By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook
After Donald Trump’s embrace of various bro podcasters helped lock in the male edgelord vote and pave his return to the White House, it was no surprise that Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton would race to the mics ahead of Saturday’s poll.
But as the election campaign reaches the home stretch, the prime minister isn’t just leading the polls – he’s also edged ahead in the podcast/YouTuber stakes. After ruffling a few press gallery feathers by rolling out the federal budget red carpet to a few Labor-friendly influencers, Albanese has taken plenty of time out of his campaign schedule for interviewers well outside the Canberra bubble.
‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic endorses Anthony Albanese during the 2025 federal election campaign.Credit: Joe Exotic / Instagram
Last month, the PM sank non-alcoholic beers with Perth-based YouTuber Ozzy Man Reviews during a near hour-long interview. He popped up on a new show from the brains behind popular podcast The Grade Cricketer.
And last week, he did an interview with a podcast called Bloody Brilliant Beers, a couple of blokes from Brissie who post about footy and frothies. Sounds like a perfect platform to reach the kind of normie suburban young male voters Dutton would desperately love to pick off.
But the opposition leader has had less time for such engagements. Before the campaign, he did an interview with Olympic diver Sam Fricker. Like Albanese, he’s sat down with Mark Bouris, the businessman and wannabe Joe Rogan, who’s interviewed politicians across the aisle. Both leaders have sat down with Kate Langbroek on the No Filter podcast from women’s media empire Mama Mia.
But it was Albanese who got the weirdest internet celebrity endorsement of the campaign on Wednesday from none other than Joseph Allen Maldonado, aka Joe Exotic, star of the pandemic-era Netflix documentary Tiger King. Maldonado, who is serving a 22-year prison sentence for animal abuse and the attempted murder-for-hire of rival zookeeper Carole Baskin, told his Instagram followers to support the PM.
Rather than the work of some enterprising Labor apparatchik, the endorsement came courtesy of 2DayFM hosts Jimmy and Nath, who asked Exotic to back the PM during a radio interview this week.
It’s a bit of social media love that Dutton probably didn’t envy.
Changing stripes
Star Liberal Party Indigenous candidate Benson Saulo has been accused of party-hopping after it emerged he had once been a member of the Greens.
Now Australian Labor Party records seen by CBD show that he was once a member there, too. Well, we have all shopped around, haven’t we?
Benson Saulo appears with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton during the campaign.Credit: James Brickwood
Saulo is contesting the Melbourne seat of Macnamara against sitting Labor MP Josh Burns and Greens candidate, NGO consultant Sonya Semmens.
Anyone could emerge the winner in this three-cornered contest, depending on which candidate falls into third place and where the preferences flow.
Saulo, a former finance executive and diplomat, was Australia’s first Indigenous person appointed to be a consul-general when in 2021 he took up the post in Houston.
A member of the Wemba Wemba and Gunditjmara family groups in Victoria and the New Ireland province on Papua New Guinea, Saulo was also the first Indigenous Australian to attend the United Nations General Assembly as a youth delegate.
He once joined Formula 1 driver Daniel Ricciardo in Cleo magazine’s “30 Aussies under 30 who are totally killing it at life” list. An impressive resume, to be sure.
Benson was a member of the Greens in 2015, briefly worked for its leader Richard di Natale, and also sought preselection. It turns out he was also a member of some other political groupings.
“In 2014, some friends and I dreamed up the idea of a youth-focused political party called Emerge – but it never got off the ground, and our small group was later absorbed by Australian Progressives,” he said in a statement.
But he left the Progressives before it was registered as a political party.
Now ALP party records and an email seen by CBD show one Benson Saulo emailed the ALP on Wednesday, June 24, 2015 at 2.25pm.
“I’d like to request that my membership with the ALP be cancelled. My membership number is 78190,” Saulo wrote.
“This wasn’t an easy decision to make as there is much the ALP can be proud of in the way of policy and supporting our communities most vulnerable, but I have made the decision not to remain an ALP member.”
He had joined the party in March.
Saulo initially denied membership, but later told CBD: “I’m shattered at having forgotten about a three-month period in 2014 in which I was an ALP member.
“I have talked extensively to the community and to the media about my short stint as a Greens member in 2015, so have no reason to hide the ALP membership I held fleetingly.
“Hand on heart, I simply forgot.”
Saulo said he walked away from the political left because they sold him a promise about values he discovered they did not adhere to.
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