Anthony Albanese rewrites personal history to help political prospects

Anthony Albanese has chosen the Labor way, the cold and legal way, to obliterate his long-lost father from his official life so his own political journey will have one fewer hurdle, one less challenge, Piers Akerman writes.

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If only Carlo Albanese could speak. Carlo is the Italian father who Anthony Albanese, Labor’s sole contender for leader, was told had died in a car accident when he was a baby but who was subsequently found, embraced, and now has passed — and whose paternity the ALP leadership aspirant is now refusing to acknowledge.

What an insight into character.

We were informed by Anthony ­Albanese that his mother Maryanne Ellery met the handsome steward Carlo aboard the Sitmar Lines cruise ship Fairsky and commenced a brief romance which resulted in Ms Ellery’s pregnancy and Anthony’s birth.

Labor leader contender and member for Grayndler, Anthony Albanese. Picture: AAP/Dean Lewins

There was no doubt in his mother’s mind as to his parentage. His father was Carlo. She gave her son his surname and because she never saw her lover again, she invented a cover story that would remain unchallenged for more than a dozen years.

The radical leftist was to tell Leigh Sales of the ABC’s 7.30 Report in August 2016: “What I was told was that (my mother) travelled overseas, met my father, married him overseas, returned to Australia and that he died in a car accident.”

But Maryanne did tell him the truth over a traumatic dinner when he was a teenager.

She said she’d met his father overseas, fallen pregnant with young ­Anthony, but that he had said he was betrothed to someone from the town in Italy where he was from. She said he might still be alive.

“I think that whole guilt associated with having a child out of wedlock in 1963 as a young Catholic woman was a big deal and, hence, the extent to which she had gone to in terms of adopting my father’s name, she wore an engagement and a wedding ring, she — the whole family just believed this story.”

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According to Mr Albanese his sense of obligation to his mother prevented him from exploring details of his father until after her 2002 death.

Through friends in the shipping industry he was able to find the records of the now defunct Sitmar Line and, with the assistance of former Liberal senator Amanda Vanstone, then Australian Ambassador to Italy, they found Carlo in Barletta and delicately arranged a meeting.

“I was very emotional. It was a big deal, it was a big moment in my life,” Mr Albanese recalled for the ABC.

Carlo Albanese arrived at the prearranged meeting, walked in and opened his arms to the son he had never met, embracing him.

“It was quite — it was incredibly generous of him, I think, and it was a very poignant moment. He immediately said that, yes, he knew my mother and understood the circumstances … I felt a connection to them and I felt like a gap had been filled, the fact that there was no doubt either or no questioning was a great sense of relief.”

Columnist Piers Akerman.

But Mr Albanese has not recognised the man he emotionally embraced as his father on the Parliamentary Citizenship Register.

As Carlo’s name did not appear on his birth certificate, Labor’s leading light has used the lawyerly excuse that he has no legal connection with the Italian who he was delighted to believe was his father before the whole Pandora’s box of questionable citizenships arose to challenge parliamentarians under Section 44 of the Constitution.

The Italian consulate in Sydney says Italian citizenship can be acquired by descent at the time of a person’s birth, as long as one parent is an Italian citizen and that claims for Italian citizenship must also be supported by documentary evidence, including the applicant’s birth certificate.

This, presumably, is the basis for Mr Albanese’s contention that he is not a citizen of another nation.

Many Australians would think that Mr Albanese was fortunate to have tracked his father down across 50 years and 40,000km and delighted in his joy.

But he has chosen the Labor way, the cold and legal way, to obliterate this man from his official life so his own political journey will have one fewer hurdle, one less challenge.

As the Romans said: “Contra factum non valet argumentum,” or “No argument can withstand the facts,” and Anthony Albanese is denying the facts he once so warmly embraced, ignoring a father who welcomed him not once, but repeatedly as he returned to see the old man several times before he succumbed to cancer in January 2014.

Ignoring your father isn’t straight. It hardly meets the inclusive test, the religious won’t like it and you can forget the pub test. This may well not be a legal issue or a constitutional issue but it is a moral issue.