Revealed: Albo’s sit-down with Communist Party paper

A young Anthony Albanese participated in a forum with the official magazine of the Communist Party of Australia nearly 18 months after the Berlin Wall fell and the horrors of the Marxist political system were exposed.

A young Anthony Albanese participated in a forum with the official magazine of the Communist Party of Australia nearly 18 months after the Berlin Wall fell and the horrors of the Marxist political system were exposed.

The interview, which appeared in the April 3, 1991 edition of the CPA’s house organ Tribune, was part of a feature called “The changing Left – coherence, theory”, included Mr Albanese as one of a number of figures who were asked by the paper to “respond to a series of propositions and to each other.”

By 1991, all of the former communist regimes of Eastern Europe had been replaced by democratically elected ones.

A young Albo in the newspaper article.

At the time, the world was coming to grips with what had occurred in Eastern Europe in the name of communism, and around the same time Mr Albanese was speaking to Tribune citizens of the former German Democrat Republic were organising to uncover the secrets of the country’s old Stasi secret police.

In the interview, Mr Albanese talked about the challenges Labor would have were it to win power off then-Premier Nick Greiner’s Liberal state government, suggesting that it is easier to take potshots from opposition than

“Being in government confronts the labour movement as a whole, not just the Labor Party, with questions which the Left failed to consider … how Labor puts its principles into action, how we deal with questions of the internationalisation of capital.”

“It’s easier to construct a vision of an antinuclear society or an environmentally aware society or one based on equality,” he said.

Excerpt from the Communist Part of Australia magazine.

As well as running the interview with Mr Albanese, Tribune in the same edition ran a classified ad promoting an upcoming “politics in the pub” talk involving the future Opposition Leader entitled, “Socialist Politics: Past Tense, Future Prospects.

In the early 1990s Mr Albanese led a faction known as the “Hard Left” which had close ties to communist organisations.

In a November 2000 article by future Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh, the Hard Left was described as being “led by Anthony Albanese”.

“This group was more concerned than the Soft Left with international issues and maintained closer links with broader left-wing groups such as the Communist Party of Australia,” he wrote.

Mr Albanese said a “desperate government should stop sifting through speeches and interviews I gave decades ago”.

The Hard Left would, ironically, change its name to “Socialist Left” on November 10, 1989, the same day the Berlin Wall fell.

Asked about the interview, Mr Albanese said a “desperate government should stop sifting through speeches and interviews I gave decades ago and focus on things that matter to Australians like jobs, wage growth, the crisis in aged care and the need for the revival of Australian manufacturing.”

“I’m very happy to stand by all of the policies that I have outlined ahead of the coming election because these are the policies a Labor government will implement if we are successful.”