Mike O’Connor: The buck never seems to stop with PM Anthony Albanese

Anthony Albanese had the nerve to once tell Scott Morrison that “Australia needs leaders who first show up and then step up”. Albo should heed his own words, writes Mike O’Connor.

If you have ever thought of finding where the buck stops in Australian politics, don’t bother because it’s flick-passed from one set of hands to the other faster than the ball when the Maroons are on the charge.

Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt copped a pass from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese over the weekend and quickly flicked it on to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal over the debacle.

This mess, which as a result of a ministerial direction to the tribunal, has seen non-citizens with a history of violent crime having their deportation orders cancelled and allowed to stay in the country.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: NewsWire/Damian Shaw

The problem, the minister explained on Sky News, was that the tribunal interpreted it in a way that the government never intended, this in spite of overwhelming evidence that it merely followed the Albanese government’s direction and that the government had been warned of the potentially dire consequences which could ensue.

Not to worry, said our man Murray, the government was using drones to monitor convicted foreign criminals allowed to stay in the country.

This, alas, was news to the Australian Federal Police, which has no knowledge of any such operation.

Ninette Simons, the victim of an assault and burglary in the Perth suburb of Girrawheen.

Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan, who was released from immigration detention, was arrested along with two other men for the violent bashing and robbery of cancer survivor Ninette Simons.

When Perth grandmother Ninette Simons was the victim of an alleged home invasion and bashing by a gang that included released immigration detainee Majid Jamshidi Doukoshkan, Albanese said it was nothing to do with his government’s directive and criticised the Community Protection Board.

Before the federal election, Albanese gave then prime minister Scott Morrison a character reference. “Never before has Australia had a prime minister with such a pathological determination to avoid responsibility,” he said.

“Australia needs leaders who first show up and then step up.”

When not passing the buck, rather than step up, Albo has acquired a sidestep of which Reece Walsh would be proud.

The PM has variously wriggled around stating any clear stance on the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor applying for arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders, thus suggesting there is some sort of equivalence between the only democratic state in the Middle East and a declared terrorist organisation.

Then-Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese and Prime Minister Scott Morrison before the 2022 federal election. Picture: Getty Images

He famously squibbed it after meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping, ducking and weaving when asked if he had raised the Chinese navy’s unprovoked sonar pulse attack on Royal Australian Navy divers.

Asked about the Chinese air force’s potentially catastrophic interception of a Royal Australian Navy helicopter in the Yellow Sea, rather than denounce it, he replied with a tepid “we need to make sure that we have a mature response”.

In Queensland, home of the 50c bus ride, Treasurer Cameron Dick was tossing an American gridiron pass, sending the ball spinning back 25 years in blaming actions by the then LNP government for initiating the Airtrain deal and authoring the tragicomedy surrounding the airport rail link.

Queensland superstar Reece Walsh in game one of the 2023 State of Origin series at Adelaide Oval on May 31, 2023. Picture: Getty Images

Announcing a 50 per cent cut in Airtrain fares for six months that would ever so conveniently mean that it ends just after the election, he denounced the contract as a dud deal by a dud government which dudded Queenslanders, “dud” having apparently been settled upon by the government’s army of spin doctors as the word of the day due to its ability to be employed as both a verb and an adjective and being a short word, relatively easy to remember and pronounce.

Curiously at the time, Labor hero Peter Beattie championed it, saying it would “bring enormous economic, employment and economic benefits to the state”.

You might ask what sort of a dud government would put up its hand to hold the Olympics – yes, I know, there were no other hands – without first looking at the most elementary of its infrastructure needs.

Former Queensland Labor premier Peter Beattie. Picture: Britta Campion/The Australian

Oh, to have been standing in the shadows when this conversation took place.

How will visitors and athletes get from the airport?

No worries. We’ll run buses. No, we won’t, because the Airtrain contract precludes and such thing. Oh dear!

Had anyone in government or in the highly remunerated ranks of its senior public servants bothered to read the contract? Apparently not.

No conversation about dudding the people of Queensland would be complete without mentioning the Wellcamp quarantine facility outside Toowoomba which effectively cost $220m for a 12-month lease and went virtually unused, but therein lies another tale of staggering incompetence.

As opposition leader, Albanese accused Morrison of having “a pathological determination to avoid responsibility”.

It’s an accusation that has a hollow, echoing ring to it now.

Ducking, dodging, weaving, passing and the Big Game hasn’t even started.

Go the Maroons.