The Albo Diaries - Week 17

The Prime Minister keeps a diary. He calls it his ‘legacy document’. You are not supposed to be reading this. His office describes it as “a fabrication.” But to be fair, his office describes most things as a fabrication, so make of that what you will.

18 May 2019

We have LOST. The Unloseable Election. The country chose three more years of Scott Morrison, a man who looks like he sells white-goods on a Sunday morning.

I’m writing this at 1am at the kitchen table with a piece of aged cheddar. Tim rang at midnight. He said Bill will resign. He said the leadership is mine. I have been waiting for this since 1979. I started crying. Not the proper crying from Keating in ‘93 - this was happy crying. With cheese.

NOTE TO SELF: must look sad in the morning. Cannot look like a man who has just been handed Christmas because Bill Shorten failed to defeat a man holding a lump of coal.

21 May 2019

Shorten is running around the corridor trying to BLOCK ME. Bill Shorten who just LOST THE UNLOSEABLE ELECTION is now phoning colleagues to ask if maybe Tanya could have a go. He’s doing it openly. Wayne Swan is helping him. Two men who have lost things are trying to stop a man who has won things. This is Labor, I thought. This is what we DO. We eat our own and call it a banquet.

Marles has stuck his hand up for deputy. Marles is a man who looks like a school principal who once met a horse. I’ll accept him. W’ll be a team. The same way that the front of a horse and the back of a horse are a team. I will be the front of the horse. Marles will be the other bit.

I rang mum to tell her. She said she was very proud. She told me I’d wanted this since I was SEVEN! She’s been carrying it for fifty years.

22 May 2022

I AM THE PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA.

Three years of agreeing with everything Scott Morrison did about COVID so that nobody could disagree with me about anything. Three years of standing next to him at press conferences like an apprentice nodding at a tradesman. And it worked. It WORKED. The country decided that the difference between us was real and I was the safer one. Me. The safer one. A man who has cried in three different Parliament House toilets.

I gave the victory speech. Acknowledged the traditional owners. Committed to the Uluru Statement IN FULL. Right there. Live. Eight minutes after Morrison conceded. I said I wanted families in public housing to be watching me, and to know it was possible.

Penny was there. She did the thing she does at moments of victory, which is look at me as if I’m a son she’s been asked to mind for the weekend. I love Penny. Penny is the Treasurer of my soul.

Jodie was there too. Jodie. I’ve kept her quiet during the campaign because we’re new and she’s normal and the people don’t trust normal. Tonight she squeezed my hand and said “you did it, Anthony.”

I am the 31st Prime Minister of Australia. Bob Hawke is dead. Whitlam is dead. Keating is alive and probably writing me a letter telling me what I’ve already done wrong.

14 October 2023

The Voice is lost. Sixty-forty. Every state. I went on television and said the Australian people had spoken and we respected that. I said it slowly. Stern but warm. Presidential but approachable. The face I’d practised was working. I have spent fifteen months saying “once-in-a-generation chance.” It was a chance. I generated it. I lost it.

Jodie said nothing in the car on the way home. She is good at saying nothing. She does it in a way that fills the car with more nothing than the original nothing. I tried to fill it. I said the No campaign was racist. She said yes Anthony. I said Dutton played politics with it. She said yes Anthony. I said this was always going to be hard. She said yes Anthony, and turned her face slightly towards the window, which in our marriage is the equivalent of a cabinet reshuffle.

I went to bed at 9.30. I did not eat cheese. The cheese knew.

13 December 2025

Saturday morning. Quiet one today. I had a coffee on the balcony and read three columns about me being weak on anti-semitism, which I am not, because I issued a statement, and a statement is a kind of action. The statement said we condemn all forms of hatred. ALL forms. Which is the right number of forms to condemn. You don’t want to leave any forms out. People are very particular about their hatred.

A man from the Israeli government has been having a go again. He said the epidemic of anti-semitic hatred was spreading “almost unchecked.” Almost means SLIGHTLY checked. He should be GRATEFUL. He should send me a fruit basket. Instead he sends a press release, which I’ve decided not to read all of, because Penny’s reading it, and Penny will tell me what’s in it, although Penny is currently not speaking to me which she has decided to do via several silences in a row.

Tonight Hanukkah starts. I’m aware of it because Geoff put a note in my diary. The note says “consider a statement.” I have considered it. I’ll do one tomorrow. Sundays are good for statements. Saturdays are for the smell of barbecue and a well-deserved cold one.

I feel fully empowered. Jodie’s gone for a walk. The dogs are asleep. Penny isn’t ringing. The phone isn’t ringing at all, in fact, which means the country is calm, which means I am doing my job. The absence of news is news. The absence of crisis is leadership. I’ll write a thought down later about this. Maybe in the speech I’m giving on Tuesday.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

I remain, as always, on the right side of history. History has not yet confirmed this. But it will.

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