uncover (or stir up) a political scandal. Just like when he was a brawler, Albanese didn’t need to publish his own propaganda. Everyone else did it for him.

But by the time Albanese took the leadership in 2019, the carefully-crafted character started to slip away. His Cool Dad energy became obsolete, with the paternal pollie space dominated by Scott Morrison and his ‘Daggy Dad’ persona. Journalists started to ask what happened to the Old Albo, evoking a nostalgia for the bomb-thrower, the hard worker and the Cool Dad. Like all nostalgic recollections, ‘Old Albo’ was riddled with historical errors, mistakenly combining the discrete traits of those past personas. What it showed, however, was the sharp discontinuity between the colourful and rough-hewn Albos past and the grey man who’d replaced them. Commentators murmured of Old Albo’s return during the 2019-2020 bushfires, as Albanese delivered Up&Go and sausage sandwiches to the firies. Then Albo was snuffed out as the pandemic put governments at the front of public consciousness.

Albanese’s hair literally turned grey waiting for the spotlight to come back. He struggled to retain a Labor seat in a 2020 byelection. His colleagues staged an intervention and made him hand over responsibilities. Unidentified sources murmured about replacing him. He got hit by a car.

Those who hadn’t seen the Albo personas of the past wrote Albanese off completely, and everyone my age started saying Tanya Plibersek would do a better job. A friend said Albanese had “the personality of a doorframe.” But those who remembered the bomb-thrower and the Cool Dad started searching for the next transformation of the Albo image. I created my Albanese Instagram account, subtitled “Who is Anthony Albanese?” and kept finding the old characters in the digital archives. In photos from the 30 years from 1989 to 2019, every persona and modulation shone through. But the post-2019 pictures reflected an uncertain effort to hold onto the old characters, diluted down to fit the lowest common denominator. Controversial characteristics were minimised in favour of cute dog photos.

In 2021, Albanese began his tentative return to the national stage. As in the past, he tried performing a character. It was very clear who he was trying to avoid being: this Albo was not Morrison. At every opportunity, he reminded Australia that “the Prime Minister had two jobs,” referring to vaccines and quarantine, “and he failed at both”. Yet, in many ways, Grey Albo was Morrison, adopting his tax cuts and his AUKUS plan. On climate, Albanese was even more Morrison than the man himself, adopting a policy designed by the Business Council of Australia. At least Grey Albo as PM wouldn’t lie, we were told. He wouldn’t tell women to be grateful for not getting shot while protesting. But on balance, it began to sound like he would do nothing at all. Albanese hadn’t found a replacement for his past characters. It seemed like he’d just given up on having any character at all.

It took a new pair of glasses, ironically enough, to bring the real transformation into clear view. In December 2021, Albanese stood up in his fresh specs and suits and told the crowd that he stood for “A Better Future”. It wasn’t much more exciting than before. But now it was being delivered with conviction. Albanese leant into his boring air and greying hair. He performed a new role — the statesman.

Albanese highlighted the shift from the non-character to the Statesman with an attention-grabbing physical transformation. He’d slimmed down after a year of working out, accentuated by some new tailored suits. The old jowly grins and brown mop of hair were replaced with sharp-jawed frowns and a tight silver coif. He got a new pair of glasses, which gave definition to his face and became ubiquitous in cartoonists’ caricatures, and started to feature a silver tie in his wardrobe. The latter was so omnipresent in his official appearances that I won a bet on 6:1 odds that he’d be wearing it on election night. I don’t think Sportsbet had noticed Albanese’s sartorial trends. But everyone noticed the glow-up, including both my grandmas (and that’s saying something).

The Statesman stood for order and civil discourse, shutting down the shouting matches that erupted at his press conferences. His suit and tie were pristine. Almost nothing was left of the anti-establishment bomb-chucker: Albo had become the establishment personified. As before, the transformed persona served a political purpose, but this was the greatest overhaul yet, for the highest goal he had ever pursued. And again, Albanese succeeded. When he stood up victorious on election night, he didn’t throw insults or start DJing. He shut down his disciples’ giddy hoots and hysteria, saying “I intend to run an orderly government, and it starts here.”

In Albanese’s first months at the top, it wasn’t clear whether this persona transformation would survive beyond the campaign. In August 2022, when I filmed my Hard Quiz episode, the government had just gotten started. There was plenty of time for the mask to come off and the Statesman to collapse. But Albanese only strengthened his new image. The once-fervent republican celebrated the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and mourned her death. The brawler who called for an inheritance tax shut down efforts to alter the Stage 3 tax cuts. The rent striker will not freeze rents. In March this year, by the time my episode aired, the government had consolidated its centre-ground reputation.

Albanese’s performance has become more natural, more convincing. He has intentionally wiped away the old characters, replacing them completely with the Statesman. The journalists who asked in 2019 where the Old Albo had gone now write emphatically of this New Albo, guardian of the establishment. The dichotomy indicates, in part, how different the Statesman is from his Albo predecessors. But it also shows how successfully Albanese is projecting his current persona. The anti-establishment left now blames ‘Albo’ for the status quo. He has invited their vitriol. He is no longer a firebrand or a hipster dad. Even the hard worker character has little in common with the Statesman, who positions himself above the fray.

The one throughline in every persona has been the claim that Albo is an authentic man of the people. But which people? In pursuit of shifting political goals, he has moved from stage to stage, each with a different audience and a new part for him to play. Rowdy improv for the 1998 Labor frontbench and focus-grouped scripts for national primetime TV. How many people have performed for such diverse crowds and venues? It’s been a one-man show like no other.

The Statesman may not be the last persona we see from Albanese. He is already modulating his image as the political goalposts shift. The teary-eyed speeches of Rudd-Gillard days have crept back in as Albanese tries to support the ailing Voice to Parliament campaign through emotive appeal. A narrative for long-term reform is being pieced together, creating contradictions with the man of the establishment.

I was wrong about Albanese’s first successful political campaign when I went on Hard Quiz. But with his knack of changing character to fit the times, I’m confident it will be a while before we see his last.

(The more time the better, I think. Without Albo at the top, my Anthony Albanese expertise will slide into irrelevance, with my glorious TV career close behind.)

Albos old and new

With his knack of changing character to fit the times, I’m confident it will be a while before we see his last.