Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s history contradicts praise of Hawke, Howard

Anthony Albanese’s economic beliefs appear to have shifted radically over the years, if a shocking speech to an audience of business leaders is to be believed.

Anthony Albanese, who once said he was in politics to “fight Tories”, has been accused of not being able to keep his own views straight after promising an audience of Sydney business leaders that if elected he would govern in the spirit of Bob Hawke and John Howard.

In the speech delivered Wednesday, Mr Albanese said that he was “following Bob Hawke’s example, I’ve ensured that all of our economic policies target issues that for government, business and trade unions are shared interests.”

But a 1987 newspaper profile of a young Mr Albanese reported that “he believes the (Hawke) government has lost touch with the people,” and quoted the then-activist criticising Mr Hawke’s treasurer, Paul Keating, for being “more comfortable mixing with millionaires and business executives than … with working class people.”

Labor leader Anthony Albanese delivered a speech to the Australian Financial Review's Business Summit in Sydney on Wednesday. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gaye Gerard

In 2012, Mr Albanese would develop something of a catch phrase when he declared, “I like fighting Tories. That’s what I do.”

On Wednesday Mr Albanese also pledged that if Labor won government at the coming election, “I would take my lead from Bob Hawke and his successor Paul Keating.”

Yet in 1995, at the height of Mr Keating’s prime ministership, Mr Albanese slammed the then-government saying, “the general free market approach … needs to be turned around and I think that the parliamentary Left have a role in changing that.”

In his speech Mr Albanese went on to praise the “the great Labor reformist governments of the 1980s and 1990s” that “used reform in … to deliver huge productivity gains.”

However a 2017 biography of Mr Albanese details the Opposition Leader “chuckling” when he recalled a stunt he and other hard left Young Labor activists rained Monopoly money down from the galleries at the ALP’s 1985 state conference as then-treasurer Keating broached the idea of paying for income tax cuts with a consumption tax.

“That was one of the actions that didn’t endear Young Labor to the party leadership,” Mr Albanese told his biographer, journalist Karen Middleton.

Albanese has been accused of being unable to keep his views straight. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gaye Gerard

Mr Albanese also said that he agreed with former prime minister John Howard’s belief that economic reform was always a race where you never reach the finish line.

“I agree, it’s also a race – a race for improvement,” Mr Albanese said Wednesday, despite as a Labor backbencher saying of Mr Howard, “In the pantheon of chinless blue bloods and suburban accountants that makes up the Australian Liberal Party, this bloke is truly one out of the box.”

Senator Jane Hume, Minister for Women’s Economic Security, said, “Each-way Albo can’t even keep his own views straight.

“A staunch lefty who once bragged in about being in parliament to ‘fight Tories’ now claims to follow in Howard’s footsteps.

“It’s laughable, and it shows contempt for the electorate,” she said.