Anthony Albanese recently found himself in the hot seat over a ‘cost-of-living crisis CD’ meme that’s gone viral for all the wrong reasons. The PM has seen the heat and his response is giving major idgaf vibes.
The post, styled like the iconic So Fresh CD cover, was titled “so helpful — cost of living relief — Winter 2024” and featured a tracklist of government initiatives, including “tax cuts for every Australian taxpayer” and “$300 off power bills.” It was meant to be a lighthearted nod to the government’s relief efforts, but instead was a complete flop.
Within hours, the post attracted over 2,000 comments, many of which were far from flattering.
Commenters labelled the meme “infantile trash” and “embarrassing,” with some users suggesting Albanese’s media team should be sacked.
One particularly scathing comment read, “Your comms team hate you and want you to lose,” while another said, “The cost of living crisis isn’t a joke!”
Albanese appeared on HIT WA with Robbie Von and Carly Portch to address the backlash.
Portch asked him, “How did this come about? And do you literally have to tick off every social media post?”
To which Albanese replied, “No, I don’t, obviously.”
When Portch asked the question on all of our minds, “So how did that end up on the front of a SoFresh CD on social media?”, the Prime Minister defended the meme, suggesting that the controversy was actually beneficial.
“Whatever, you’re talking about it. Which means we’re talking about our cost of living relief. Which is kind of the objective of social media to get people talking about the issues,” he replied. Good save!
Despite the flop, Albanese insists he’s the hero of this story, highlighting the government’s efforts. “But how it came about [the meme] is the fact that we are doing things,” he said.“What we’re doing is income tax cuts for everybody, not just for some. I mean, I got less so that other people could get something.”
He continued: “People earning under $45,000 a year were going to get not a single dollar. We made sure the average workers are getting double. We’ve done energy bill relief together with the states and territories. That adds up to hundreds of dollars off bills. We’ve got the second increase in a row in rent relief, providing the biggest support that has ever been given for renters. We’ve got fee-free TAFE, we’ve got cheaper childcare, all of these measures we have done because we understand that cost of living is the number one issue that we need to deal with.”
And no, Labor is not about to sack the social media team for the controversial meme.
“I’m from the Labor Party. We look after workers and what we don’t do is have the sort of, you know, breathless nonsense that appears on some of these sites from time to time in order to get clicks,” Albanese said.
“That’s precisely what they’re doing — in order to say that someone should lose their job over something like this. For goodness sake, if people on that site want to look at everything that they’ve ever put up for accuracy, then fine. They should hold themselves to the same account.”
In the end, while firing people over a meme might be extreme, perhaps a promotion for that Gen Z intern probably warned him against posting it is in order.
Lead image: X/Getty Images
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