Anthony Albanese Pitches ‘Safe Change” in Australian Election

Anthony Albanese likes to talk about his modest upbringing: He grew up in public housing in Sydney’s inside suburbs, raised by a single mom on a incapacity pension, and was the primary in his household to go to school.

Mr. Albanese, the chief of the opposition Labor Party and the person polling says is prone to change into the following prime minister, has credited good authorities for retaining a roof over his head throughout his childhood.

It’s this sort of authorities — one which “holds no one back, and leaves no one behind,” in his phrases — that he has evoked as he has sought to attach with working-class voters.

The question, although, is whether or not this oft-told story has registered with voters. Although Mr. Albanese is one in every of Australia’s longest-serving politicians, many citizens nonetheless say they know little about him or what he stands for.

Part of it is because Labor has run what has been known as a “small target” marketing campaign. Mr. Albanese took over as opposition chief after Labor’s upset loss in the 2019 election, which the occasion has attributed to a too-ambitious coverage platform that left it susceptible to a scare marketing campaign by the conservative Liberal Party.

This time, Labor has sought to attenuate variations with the federal government on a number of points like nationwide safety and border safety, and it has proposed incremental modifications on different points like local weather change.

As Mr. Albanese places it, he’s searching for “renewal, not revolution.”

“There’s a slight element of Joe Biden about Albanese — he’s an alternative which people are hoping for because they don’t like the incumbent,” mentioned John Warhurst, an emeritus professor of politics on the Australian National University.

“There’s not an enthusiasm there,” he added.

A career politician, Mr. Albanese joined the Labor Party as an adolescent. He acquired his begin by means of scholar politics on the University of Sydney, after which he labored for Labor politicians and in occasion roles. He constructed up a standing as a back-room energy dealer earlier than being elected to Parliament in 1996.

When Labor received the 2007 election beneath the management of Kevin Rudd, Mr. Albanese grew to become the minister for infrastructure. He weathered the next years of inside occasion chaos in which Julia Gillard took over as prime minister earlier than Mr. Rudd wrenched the publish again. As one in every of Mr. Rudd’s key backers in the management struggle, Mr. Albanese grew to become deputy prime minister for 2 months earlier than Labor was defeated in the 2013 election.

As a member of the Labor Party’s extra progressive “socialist left” faction, Mr. Albanese spoke in favor of euthanasia, was a robust supporter of same-sex marriage and opposed his occasion’s assist of insurance policies that bar refugees from searching for asylum after reaching Australia by boat.

But in latest years, he has shifted to a extra reasonable stance, together with falling in line along with his occasion’s position on asylum seekers. During the marketing campaign, he has sought to guarantee voters that he’s a centrist, together with with a front-page profile in a Murdoch-owned paper with the headline “I am not woke.”