Harried Anthony Albanese pitches to business

Anthony Albanese has offered a ‘constructive’ approach to business if he becomes prime minister as he fights off issues surrounding his office.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese with Tanya Plibersek, left. Picture: Monique Harmer

Anthony Albanese has offered to adopt a “constructive” approach to business if he becomes prime minister as he fights off damaging issues surrounding his office following the resignation of his deputy chief of staff and growing caucus dissatisfaction.

The nation would go “nowhere” without business, the Opposition Leader said on Wednesday, as he talked up the ­potential for a new era of co-­operation during the COVID-19 ­recovery aimed at boosting jobs.

“During the pandemic we have acted constructively,” Mr Albanese said in an address to the Labor business exchange program. We have stuck to the fundamental truth that is all too often forgotten: that the job of an opposition is not merely to oppose. Just as we have been constructive with the government, we want to be as constructive with business. Australians want us to work together to find the best way forward.”

Mr Albanese said Labor was “pro-aspiration”, “pro-entrepreneurship”, “pro-wealth creation” and “pro-growth”. He said business, workers and unions had to work better together as part of a “reset” to help drive the economic recovery.

Mr Albanese’s deputy chief of staff, Sabina Husic, resigned on Tuesday after an anonymous dirt file circulated online and was shared among Labor MPs.

Ms Husic said the document, which claimed there was a “destructive culture of bullying” in the office, was “malicious, false, fake and defamatory”. She quit declaring she no longer felt safe in her work environment.

Other staffers in Mr Albanese’s office to have left in the past year include media advisers Annie Williams, Fiona Sugden and Nikita Prasad.

Opposition education spokes­woman Tanya Plibersek, a potential future leader, urged her colleagues against a “self-­indulgent” focus on its internals.

“I saw that Sabina Husic has said she is moving on, and I wish her all the very best. She is a very experienced, very hardworking person, and I wish her all the best,” Ms Plibersek said.

With leadership rumblings gaining traction in caucus, former Labor leader Bill Shorten ­labelled Ms Plibersek a “great person” and declared he had a “very high opinion” of her.

Mr Shorten urged her to run for leader after he lost the 2019 election. But he added there was “no vacancy” and backed Mr Albanese to remain leader.

“Albo is doing a good job,” he said. “What we have got to not do is take people for granted.”

He neither endorsed nor criticised Joel Fitzgibbon’s call for Mark Butler to be removed from the climate change and energy portfolio, declaring it was a matter for Mr Albanese.

Mr Butler was the architect of the party’s uncosted 45 per cent emissions reduction target, which hurt Mr Shorten during the last election campaign.

“Politics should be a team environment. I was the captain of the team, so, as I said on election night, I took responsibility for the loss,” Mr Shorten said.

Mr Fitzgibbon, who has been destabilising Mr Albanese’s leadership since he quit the frontbench last week, said Labor was “too relaxed about losing”.