Anthony Albanese’s Qantas upgrade controversy reveals big problem with PM’s biggest strength | Samantha Maiden

Maybe politics isn’t the PM’s strong suit after all. It’s not like this is Canberra’s only travel scandal, writes Samantha Maiden.

The conventional wisdom about Anthony Albanese over the years has often settled on the notion that he was never a public policy genius, but he is good at politics.

Remember, this is the bloke that was Australia’s longest serving transport minister, preferring to cut ribbons for new roads and wander around in hangars with then Qantas CEO Alan Joyce rather than take on a new portfolio, even when he was briefly deputy prime minister under Kevin Rudd’s second coming.

But the Prime Minister’s week from hell, courtesy of the Qantas flight upgrade furore, hints at a harsher assessment.

It’s an assessment that first came into view during his less than stellar performance on the 2022 campaign trail.

He was prone to stumbling over silly gotcha questions about interest rates posed by young reporters who were reading from their mobile phones while trying to memorise their bosses’ questions.

He was not good at campaigning and it’s an open question after this week if he is really that much good at politics.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visiting Festa in Sydney. Picture: NewsWire / Simon Bullard.

Former Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

What he has been the recipient of is extraordinary good luck, which granted him the Labor leadership after Bill Shorten misguidedly wanted it straight after the 2013 election.

Mr Albanese’s predecessor would have been wiser to wait but he wasn’t and the rest is history.

The Tortoise beat the Hare.

That put Anthony Albanese in the box seat to win the 2022 election after voters wanted Scott Morrison put in the bin after Hawaii and other adventures.

And now here we are, watching in real time as his replacement ties himself up in knots trying to explain why there’s nothing to see here with this Qantas story, just as Scott Morrison said there was nothing to see here about his Hawaii holiday while bushfires raged.

It’s hard not to feel a twinge of sympathy for the Prime Minister, who has become so desperately out of touch with the real world after nearly 30 years in politics that he thinks this is all normal.

He really doesn’t seem to have a clue.

Imagine for a moment if Treasurer Jim Chalmers was routinely offered membership of a secret bank lounge where he could hang out with all the other politicians and their wives drinking French champagne and score interest rate deductions and other freebies and it was all organised by the big banks’ government relations lobbyist.

Now imagine he said that was all very nice, very demure, and not a problem at all because everyone is doing it so it’s fine.

He would be rightly laughed out of town. People would lose their collective minds.

And yet Mr Albanese’s brain has become so warped and mangled by spending half his life catching planes to Canberra on the taxpayer dime that he seriously thinks getting freebie upgrades for private holidays from Qantas from economy to business is normal and fine because he declared it.

He wants to split hairs about whether he rang the CEO directly, or if there’s a hotline his staff called, or whether he was just offered it and how is he to say no?

For heaven’s sake, he was the transport minister. Does he lack even the most basic of insight to see why this pisses people off?

It’s clear enough the Prime Minister doesn’t think he was influenced by all this influence peddling in any way.

And maybe he wasn’t. But that’s not the point.

The point is that it stinks to high heaven and the fact the Prime Minister can’t smell the proverbial being metaphorically left in large piles all around the Lodge is a serious concern.

Does he need to see a nose doctor?

Former Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop. Picture: Monique Harmer

Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

And gosh, Tony Burke is awfully quiet right now. Remember what happened to Tony?

Four years ago he repaid $8600 of taxpayer money he spent flying his family to Uluru under “family reunion” travel for a holiday in 2012, eight years after the flights were booked and several years after questions were raised.

In theory, family reunion travel was meant to be about flying your missus or mister to Canberra but somehow it was worked out you could “reunite’ anywhere and so bugger it, he did it in Uluru after a work trip. Totally within the rules.

The issue first blew up when Labor pursued then Speaker Bronwyn Bishop over her $5000 Geelong helicopter flight to attend a Liberal Party fundraiser.

Back then the Liberals were whispering all the same lines that Albanese’s mates like Queensland’s Murray Watt have been whispering this week, which is something along the lines of “Sssh Be careful, Be careful, because we are all doing it and you will be in trouble too.”

And so Tony Burke led the attacks on Bronwyn Bishop and then the Liberals went to the disclosures chum bucket and found out he had used family reunion travel to do the Uluru trip.

It is said that he never claimed family reunion travel again.

Not because he wasn’t allowed to but because he didn’t want to put his family or himself through the drama again.

“After further reflection he decided the costs associated with his family’s travel did not meet community expectations so he repaid it,” a spokesman said

In other words, he learned his lesson.

But right now, the Prime Minister hasn’t learned his lesson. He says anyone mentioning the perks for his fiancee and son are attacking his family.

But life has a way of teaching us the lessons we would rather not learn the hard way.

And one way or the other the Prime Minister is about to work that out.

Originally published as Anthony Albanese’s Qantas upgrade controversy reveals big problem with PM’s biggest strength | Samantha Maiden