It’s hard to think of a more politically tone-deaf decision than Anthony Albanese’s purchase of a $4.3m clifftop mansion six months before a cost-of-living election.
The government has been drifting in the polls and struggling to get cut-through on its economic measures, lacking a strong narrative about its reason for being in office.
While it appears paralysed on economic policy as it awaits an interest rate cut from the Reserve Bank of Australia, the government – and particularly Albanese – have become increasingly vulnerable to the opposition charge of being out of touch with ordinary voters.
Meanwhile, the Greens are successfully hammering the government on housing affordability and the rental crisis under the “property investor” PM.
On the backfoot on measures that would address the housing crisis, Albanese was also forced to clarify the government’s position on negative gearing and capital gains tax reforms in a messy policy debate last month.
Polls are tight, and a minority government is on the cards at the next election.
Against this backdrop, colleagues are right to feel dismayed and befuddled by Albanese’s decision to splurge on a lavish Central Coast home with his wife-to-be Jodie Haydon.
The move comes as polling shows almost 80% of Australians view home ownership as unattainable for young people without family assistance, inflation remains stubbornly high, and financial stress among working Australians is at record levels.
Albanese insisted on Tuesday that he “knows what it’s like to struggle”, but the prime minister’s log cabin story is from a long time ago now.
Having been in parliament for almost 30 years, and now on an income of $550,000, the “battler from Marrickville” trope rings hollow when you’re having to defend the timber-lined cathedral ceilings of your third property at Copacabana (of all places).
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, himself a property investor with undisclosed wealth held in trusts, said little about the purchase, indicating the decision was a “matter for the prime minister”.
But he doesn’t need to. In a political environment where most people are not paying attention to policy or the government’s daily grind, there is nothing like a real estate story – with pictures to boot – to get cut-through.
It’s just not the kind of cut-through the government needed.
Before the last election, Albanese said he had “picked a side”, choosing to go into bat for working Australians.
While no one doubts the prime minister’s battler pedigree, his property investment decision raises a fundamental question: has he not been listening?
The judgment is appalling, the optics truly terrible.
Unlike those at Kirribilli House, the second prime ministerial residence in Sydney with harbourside views.
Couldn’t he have just enjoyed those for another six months and then gone property shopping?
