No punching down: Albanese says a positive campaign is coming

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has pledged a positive election campaign aimed at lifting up rather than punching down on Australians while saying he and Donald Trump have different perspectives on the world.

In a candid interview with Nine’s 60 Minutes program, Albanese, who celebrated his 62nd birthday on Sunday, said he would not leave “anything on the field” in the coming campaign, which could be called this week.

Jodie Haydon with Anthony Albanese on their engagement.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

And partner Jodie Haydon has revealed she made the first move to start a relationship with Albanese, saying she was acting as a “single independent lady”.

Both Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton have featured on 60 Minutes in the past fortnight as they attempt to flesh out their public profiles to voters ahead of an election that opinion polls suggest could be determined by a handful of votes in a small number of seats.

Albanese, who spent much of Sunday saying Peter Dutton as health minister in the Abbott government had sought to destroy Medicare, rejected suggestions the campaign would be dominated by negative attacks between the two main parties.

“Peter Dutton has a record that is negative,” he told Karl Stefanovic in the 60 Minutes interview.

“It’s not a negative campaign. It’s a positive one.

“What I’ll do is go through the policies. I want to bring Australians together. I want to lift people up, not punch down on people.”

Albanese has moved widely across the country over the past 10 days, including trips to Devonport, Whyalla, Sydney and Melbourne. He will finish this week in Western Australia, where the state Labor government of Roger Cook is expected to easily defeat the Liberal Party opposition at the state election on Saturday.

He signalled the pace of recent weeks would be ramped up during the election campaign.

“I won’t leave anything on the field. I’ll have a real crack,” he said.

The campaign is likely to include fallout from changes of policy out of the United States as President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Australian aluminium and steel are due to start on March 12.

At the weekend, global leaders including Albanese publicly backed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after his unseemly argument with Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance in the Oval Office of the White House.

Albanese, pressed on how he would deal with Trump in coming months, was circumspect.

“I’ll deal with him as I deal with other world leaders, respectfully,” he said. “Donald Trump has a different perspective from mine. That’s very clear.

“But we have so much in common. The trade relationship is very important. The AUKUS arrangements are very important.”

Haydon is likely to feature in the campaign more prominently than she did in 2022 when she appeared sparingly. That was well before the pair became engaged early last year.

Haydon has been on international trips with Albanese, who said he had been fortunate to find someone whom he describes as his best friend.

Describing her partner as the hardest working person she knew, Haydon reflected on how she had used social media to directly message Albanese, which led to their first date at a pub that then developed into their relationship.

“I was a single woman for a long time before I met him,” she said. “To all the single independent ladies out there, why can’t we make the first move?”

Anthony Albanese and Jodie Haydon in an interview on 60 Minutes.Credit: 60 Minutes

Albanese has come under criticism for buying a $4.3 million oceanfront residence in the NSW Central Coast community of Copacabana, while many Australians battled with the cost-of-living crisis.

He defended the purchase, saying that at some point in the future, he and Haydon would end up at the house because of its close proximity to Haydon’s family on the Central Coast.

According to Haydon, without Albanese, her life was destined to become an episode of a 1980s American sitcom.

“I think many of my other single girlfriends and I thought we would end up like the Golden Girls; we’ll all live together up the coast, and that would be life,” she said.

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