THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED IN THE INNER WEST REVIEW ON FEBRUARY 9, 2022
From Camperdown council housing boy to our 31st Prime Minister? The prospect is growing for Anthony Albanese, Member for Grayndler, who has always called the inner west home.
There will be some firsts for Australia if Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese, Member for Grayndler, becomes the next Prime Minister. He will be the first PM to be a born and bred inner westie, and to have grown up in public housing, the only child of a single mother. He will also be the first PM of Italian heritage, marking the first time the nation's ethnic diversity is reflected in its highest political office.
"As much as we're a multicultural country, the people who put themselves forward as prime minister have historically had names like Howard, Rudd, Gillard, Morrison," Albanese says.
"One of the leaders of the Italian community said to me - privately because he's a member of the Liberal Party - that 'just this once, I am voting Labor, because I am not going to miss out on the opportunity to have someone with Italian blood as an Australian PM'."
When the Inner West Review catches up with Albanese two weeks before Christmas, on a warm, breezy day in a park near his Marrickville home, he says he is more optimistic than he has ever been that Labor can win this year's federal election.
Just that morning, at Marrickville Metro, "it took me a fair while to just buy things to cook for dinner, because people just wanted to stop and talk. They are excited. I think they want a change of government. And they like the idea of having a prime minister who lives in Marrickville."
She is gorgeous, I am besotted with her - it's pathetic. They just give unconditional love.
- Anthony Albanese
It is only two days after his first campaign rally before a crowd of supporters at Wests Ashfield, and the Omicron imbroglio is yet to slam the nation and inflict further damage on the Morrison government's approval ratings. By December 27, a NewsPoll analysis is giving Labor a thumping victory of more than 80 MPs in the lower house, in an election that must be held no later than May 21. Last week, Labor's lead had widened further to 56-44 on a two-party preferred basis.
And Albanese was only two points behind Scott Morrison as preferred prime minister, shrinking a large and persistent gap that had been showing an apparent failure on the part of Albanese to cut through nationally - a stark contrast to his status as a bona fide icon in his own electorate, where 'Albo' is as inner west as street art and the Newtown Jets.
Take St Peters craft brewery Willie the Boatman's Albo Corn Ale, created in 2015 in honour of "the last of a rare breed of pollie and all-round good bloke". Or the framed copy of the photo famously known as 'Hot Albo' that hangs in popular Dulwich Hill restaurant the Sausage Factory, wearing seasonal jumpers knitted by the owner Chrissy Flanagan.
"I make different little jumpers for him," Flanagan says. "At the moment, he just has a sausage floral - during the week he is getting his Christmas jumper on, which is a boxing kangaroo with a Santa hat having a barbecue."
In the 2019 federal election campaign, Flanagan and Albanese collaborated on a sausage creation, with Albanese calling a press conference to launch their beef and bush tomato 'Democracy Sausage', the two of them in matching sausage aprons.
"He is Mr Inner West, and I think also the natural successor to Bob Hawke, in that he is very in touch with people's lived experience in a contemporary way," Flanagan says. "He is not a remote impersonal figure; he is your mate in the dog park that you have a chat to.
"He is just a top bloke. And he is obsessed with that dog; he adores that dog."
'That dog' is Toto, the white cavoodle who bounds across the park towards us, Albanese bringing up the rear, for our photo shoot on the banks of the Cooks River. Forced to keep clear of Sydney for nearly three months during last year's COVID lockdown, Albanese missed Toto, and his 21-year-old son, and greatest pride, Nathan.
Albanese dotes on Toto, that much is clear. "This is cavoodle central around here - look at her, she loves being chased," he says. "I had a Sydney silky terrier as a kid, but this is my first dog as an adult. She is gorgeous, I am besotted with her - it's pathetic. They just give unconditional love." He quotes a 1990s song by the Fauves: "Dogs are the best people."
The long road to 2022
When Albanese was first elected in 1996, aircraft noise over the inner west was the dominant political issue in Grayndler following the building of Sydney Airport's third runway. The No Aircraft Noise party fielded a candidate who failed to fulfill predictions that the single-issue party would take Grayndler.
Albanese won the seat comfortably, campaigning on a platform that included a new airport in Sydney's west, His job as a senior political adviser for then NSW premier Bob Carr behind him, he headed for Canberra - and a steady rise through Labor's parliamentary ranks all the way to Deputy Prime Minister under Kevin Rudd and, in 2019, Leader of the Opposition. "I am still friends with, and not everyone could say this I think, both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard," he says.
At a time when skies over Sydney have been eerily quiet and the first sods for the Badgerys Creek Airport well and truly turned, aircraft noise is hardly the same hot-button issue. Rather, Albanese cites secure work as the No. 1 concern that gets raised with him when he's out and about in Grayndler. With the rise of the gig economy, "a lot of people are in casual employment, and that makes it really difficult for them to be able to get a mortgage, to get into the housing market," he says. People are also passionate about climate change "and wanting action". Gender equity comes up strongly, too.
His own fortunes closely mirror those of the place he has always called home - first at Camperdown, then Newtown, then Marrickville. His life spans the inner west's industrial, working-class 'then' and prosperous, middle-class 'now' - a council housing boy with Labor in his blood who, in 2021, sold a Marrickville investment property that had doubled in value, and dropped his party's opposition to legislated tax cuts for the wealthy.
I have an obligation to the electorate to get there. I've had loyal support from Grayndler.
- Anthony Albanese
He grew up in one of a row of council duplexes on Pyrmont Bridge Road in Camperdown,
and his childhood memories are fond: "There were spontaneous gatherings every weekend to kick the footy, and cricket matches; the occasional window suffered as a result in the middle of where all the flats are there."
He recalls the constant aroma of baking biscuits from the Weston's factory, one of the many industries that surrounded the public housing block back then: the Royal Alexandra Children's Hospital was across the road; there was a Grace Bros storage place on one of the corners, McNulty's metal foundry on another.
There was a genuine sense of community; everyone knew each other, and "it was very Catholic at the time, because Catholics tended to work for the council, and there was very much a rugby league focus". A league player himself, Albo went to the local St Joseph's Primary School, and then to St Mary's Cathedral School in the city. Some of his mum's best friends still live at Pyrmont Bridge Road.
Out and about in Grayndler
Albanese describes his electorate today as vibrant, interesting and dynamic, pointing to the number of artists and other creatives that live and work here, the First Nations and multicultural communities and groups, and the proliferation of restaurants, bars and craft breweries that definitely weren't around in his boyhood.
"You can see the area is changing substantially, but it is still a diverse community, which is really important - and one of the really positive things is the diversity of the multiculturalism as well: there are newer residents from Pacifica and from Africa, joining the traditional communities of the Italians in Leichhardt, the Greeks in Marrickville, the Portuguese in Petersham, the Chinese in Ashfield ... it's a really diverse population, where there is a great deal of harmony I think."
When he's in the electorate, the days are busy: sometimes he'll be in his electoral office on Marrickville Road; there'll be events to attend - something at Balmain Rowers, say, or with the Italian community in Leichhardt, at Bill Crews' Exodus Foundation in Ashfield, or at the Addison Road Community Centre.
If it's a weekend and the Jets are playing at Henson Park, he'll be there - "there's nothing better. I have probably been to hundreds of footy games at Henson Park". And he hangs out in the inner west, taking advantage of its "fantastic" restaurants, bars, clubs and live-music venues.
Albo famously loves his music - getting to host Rage when he was deputy PM "was very much on the bucket list" - and he is concerned about how hard the pandemic has been on the live music scene. Mates like Mark Wilson from Jet, and Kram from Spiderbait have been in touch. "They all text me about the frustration that is out there from the lack of [government] support for the arts sector; it's so tough."
'What would my mum think?'
Albanese has been generous in sharing his personal story with the Australian public. He grew up believing his father had died in a car accident before he was born. Then, as a teenager, his mum, Maryanne, sat him down to tell him that in fact his dad could still be alive: she had met him on the cruise liner Fairsky on a voyage to England. Carlo Albanese was a steward with a betrothed back in Naples, to whom he remained loyal after Maryanne fell pregnant.
She returned to Sydney with a new last name and wearing a wedding ring, and raised her son as a single parent in the house she would live in her entire life. Decades after he had learned the truth, and seven years after his mother's 2002 death, Anthony, then 46, met his father Carlo - and a brother and sister - in Italy.
But his mum, who he says was "spent" when she died at 65, of a brain aneurysm, remains his reference point. His anchor. He says he hopes that he brings a sense of optimism to politics, and when you ask him how he maintains that optimism over such a long time - this federal election campaign is his 10th - Maryanne Ellery is a large part of the answer.
"I think it is who I am, and I do think quite often, what would my mum think, in terms of being grounded; she was someone who did it tough, who talked to people, listened to talkback radio and would never get ahead of herself - and I think of that, about engaging with people, being respectful and including people who don't agree with everything, and [asking] how do we bring those people forward?
"My reaction is always that you've got to talk to people, and engage with them ... social change doesn't happen by yelling at people who disagree with you; it happens by arguing your case and bringing a majority of Australians with you.
"But you need to be in government to really make a substantial difference to the country and that is why I am very passionate about getting into government and making a difference.
"I have an obligation to the electorate to get there. I've had loyal support from Grayndler: It's a tough electorate, it's a political electorate, who have shown faith in me over a period of time, who want a better country, a more inclusive country, and who want social change to occur, and I have got a responsibility to do that."
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