Anthony Albanese’s biggest wake-up call

IT’S a close call, but hard grafter Anthony Albanese says there’s one job that definitely qualifies as his worst. And it’s just about as unglamorous as it gets.

ANTHONY Albanese was a working class, public housing kid who was used to scrapping it out in what were then Sydney’s rough inner-city streets.

But when the Shadow Infrastructure Minister encountered a different breed of people at university, it brought about an important change in him.

“I’d never met anyone from the North Shore before,” he told news.com.au of the massive metaphorical distance between him and the city’s most exclusive suburbs, as we sat down this week in his spacious office in his Grayndler electorate. “I played rugby league ... rugby league or rugby union was a class division.

“I was the first person in my family to finish school, let alone go to university.”

Instead of fighting his privileged new peers, he had a wake-up call, learning the value of the old saying: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

While the former Deputy Prime Minister has become a poster boy for high flyers from working class backgrounds, he never had a chip on his shoulder about his roots. Despite finding it “strange” when other students at Sydney University attached their old school ties to beer mugs, he embraced his education in how the other half thinks.

Albo, far left, during a protest at Sydney University, where he learnt how to play the game to succeed.

In one “classic example”, a fellow student’s connection to an orthopaedic surgeon led to the appointment that helped his mother, Maryanne, regain the use of her hands and feet after being crippled by severe rheumatoid arthritis.

“It taught me a lot about life,” he says. “That, I think, was a pretty critical period because if that hadn’t have happened, I might not have been able to move out of home as well. She was much more independent.”

His newfound broader horizons may explain a lot about the affable minister with a heart of steel — his unlikely friendship with the much maligned Christopher Pyne, his realistic attitude to getting things done and his unflinching work ethic.

“Christopher likes a show but I think we have in common a joy for life,” says the husband and father of one, who calls the Minister for Defence “a positive person.”

“Christopher isn’t very well liked by Labor people, I don’t think, and sometimes people will question, say I can’t see how you can possibly get on with, but I think he is a likeable person.”

Would they go to the pub together? “I can’t imagine Christopher in a pub. Maybe a wine bar. I’ve had a drink in his office, he’s had a drink in my office.

“When you see each other, as we do sometimes do, before The Today Show, it’s very hard to be cross and ideological at 10 to six in the morning.

“I’m pragmatic. I want to make a difference, not just make a noise.”

One avid reader is assured — Albanese’s pal Christopher Pyne. Picture Gary Ramage

The Shadow Infrastructure Minister at his book launch at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture Gary Ramage

During those formative university years, Albanese was at one stage juggling a full-time job, part-time jobs and studying economics full-time. He had a busy social life watching indie bands at city hotels and was growing ever more deeply involved in politics, winning key roles by narrow margins so frequently that his battler mentality was cemented.

He started full-time at the Commonwealth Bank just weeks after finishing his HSC, then he began working Thursday nights and Saturday mornings stacking shelves at Grace Bros department store, and finally he took by far his best-paid job at Pancakes on the Rocks, where he earned triple time for the Saturday night 11pm to 7am shift. “Something had to give,” says the 53-year-old.

His worst job was “hosing pigeon droppings”from a warehouse wall for $50 a day, using industrial strength hoses “that just all rained down on us all this crap”.

Yes, he agrees, there’s still crap raining down of him, just “of a different sort.” And more importantly, he loves it.

“Being the Leader of the House from 2010 to 2014 and keeping together the minority government, where we had 70 votes on the floor of the House out of 150, that was tough. It was enjoyable, it was fascinating, it was exhilarating, but it was tough.

The former Deputy Prime Minister with the two most important women in his life, mother Maryanne and wife Carmel Tebbutt, the first woman to hold the position of Deputy Premier of NSW.

“I think the Government showed last week with 76 members of the House of Representatives, it lost control of the House after three days. We kept control of the House every minute of every day for three years.”

Albanese has spent the past week launching his book, Albanese: Telling it Straight, sharing his emotional personal story of finding his Italian father as an adult, after he was brought up alone by a single Catholic mother who pretended to be a widow.

That experience of growing up in a “two-person family” has influenced his view on the plebiscite. “There being a public debate and people voting in judgment about people’s families is, I think, of concern, can be very hurtfulto those families,” he says, adding that families are complex.

Yet despite recounting his late mother’s dream he would one day be Prime Minister in his book, and being married to Carmel Tebbutt, who was the first female Deputy Premier of NSW, he insists he won’t make another power play. “My view isyou should just do the job that you have to the best of your capacity at any time and that’s my sole objective. The team, I think, is more important than any individual.

“I was disappointed that we’re not in Government. I wanted to be a minister in a Labor government again because it’s only on the government benches that you can make a big difference.”

Discussing his last campaign, where he was threatened by the Greens, he added: “I’m in the Labor Party because I want to be in a party of government, not a party that protests government decisions after they’ve been made. I want to make those decisions.”

He believes the current government’s fatal flaw is that many in it are “complacent” and think they have a right to be in charge, just like some of the people he met so long ago at Sydney University.

“Too many of them have come from a born to rule mentality and they think government’s easy — it’s not.

“I had to fight for things, and I think if you’re about change then it’s more likely that you’ll have to fight for it than if you’re about the status quo.”