Joe Hildebrand reveals the moment he realised Anthony Albanese would become PM

Anthony Albanese edges closer to becoming Australia’s next Prime Minister. And there was one moment that proved why he would win.

In March, I sat down for an interview with Anthony Albanese.

We talked about everything from China to childcare and at one point I asked him if Labor had ditched woke politics and was determined to be the party of mainstream Australia.

His reply could not have been more emphatic.

“Labor is the party of mainstream Australia and the values of mainstream Australia are that we look after each other and that we aspire to a better life for future generations,” he said.

“Labor’s historic task is to move more people into the middle-class, to appeal to small business and if we don’t do that Labor won’t be successful.”

Nothing particularly controversial about that, you might think. Nor would most people think there was anything controversial about his response in a more lighthearted rapid-fire round of questions when asked if men could have babies.

“No,” he replied.

The resulting piece ran on page one of The Daily Telegraph under the apparently triggering headline “I am not woke” as well as the front page of various other mastheads.

Apparently this was enough to set off a firestorm of breathless outrage on Twitter and whatever other online platform where good hot-takes can be found.

The woke left turned on Albo with a ferocity and viciousness that would have left Genghis Khan reaching for his pronouns guide.

And it was then that I knew he had won the election.

Australian Labor Leader Anthony Albanese addresses to the media during a visit to a Goodstart Early Learning Centre in West Ryde. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

It is a popular trope among hard leftists that you judge somebody by the company they keep.

Thus the past idiocy – hopefully an aberration – of the ALP’s social media strategy trying to shame Scott Morrison for shaking hands with Donald Trump.

The notion that any Australian Prime Minister would refuse to shake hands with a US President is so outrageously stupid and dangerous that one can only hope that whoever was working the Twitter account that day was a 13-year-old Trotskyite with ADHD.

Incidentally, this guilt-by-association condemnation is also the logic of terrorists, who believe that whole nations or races or religions are accountable for the sins of any among their number. An obvious example is the ranting of ISIS and the like that some Westerners bombed our country therefore the death of any Westerner can be justified.

Thus all extremist thinking is the same and all equally insane. A far more accurate measure is to judge a man by the quality of his enemies.

And it is by this measure that Albo’s star fairly soared as he stood assaulted by various voices, including an article on the Pedestrian.tv website that declared: “Anthony Albanese’s ‘Not Woke’ Cover Wasn’t Just Cringe, It Was Also Transphobic”.

For proof, the article included a tweet that said: “Albanese proud to deny the existence of trans people”.

Having been there for the entire conversation I can unequivocally confirm he did no such thing. I’d even swear it on a stack of bibles but I suspect that would only make matters worse.

As usual whatever is true on social media is an inverse barometer of whatever is true in the real world. Twitter is gaslighting the globe.

Instead, Albanese was at pains to stress that all people needed to be respected and supported. He uttered not a single offensive thing, nor anything less than an expression of goodwill for all Australians.

Anthony Albanese after delivering a speech at the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation in Melbourne, Victoria on day 3 of the federal election campaign. Picture: Toby Zerna

But of course that didn’t stop the outrage because the very core of woke politics is an obsession with oppression. To search for offence where there is none and to claim victimhood from sandstone university campuses at the hands of suburban battlers.

Just as tellingly Albanese also got attacked by the right, most notably from One Nation’s Mark Latham who claimed that Albo’s espousal of mainstream values was a dramatic departure from his left-wing ideals of decades ago.

You’d think that if anyone in Australian politics might sympathise with damascene conversions it would be Mark himself, but here we are.

Even so, his condemnation is every bit as helpful to Albo as the condemnation from the lunar left.

John Howard once observed that if you were copping criticism from both sides it meant you’d got your position right, and he won four elections – ironically his last being against Latham when he was on the other side.

In perfect illustration of this, a news.com.au report on the criticism from the left ran alongside a video of Latham’s criticism from the right. The 822 comments that followed were virtually unanimously supportive of Albanese’s position – a miracle in any online comments section.

Picture: Toby Zerna

A typical response: “Well done Albo. You have gone up in my expectation.” Another: “I like this Albanese guy.” Another: “Politician finally speaks the truth and he cops a backlash because of it.” Yet another: “Wow, a politician speaking the truth for once.”

Moreover it is turning support towards him: “Thanks for not going woke, Albo.” And: “Never ever thought I would back Albo on anything … but here it is.” And: “What the heck I love Albo now.” And the clincher: “Makes me even more inclined to vote for him.”

You get the drift.

By cutting loose the lunatics on the left, Albo is cleaning up like a Dyson V12 on a fistful of bogan dust.

And given his victory – having studiously junked the leftist wishlist of Labor’s previous policy platform – it is ‘as much a repudiation of woke and lunar left as it is of the Morrison government.

Or as commenter Jason put it more sublimely and succinctly: “The problem is not that Labor are inherently bad, it’s that they’re beholden to far-left loonies that make them much worse than they otherwise would be.”

God-willing those dark days are finally over.