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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media I’m Ruby Jones this is 7am: The Vote.

With an election called, the Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Labor leader Anthony Albanese have six weeks to convince Australia they would make the better leader.

For Albanese, the challenge is to avoid the mistakes of the last Labor election campaign, but as a small target, can he still be inspiring enough to win over voters – and secure a majority?

Today, chief political correspondent for The Saturday Paper Karen Middleton, on Anthony Albanese’s rebrand… and what it tells us about Labor’s strategy.

It’s Tuesday April 12

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RUBY:

Karen, you wrote Anthony Albanese's biography in 2016, so six years ago now. When you wrote that book, did you think that he would end up - as he is now on the brink of potentially becoming the thirty-first prime minister of Australia?

KAREN:

I did not I did not think that at the time at all, to be honest.

He's never struck me as someone who's always had a burning ambition to be prime minister. I did discuss this with him when I wrote the book.

But if you look at some of the other people who've been prime minister or tried to be prime minister, they are people who've felt that it was their destiny in some senses. I think Kevin Rudd thought that. I think Malcolm Turnbull thought that. I think Bill Shorten thought that.

So I don't think that Anthony Albanese was like that.

But I do think in recent years it's become much more of a possibility. Ever since he contested the leadership against Bill Shorten after Labor lost office, back in 2013 and I think that the fire was lit in him after he lost that leadership contest and then he really decided he wanted to be the leader. And then we've seen this sort of epiphany in the last year or so where he's really determined to win and to throw everything at it.

RUBY:

And he's obviously closer than he ever has been before right now, but I wonder if he could at this moment take me back to, I guess, the beginning of Anthony Albanese’s story because he's spoken openly about his childhood and growing up in a housing estate, in commission flats, his mother, who who raised him. So how did those experiences; Albanese's formative experiences, inform who he is now?

KAREN:

Well, I think he's a resilient person. I think he had to fend for himself quite a bit. And not only that, but he had to care for his own mother because she had a quite a debilitating chronic illness

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“My mum had rheumatoid arthritis well before there were some of the assistance that they say now. And it's a single mum she didn't have. There was no husband to come along and she was to stand up for her or anyone else. I was a little kid.”

KAREN:

And so he was a carer as well as a son

Archival Tape -- Speaker 2:

“I remember having a confrontation with her doctor ups a little kid, you know, just saying, you know you, you waiting for my mother to die. Like what? She wasn't getting The sort of assistance that someone else would.”

KAREN:

He's a sensitive person. He gets very emotional when it comes to talking about his mum because he's conscious of how much she gave up to raise him in the way that she did

Archival Tape -- Karl:

“What do you miss most about her?”

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“I just miss her love.”

KAREN:

She lived in the same house her whole life. The house she'd grown up with her parents in was the house she raised him in. as you said The council house in Camperdown in Sydney. And so I think all of those experiences are very acutely present in him as a politician.

RUBY:

Hmm. And in terms of his political life, Albanese has long been a factional player in the ALP. He's from the New South Wales left, so I was hoping you could talk to me a bit about his early career, who his mentors were and what he was like when he first entered Parliament.

KAREN:

His greatest mentor was Tom Uren, who was a member of Parliament, a stalwart of the left of the Labor Party and really seen as a great sort of moral conscience of the left.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“Tom wanted to change the world, and his tool was persuasion. His aim was incremental progress. He would always tell me, you've got to bring people with you.”

KAREN:

Albanese looked to him not only as a political mentor, but as a personal mentor.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“He would always tell me, you've got to bring people with you.”

KAREN:

Like a father figure really was absolutely devoted to him and gave the eulogy at his funeral when he died in 2015.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“Into his 90s, he said. And I quote, I hope that right to the end of my days, I'll always struggle for progress. Always have faith in tomorrow.”

KAREN:

And within the Labor left, Albanese became very active, and he ended up as an assistant secretary in the New South Wales branch of the Labor Party in Sussex Street, which is a bit of a viper's pit of factionalism.

The right is the dominant faction in New South Wales. And so when you are the left wing assistant secretary, you're in there amongst people that are really more of your enemy than the traditional political enemy, the Liberal Party. So it got pretty rough and tough, I think, in politics as he came up through the Labor Party. So he plays factional politics pretty hard.

RUBY:

And he entered parliament in 1996, Karen, and you were in the the press gallery then. Do you remember when he entered? What was he like, did he stand out?

KAREN:

Yes, he was a young firebrand,

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese on Howard:

“Mr Deputy Speaker, today my grievance is against the Prime Minister, for his failure to provide leadership”

KAREN:

He was very outspoken. He was a bit of a head kicker, young and fiery.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese on Howard:

“In the pantheon of chinless blue bloods and suburban accountants, it makes up the Australian Liberal Party. This bloke is truly one out of the box.”

KAREN:

And it's interesting when he came into politics, it was at a time when the Labor Party had lost to John Howard and the Coalition. They were in disarray. They had to regroup.

Kim Beazley had a task of pulling them all together as the new Labor leader, and he sort of told everyone to pull their heads in and stay quiet. But he sort of took Albanese aside and he said, No, not you, I want you to have a crack at the government.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese on Howard:

“You have to go back to Billy McMahon to find a prime minister who even approaches this one for petulant pettiness and sheer grinding inadequacy.”

KAREN:

So Kim Beazley saw that Albanese had some talents as a bit of a political head kicker that he could employ in opposition in parliament.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese 2012:

“There's a gaggle of nut jobs, a gaggle of right wing nut jobs,..”

KAREN:

And then when Labor was in office and particularly when Julia Gillard was prime minister and Anthony Albanese was the leader of the house, he frequently led the attack.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“They're in a forum saving Australia from the left's agenda. You can imagine what it was like. How can we subsidise coal some more? How can we punish asylum seekers more? How can we support more discrimination?”

KAREN:

It's interesting because he's had to moderate a lot of those tendencies since he's been the leader, and now you're seeing a much more restrained and moderate version of Albanese than the one you used to see in his early parliamentary days.

RUBY:

Let's talk more about the Albanses of today then. He’s been Opposition leader since the last election - what would you say he’s been like in that role?

KAREN:

I think he's been very strategic and that is one of the hallmarks of Albanese that I suppose I knew, and I've known him for a long time since he was in in that New South Wales head office many, many years ago, decades ago.

And I knew he was strategic, but I've come to understand through writing the book exactly how strategic he is. He does think many steps ahead. In fact, I think it was Meredith Bergman, his colleague in New South Wales, who commented when I interviewed her for the book that she used to pride herself on being able to think three or four steps ahead of other people. But when she met Albanese, she realised he could think 10 steps ahead.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

I want to be known as the Labor leader, not the opposition leader

KAREN:

So I think there's been a lot of that brought to his role as opposition leader.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

This is not a time to prevent measures which are ever imperfect are necessary to be implemented. We do need unity .

KAREN:

He's been a large driver behind the small target strategy that has been much criticised because it means there's a lot about Labor's policy positions that we're only finding out getting close to an election .So you could argue that's not a very fair position to take in a policy sense, but in a political sense. It was probably pretty cunning because it meant that there was nothing for the government to kick at until very recently.

And another thing that he did was identify some of the nuances and foibles and characteristics of Scott Morrison as a leader.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“People might know was agree with me, but what you see is what you get. Scott Morrison's got an issue with the truth.”

KARENL

He was very determined early on to work out who his opponent was and where his strengths and weaknesses might lie, so that he could structure a campaign against that person in the lead up to the election. And that's what you're seeing playing out now, I think.

Archival Tape -- Karl:

“You honestly think Scott Morrison's a liar?”

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“Well, he has said things to me that are simply untrue.”

RUBY:

We’ll be right back

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Archival Tape -- Channel 9:

“Good evening, our political leaders have had months of warm up. Now it's the real thing.”

Archival Tape -- Channel 7:

“Scott Morrison has pulled the election trigger, sending millions of Australians to the polls for a May 21 election.”

Archival Tape -- Reporter:

“The six week campaign is already underway tonight, with the prime minister and Anthony Albanese wasting no time launching their blitz in key battlegrounds.”

RUBY:

Karen, the election has just been called what is the Labour leader Anthony Albanese, pitch to Australia at this point? What is he saying about why he should lead the country?

KAREN:

Well, I think he's saying a number of things. I think he's trying to exploit the sense of hesitation around the government and around the prime minister in terms of whether they can be trusted, whether they're telling the truth.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“If I had the honour of serving as your prime minister, I can promise you this, I will lead with integrity and I will treat you with respect. I will restore faith in our political system.”

KAREN:

So he's doing a line on trust and saying it's you can trust us, you can believe what we tell you.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“I won't go missing when the going gets tough. I will accept the responsibility that comes with high office.”

KAREN:

And I think as part of that, he's saying what you see is what you get. I'm an authentic kind of a guy which he and Labour see as a strength of his.

So its going to be quite a personal contest through this campaign.

RUBY:

To that end then - how do you think that Anthony Albanese will style himself during the campaign?

KAREN:

Well, he has styled himself differently since he became opposition leader, and that's a good way to put it.

Archival Tape -- KarI:

“I barely recognise, do you know what a glow up means?”

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“Yeah, I do.”

Archival Tape -- Karl:

“I mean, what's happened to you?”

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“I'm hungry”

KAREN:

He's changed himself physically. He's lost weight.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“I'm hungry. I want to be match fit. And the other thing to happen, of course, is almost dying last year in a car accident.”

KAREN:

He was very affected by a car accident. He had a year or so ago that he's spoken about quite a lot, publicly said that made him review his life in a very personal way and think about what was important and focus his mind on what he needed to do to actually win the election and be serious about it.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“It made me absolutely determined to make a contribution to the country.”

KAREN:

He's also sharpened up the suits that he wears the haircuts, the glasses, all superficial things. But they all go towards presenting a style of politician that is perhaps a more appealing politician across the board than he might have been if he was just still rough and tumble Albo, who gets in scraps all the time.

RUBY:

And so if those are the strengths that Labor is identifying that they want to run is what do you think that the weaknesses might be or is anything kind of emerged so far that you think might point to two areas that Albanese might struggle with in the weeks ahead?

KAREN:

I think some people on his own side have been frustrated that he hasn't been clearer in his messaging. Some of them that he has been a bit waffly that there's a little bit of a hawk back to some of the criticisms around Kim Beazley. You know, nice guy, but not cutting through. And that that he should have been sharper on his messaging. So I think they've been trying to work on that. But that's certainly one of the criticisms that they feel that the message hasn't been as clear and as sharply delivered as it needed to be.

Some of those critics have also been a little bit frustrated that the Labor Party has opted to have a smaller policy programme in the lead up to this election than they did last time they got burnt last time by having a lot of policies, big policies that the government managed to attack very successfully.

And they've deliberately gone for a smaller suite this time around. But some of those people in the Labor Party have then said they feel, perhaps, that Anthony Albanese is less passionate than he used to be, or not advocating as forcefully for some of the traditional Labor values.

They're very determined to not give the coalition free opportunities to attack Labor on the eve of a poll, and that has naturally frustrated some on their own side. But they are saying in response will look, it's the people who voted liberal last time that we need to vote for us this time, and that's why we're doing it. And that's the argument they put to their own critics. I think they perhaps cynically say in the end, in the end, those Labor people will vote Labor, and it's the people who didn't vote Labor. But we need to attract.

RUBY:

Right and so how do you think this is all going to play out now that the election has been called? What sort of campaign do you think we will see being run by the Coalition, against Anthony Albanese?

KAREN:

Oh, I think it's I think it's going to be a very willing election campaign and very personal. Because Scott Morrison has everything to lose here in terms of his position as prime minister and the Coalition's position running the country. They will throw everything at it.

There will be an emphasis on him as being an extremist, reports have come out about how far left he might have been leaning as a younger person, as a politician.

Archival Tape -- Scott Morrison:

“He was opposed to offshore processing. He was opposed to temporary protection visas. He was opposed to boat turn backs, Mr Speaker. He was opposed to mandatory detention…”

KAREN:

Trying to sow some doubt in the minds of people who might be thinking about voting Labor instead of voting liberal.

Does he really have your interests at heart? Whose? Whose interest is he really serving? These kinds of messages will become very pronounced as they desperately try to make people doubt that he's a good option as leader.

RUBY:

And having covered politics and in particular, having covered Anthony Albanese's career for a long time, having written the book about him, what do you say when people ask you what Anthony Albanese is like as a person?

KAREN:

I think he's a confident person. He knows who he is, and he moves easily with different groups of people. He can get on well with people in lower socio economic circumstances and people at the top end of the economic scale. And that's a skill that not everyone does have. I would say that that's that's something about him that is is interesting, that ease of movement

I think he is a pretty ruthless politician which you don’t always see in public, I think he does put the Labor Party very high up in his priorities, along with issues of social justice and that sort of thing. But he will always be thinking not only about how these policies affect real people, but he'll be thinking, are these good policies for Labor to adopt, for Labor to succeed.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“My ambition is for Labor to be in government.”

“My ambition has never been about myself.”

KAREN:

He talks about growing up with three great faiths the Catholic Church, the South Sydney Rugby League club and the Australian Labour Party. And so the Labor Party's is very important to him.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

Its about what Labor governments can achieve for the sort of people that I grew up with the sort of people who need Labour governments.

KAREN:

And he will make personnel changes within his party. He will orchestrate the people that he wants to be preselected. He will work very hard to do that to further the cause of Labor.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

For the people who really need a Labor government. It makes a difference.

KAREN:

So he would always, I think, put the cause of Labor ahead of the cause and aspirations of individuals within the Labor ranks.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese:

“And I know growing up, I know the difference that it made to my mum's life, to her pension, to whether she got the health care that she needed. It made an enormous difference.”

“It wasn't an academic exercise. And for millions of Australians, that's the case today.”

“They need a Labor government.”

RUBY:

Karen, thank you so much for your time.

KAREN:

Thanks, Ruby.

RUBY:

Karen Middleton’s biography of Anthony Albanese is called Albanese: Telling it Straight.

Soon, we will have more episodes of 7am - The Vote, including interviews with key politicians, panel discussions to explain the latest events in the campaign, and in-depth feature episodes.

In the meantime, you’ll continue to get regular episodes of 7am every morning.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

On the first day of the election campaign, opposition leader Albanese was unable to recall national unemployment figures and the Reserve Bank of Australia’s cash rate.

He addressed the blunder on key figures in a press conference in Tasmania acknowledging he made a mistake, saying quote: “I’m human. But when I make a mistake, I’ll fess up to it.”

**

And prime minister Scott Morrison started the Liberal government's election campaign in the seat of Gilmore with NSW Liberal candidate Andrew Constance.

The two men addressed their past conflict during the Black Summer bushfires, with Constance saying we can’t reverse history.

**

And according to US officials, Finland and Sweden could join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation - NATO - as early as June this year.

According to one official, it’s evidence that Russia has made a “massive strategic blunder,” as the move would enlarge the western alliance from 30 to 32 members.

I’m Ruby Jones, This is 7am, see you tomorrow.