Anthony Albanese
Anthony Norman Albanese ( /ˌælbəˈniːzi/ AL-bə-NEEZ-ee or /ˈælbəniːz/ AL-bə-neez;[nb 1] born 2 March 1963) is an Australian politician serving as the 31st and current prime minister of Australia since 2022.[3] He has been leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) since 2019 and the member of parliament (MP) for the division of Grayndler since 1996. Albanese previously served as the 15th deputy prime minister under the second Rudd government in 2013. He held various ministerial positions from 2007 to 2013 in the governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.[4]
Anthony Albanese
Malcolm Turnbull (as Minister for Communications)
Jodie Haydon (2021–present, engaged in 2024)
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- The Lodge (primary)
- Kirribilli House (secondary)
Albo
Albanese was born in Sydney to an Italian father and an Irish-Australian mother, who raised him as a single parent. Albanese attended St Mary's Cathedral College and studied economics at the University of Sydney. As a student, he joined the Labor Party and later worked as a party official and research officer before entering Parliament.
Albanese was elected to the House of Representatives at the 1996 election, winning the seat of Grayndler in New South Wales. He was first appointed to the shadow cabinet in 2001 by Simon Crean and went on to serve in a number of roles, eventually becoming Manager of Opposition Business in 2006. After Labor's victory in the 2007 election, Albanese was appointed Leader of the House, and was also made Minister for Regional Development and Local Government and Minister for Infrastructure and Transport. In the subsequent leadership tensions between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard from 2010 to 2013, Albanese was publicly critical of the conduct of both, calling for party unity. After supporting Rudd in the final leadership ballot between the two in June 2013, Albanese was elected the deputy leader of the Labor Party and sworn in as deputy prime minister the following day, a position he held for less than three months, as Labor was defeated at the 2013 election.
Rudd retired from politics, so Albanese stood against Bill Shorten in the October 2013 Australian Labor Party leadership election. Although Albanese won a large majority of the membership, Shorten won more heavily among Labor MPs and became leader. Shorten subsequently appointed Albanese to his Shadow Cabinet. After Labor's surprise defeat in the 2019 election, Shorten resigned as leader, with Albanese becoming the only person nominated in the leadership election to replace him; he was subsequently elected unopposed as leader of the Labor Party, becoming Leader of the Opposition.[5][6]
In the 2022 election, Albanese led his party to victory against Scott Morrison's Liberal-National Coalition.[7][8][9][10] He was sworn in on 23 May 2022.[11][12] Albanese's first acts as prime minister included proposing a change to the Constitution to include an Indigenous Voice to Parliament,[13][14][15] updating Australia's climate targets in an effort to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, and supporting an increase to the national minimum wage. His government legislated a national anti-corruption commission, made major changes to Australian labour law and established the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme. In foreign policy, Albanese pledged further logistical support to Ukraine to assist with the Russo-Ukrainian war, attempted to strengthen relations in the Pacific region, and held several high-level discussions with Chinese president Xi Jinping, overseeing an easing of tensions between the countries and leading to easing of trade restrictions put by China on Australia. He also oversaw the official commencement of the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
Early life
Family and background
Albanese was born on 2 March 1963 at St Margaret's Hospital in the Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst.[16][17] He is the son of Carlo Albanese and Maryanne Ellery.[18] His mother was an Australian of Irish descent, while his Italian father was from Barletta in Apulia. His parents met in March 1962 on a voyage from Sydney to Southampton, England, on the Sitmar Line's TSS Fairsky, where his father worked as a steward, but did not continue their relationship afterwards, going their separate ways.[19][20][21]
Growing up, Albanese was told that his father had died in a car accident; he did not meet his father, who was in fact still alive, until 2009, tracking him down initially with the assistance of John Faulkner, Carnival Australia's CEO Ann Sherry (the parent company of P&O, which acquired the Sitmar Line in 1988) and maritime historian Rob Henderson, and then later the Australian Embassy in Italy and ambassador Amanda Vanstone.[19] He made contact with his father in 2009, visiting him a number of times in Italy, and he took his family there as well. His father died in 2014.[22] He subsequently discovered that he had two half-siblings.[20][21] During the Australian parliamentary eligibility crisis of 2017, it was noted that, although birth to an Italian father would ordinarily confer citizenship by descent, Albanese had no father recorded on his birth certificate and thus meets the parliamentary eligibility requirements of section 44 of the constitution.[23]
Albanese's maternal grandfather George Ellery ran a printing business on William Street in Darlinghurst. He provided printing services to the ALP.[24]
Childhood and education
Albanese grew up with his mother and maternal grandparents in a Sydney City Council home in the Inner West suburb of Camperdown, opposite the Camperdown Children's Hospital.[25] His grandfather died in 1970, and the following year his mother married James Williamson. He was given his stepfather's surname, but the marriage lasted only 10 weeks, as Williamson proved to be an abusive alcoholic.[26] Albanese's mother worked part-time as a cleaner but suffered from chronic rheumatoid arthritis, with the family surviving on her disability pension and his grandmother's age pension.[27]
Albanese attended St Joseph's Primary School in Camperdown[28] and then St Mary's Cathedral College.[29] After finishing school, he worked for the Commonwealth Bank for two years before studying economics at the University of Sydney.[16] There, he became involved in student politics and was elected to the Students' Representative Council.[30][31][32] It was also there where he started his rise as a key player in the ALP's Labor Left.[33] During his time in student politics, Albanese led a group within Young Labor that was aligned with the left faction's Hard Left, which maintained "links with broader left-wing groups, such as the Communist Party of Australia, People for Nuclear Disarmament and the African National Congress".[34]
Albanese's mother died in 2002.[35]
Pre-parliamentary career and travel
After completing his economics degree in 1984,[36] Albanese took on a role as a research officer to the then Minister for Local Government and Administrative Services, Tom Uren, who became a mentor to him.[37] In 1989, the position of Assistant General Secretary of the New South Wales branch of the Labor Party became vacant when John Faulkner was elected to the Senate. The election to replace him was closely disputed between the Labor Left's Hard Left and Soft Left groupings, with Albanese being elected with the backing of the Hard Left, taking on that role for the next six years.[34] In 1995, he left the position to work as a senior adviser to New South Wales Premier Bob Carr.[16]
Albanese's first overseas trip was in 1986, accompanying his friend Jeremy Fisher to Vanuatu.[38] In 1987, Albanese joined his boss Tom Uren on a visit to South-East Asia, which included: a meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, Thailand; an Anzac Day dawn service at the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery with John Carrick; and a tour of Cambodia alongside Bill Hayden's daughter Ingrid.[39] He then travelled extensively in 1988, visiting Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Western Europe on a Contiki tour, and Eastern Europe and Scandinavia as a backpacker.[40] Upon returning to Australia, he began dating Carmel Tebbutt, with whom he would holiday in Europe and South-East Asia,[41] plus a backpacking trip to India in 1991.[42][43] Sometime during his 20s, Albanese also took part in a tour of the United States organised by the State Department, with a thematic focus on the interaction of advocacy groups with the U.S. Government.[44][45]
In 1990, Albanese bought a semi-detached two-bedroom house in the Inner West Sydney suburb of Marrickville.[36]
Return to Opposition
2013 leadership election
Following the defeat of Labor at the 2013 election, Albanese announced his candidacy to be Leader of the Labor Party, standing against Bill Shorten.[75] Shorten was announced as the winner after a month-long contest that was the first to involve a combined vote of MPs and rank-and-file members. Although Albanese won comfortably among party members, Shorten held a greater lead among MPs, and was subsequently elected.[76]
Shorten Opposition
In October 2013, shortly after the leadership election, Shorten appointed Albanese Shadow Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and Shadow Minister for Tourism; he held these roles throughout Shorten's time as leader.[77] In September 2014, Albanese was given the additional role of Shadow Minister for Cities.[78]
Personal life
In 2000, Albanese married Carmel Tebbutt, a future Deputy Premier of New South Wales.[242][243] They had met in Young Labor during the late 1980s,[244] and have one son together.[245][246] The two separated in January 2019.[247] In June 2020, it was reported that Albanese was in a relationship[248] with Jodie Haydon.[249] Albanese said they had met at a dinner event in Melbourne a year after his separation from Tebbutt.[250] Albanese is the first divorcee to be appointed prime minister.[251] In February 2024, Albanese announced his engagement to Haydon after proposing to her at The Lodge in Canberra, making him the first prime minister of Australia to be engaged while in office.[252]
Albanese describes himself as "half-Italian and half-Irish"[253] and a "non-practising Catholic".[254] He is also a music fan who, not long after becoming prime minister, attended a Gang of Youths concert at the Enmore Theatre[255] and previously intervened as transport minister to save a Dolly Parton tour from bureaucratic red tape.[256] In 2013, he co-hosted a pre-election special of music program Rage and his song selection included the Pixies, the Pogues, the Smiths, the Triffids, PJ Harvey, Nirvana, Hunters & Collectors and Joy Division.[257][258] On 30 November 2023, Albanese posted his Spotify Wrapped to his Instagram story, indicating his top artists to be Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift, Hilltop Hoods, Bruce Springsteen, and Lily Allen.[259]
As a lifelong supporter of the South Sydney Rabbitohs rugby league club, he was a board member of the club from 1999 to 2002 and influential in the fight to have the club readmitted to the National Rugby League (NRL) competition.[260] During October 2009, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Albanese had opposed an attempt to appoint the former Liberal prime minister John Howard to a senior position in the NRL. Albanese stated he had phoned the NRL chief executive, David Gallop, as well as other league officials, to advise them against the idea. He then implored officials at Souths to help stop the suggestion from gaining momentum.[261] In 2013, he was made a life member of the club.[260] He is also a fan of Australian rules football, and supports the Hawthorn Football Club.[262][263]
Albanese was injured in a side collision while driving in Marrickville, New South Wales, on 8 January 2021. He underwent treatment at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and was reportedly "injured externally and internally and had suffered considerable shock in the immediate aftermath of the impact". The other driver was a 17-year-old who received a ticket for negligent driving.[264] Emergency workers told Albanese that if the teen's car had hit just 30 centimetres either side of where it did, Albanese "would almost certainly have been killed".[265] Shortly following this accident, Albanese lost over 18 kilograms (39 pounds) by cutting out carbohydrates and reducing his alcohol intake, in an effort to be "match fit" for his election campaign.[266][267]
