PETER VAN ONSELEN: Humiliating his wife with talk about 'bonking' after the footy is one thing. Albo's flex about his 'leadership' was just as shameful

By PETER VAN ONSELEN, POLITICAL EDITOR, AUSTRALIA Published: 03:26, 6 July 2026 | Updated: 03:27, 6 July 2026 Your browser does not support iframes. Australian politics has become so degraded you can't even take a few days off without returning to find the national conversation lying face down in the gutter. I spent the end of last week at a university conference discussing leadership, judgment and institutional seriousness. Irony is alive and well. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister was providing a masterclass in callow failure. In a single week, Anthony Albanese revealed more about his political character than he intended. At the NSW Labor conference, he cast himself as a brave reformer, a leader with the 'ticker' to do the 'hard thing' on tax.  Almost simultaneously, the country was subjected to a grubby podcast performance where the PM fielded questions about who he would 'shag' if his marriage went 'tits up', and went on to talk about 'bonking' his wife after a South Sydney victory because, apparently, a Rabbitohs win is a potent 'aphrodisiac'. At the conference Albo told the Labor faithful that leaders without ticker simply 'kick the can down the road'. True leadership, he declared, means doing 'the hard thing'. It is a remarkable flex from a man who lacked the ticker to take his tax changes to an election. Less than a year before unveiling his overhaul of negative gearing and capital gains, he wasn't levelling with voters. He was actively denying his real agenda existed. He kicked the can safely beyond polling day, waiting until the votes were counted and the political risk had evaporated before revealing the switch. That's not courage, it's deceptive convenience. It's also post-election revisionism dressed up as bravery. To insulate this deceit, Albo dismissed his critics as producing 'barely coherent noise'. It is the reflex of a leader desperate to downgrade legitimate scrutiny. Albanese and his wife Jodie Haydon at the weekend. No one expected the Prime Minister's comments about sex to dominate the news cycle this week  Yet the critics aren't merely partisan hacks or furious landlords. They include Ken Henry, a former Treasury secretary and titan of tax reform, Harvard-trained economist Professor Richard Holden, and business groups warning about investment, productivity and housing supply.  The alarm is even coming from inside the Labor Party: Cabinet Secretary Andrew Charlton has conceded the capital gains changes do not interact well with start-ups and small businesses, while NSW Premier Chris Minns warns of bracket creep and a suffocating tax burden. These are serious people raising serious objections. If the Prime Minister is searching for barely coherent noise, he need only rewind his own podcast audio. Replete in a T-shirt, straining with the effort of appearing relatable to the youth demographic, Albo was asked his contingency plan for a collapsed marriage. The escape route was obvious. He could have laughed it off, cited his vows, or simply refused to play along. Instead, he leaned in, almost instantly. Our PM is no political novice ambushed by a rogue host. He's sat in Parliament - successfully not answering questions since 1996. He's spent three decades mastering the dark arts of deflection, evasion and filibustering. In Question Time, he can dodge a policy interrogation for minutes on end. Refusing to even answer questions when directed to answer them by the Labor Speaker. Yet handed a juvenile sex question about a pop star, Albo answered in seconds. That was a choice. He willingly lowered the highest office in the land to locker-room banter. There is something uniquely pathetic about politicians who mistake vulgarity for authenticity. Albo assumes that dressing down and submitting to low-grade internet content makes him appear human. It merely makes him look small, and worst of all, the office shrinks with him. Subjecting the highest elected office in the land to vulgarity like this just makes Albanese look small  His subsequent apology only compounded the indignity of it all. When the outrage erupted, uniting left, right, women and ordinary voters repulsed by the spectacle, he didn't face the cameras to explain himself. Albo retreated behind a written statement, which, I'm told, he was reluctant to even issue. This PM demands credit for the courage to break an election promise, yet lacked the courage to pitch it to voters beforehand, and lacked the courage to defend his own personal conduct. This is the defining pathology of Albo's leadership. He invokes courage only after the moment for it has passed, rebrands delayed honesty as reform, dismisses expert critiques as incoherent noise, confuses vulgarity with relatability and written statements with accountability. No wonder voters are desperate for a viable alternative. The podcast fiasco wasn't a mere communications misstep, it exposed the exact same weakness driving his tax agenda. It is a compulsion to take the easy option, then retrospectively dress it up as principle. That's not leadership, it's cowardice. If Albo is still hunting for the real 'barely coherent noise' in Australian public life, he can stop looking at the economists, Treasury veterans, Labor premiers and party colleagues dissecting his tax policy. He should look instead at the Prime Minister of Australia, grinning into a microphone, explaining who he would shag if his marriage went 'tits up'. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? 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