Anthony Albanese sparks emotional reaction from Grace Tame during interview
Labor leader Anthony Albanese brought former Australian of the Year Grace Tame to tears while being interviewed by the sexual assault survivor.
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Labor leader Anthony Albanese sparked an emotional reaction from former Australian of the Year Grace Tame during a poignant conversation about being raised by a single mum.
Ms Tame probed Mr Albanese in an interview for InStyle Australia for an example of who shaped his “views on gender issues and policy”, with his response bringing the 27-year-old to tears.
Mr Albanese shared how when his mum fell pregnant out of wedlock in 1963, it was “the fashion of the day” that babies would not be kept by either parent.
“She was going to have got the news that my father had died and then lost the baby and I was going to be adopted out,” he told Ms Tame.
“Because in 1963, when I was born, it was acceptable to be a widow but it wasn’t acceptable to be an unmarried mother.”
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His mum, despite challenges that lay ahead, made the decision to give him the last name of his dad and raise him on her own. His dad told her he planned to marry someone from his Italian home town.
“Now, she was a strong woman who made the decision to have me, and to raise me by herself,” Mr Albanese said.
“She worked originally when I was a bub, cleaning office buildings at night, looking after me during the day, she then had rheumatoid arthritis and was really crippled up.”
He went on to detail how his quaint family-of-two, like many others, was “particularly close”.
“So it was just me and her — and a two-person family, I think, is particularly close. It’s one of the things that has focused me and a part of who I am,” he said.
“She always respected everyone and I grew up with the confidence of having a mum who lived a lot of her aspirations through me. She couldn’t work. And so she’s the most important role model in my life and she’s very much still part of who I am today.”
His answer left Ms Tame and her fiance Max Heerey in tears.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you there,” Mr Albanese said.
Ms Tame said she became emotional because she respected his answer “so much”.
“No, it’s just, yeah, I respect that so much. [looking off camera and laughing] Max is crying! Oh, I want to give you a hug,” she said.
Mr Albanese extended on his point by paying reference to a common argument against marriage equality.
“One of the things that some of the opponents said was, you know, you need a mum, a dad and two kids — that’s a family, I hear that message and go, well, hang on, you know, families are diverse and made up of all sorts of different groups,” he said.
“People are different. Relationships are complex. The one thing that really, really matters — the essential ingredient — is love.”
Mr Albanese explained how out of respect for his mum, he didn’t go searching for his dad until after she died in 2002 “because I didn’t want her to think that she wasn’t enough”. “Because she was enough for me,” he said.
Ms Tame shared insights from her own upbringing and how being around strong women throughout her life had gifted her a lot of the strength and courage she possessed.
“And all I knew was strong women. All around me, all the time. We had a trans family member; I knew diversity, I lived and breathed diversity,” she said.
Ms Tame however conceded she was “still just processing your story”.
“I’ll probably go and cry about it later and I’m not ashamed of that,” she said.
Amused by her confession, Mr Albanese accepted he had “done okay”.
“No, you’ve done better than okay. A lot of respect for you, Anthony,” Ms Tame replied.
The duo made headlines earlier this year with an iconic photo taken hours after Ms Tame’s infamous interaction with Prime Minister Scott Morrison at a morning tea for Australian of the Year finalists.
Mr Albanese shared a picture to Facebook of himself and a beaming Ms Tame taken at an event later that day.
It was accompanied by the caption: “The extraordinary 2021 Australian of the Year, Grace Tame”.
Originally published as Anthony Albanese sparks emotional reaction from Grace Tame during interview
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