Source : the age
Anthony Albanese has accused Peter Dutton of alienating mainstream voters by trying to inject machismo into Australian politics, as he warned that Donald Trump’s presidency has opened to door for China to exert more influence in the Indo-Pacific.
Albanese gave a wide-ranging interview with the popular The Rest is Politics podcast, hosted by former UK Labour adviser Alastair Campbell and former Tory politician Rory Stewart, where the prime minister spoke about his childhood, upcoming wedding, favourite musical artists and views on world affairs.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and fiancee Jodie Haydon (rear) with Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher on Sunday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Albanese recorded the interview on Saturday night, before attending St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney on Sunday morning for Easter Mass, where he sat in the front row and took communion.
Albanese spoke to Sydney Catholic Archbishop Anthony Fisher about his memories attending the adjoining St Mary’s Cathedral College while he was at high school and told him that adrenaline was fuelling him during the election campaign.
“Thirteen days to go, but who is counting? Me,” he said.
Dutton opted for a casual Easter Sunday, as he cooked up a breakfast of bacon and egg rolls in Ipswich, Queensland.
Peter Dutton with wife Kirilly, dog Ralph and LNP candidate Carl Mutzelburg in Ipswich on Sunday.Credit: James Brickwood
The opposition leader greeted supporters and community members and was accompanied by wife Kirilly, their family’s spoodle, Ralph, and Carl Mutzelburg, the Liberal National Party candidate for Blair, which covers Ipswich.
“Remember what is important in life and what is important is family, our friends and our society, our community,” Dutton told supporters.
In a clear reference to Trump during his podcast interview, Albanese said Dutton was “channelling some other world leaders we’re seeing” and was “bringing a machismo, essentially, to politics”.
“That is something that I think alienates the centre,” Albanese said.
Playing the ball: Albanese on The Sunday Footy Show in Sydney on Sunday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“We have compulsory voting [in Australia]. You win elections either from the centre-left or centre-right.
“We’ll see how it plays out over the next couple of weeks, but certainly Peter Dutton has gone out of his way to appeal to a right-wing base, and there isn’t too much that is there for the centre that can be seen as being moderate.”
Dutton was quicker than Albanese to criticise Trump’s deal-making approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has sought to shake off comparisons to the US administration over the course of the campaign. But this was hampered by last weekend’s enthusiastic pledge by senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to “make Australia great again”, which echoed the Trump slogan.
Albanese and Dutton have both sought to use podcasts to appeal to voters during the campaign, with Labor contracting the company associated with the satirical news publication Betoota Advocate to provide advice on the party’s podcast strategy.
During the leaders’ debate on Wednesday, the prime minister predicted the current crop of teal independents would hold all their seats on May 3 because Dutton appeared ambivalent about the link between climate change and natural disasters, and favoured gas and nuclear power over renewable energy. Albanese reiterated that view in his podcast interview.
“I can’t see the teal independents losing what used to be safe conservative seats,” he said on the podcast, which boasts of 700,000 downloads per episode and is followed by political junkies around the world.
Albanese said Trump’s decision to dramatically cut foreign aid funding and withdraw from the Paris climate agreement “will have a real impact on the standing of the United States in the region” and that the dynamic in the Indo-Pacific “has really changed with the election of the Trump administration”.
“Now Australia, we want to be the security partner of choice in the region, and we’ll continue to step up, but there’s no doubt that any time the United States steps back, China will seek to step forward,” he said.
“And that is a strategic reality that we have to deal with.”
Albanese said Australia had clearly made its choice in standing with the US over China: “We have had strategic competition in the region between China and the United States, and Australia chose a side a long time ago there and stands with democracies around the world.”
Albanese said he was excited to marry fiancee Jodie Haydon later this year but joked that “it will be easier to work through the global geopolitical position” than to pick a single wedding song.
“We do have slightly different musical tastes,” he said, as he nominated Cold Chisel and Nick Cave as his favourite Australian musical artists. Albanese added he was also a big fan of Australian female singer-songwriters such as Sarah Blasko, G Flip and Angie McMahon.
He also detailed his childhood in Sydney’s inner west and his experience meeting his father Carlo for the first time during a work trip to Italy when he was in his mid-40s and the transport minister in the Rudd government.
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