Albanese is in a fight with News Corp – he might as well start throwing punches

Anthony Albanese seemed to put his finger on something when he diagnosed a certain “conflict fatigue” in the electorate after Labor’s shock defeat to Scott Morrison in the 2019 federal election.

He has tried to avoid picking fights since he took over the Labor leadership and crept into power using a small target strategy in 2022.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attended the opening of the queer museum QTopia in Sydney in February. The museum is a pet project of Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch.Credit: Dean Sewell

And there is one fight that Albanese really hoped to avoid. That’s a fight with the 800-pound gorilla of Australian politics – News Corporation – which has become Labor’s natural enemy in the past decade, backing the Coalition in almost every state or federal election since 2007.

The PM has tried to appease – if not please – News Corp since taking office. Unlike his predecessor Bill Shorten, Albanese has made himself available to News journalists and by a rough tally has appeared on Sky News daytime more often than he has granted interviews to any other Canberra bureau. That’s been noticed at News Corp.

Under pressure from News, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has eschewed a proposed ban on gambling advertising, dropped a bill to combat mis- and disinformation, and legislated the Murdoch tabloids’ proposal to somehow ban kids from social media.

The PM has visited News Corp headquarters at Holt Street on multiple occasions since 2022 – and was schmoozing editors there only a few weeks ago in an unreported visit, multiple sources say. I understand he has regular dialogue with the editors of all the major News Corp mastheads.

Albanese has also gone out of his way to meet privately with News Corp executive chairman Lachlan Murdoch, who took over after founder Rupert retired last year, and attended functions near and dear to the successor’s heart. The PM was there for the opening of queer museum QTopia in February – part-funded by the Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch Foundation.

He joined in the celebration of The Australian’s 60th anniversary in July, and wrote an essay for the occasion. Last week he turned up early for an amicable private chat with 93-year-old Rupert – visiting Sydney for the first time since 2018 – at Lachlan and Sarah’s annual Christmas party at their Bellevue Hill mansion, Le Manoir.

Too bad. According to a report in this masthead on Tuesday, the PM warned cabinet colleagues at a meeting on Monday that the government is under determined attack from News Corp’s Australian media outlets, which were working to elect Peter Dutton.

According to four cabinet ministers who leaked news of the warning, the PM “said News Corp and the opposition were now working hand in glove and that this was an embedded part of the political dynamic that we all needed to deal with”.

Albanese was immediately lampooned on Sky News after dark, with host James Macpherson joking last night about those “evil journalists” at News Corp who had it in for the PM, and pondering whether the “slow downward polling trend is all because of the tactics of the conservative press”.

“I’m not sure if Anthony Albanese should be more worried about News Corp, or about his cabinet members leaking what he is saying to them in private meetings,” Macpherson said.

A year ago, even through the divisive Voice referendum, there was a certain warmth and spirit of co-operation between News Corp and the Albanese government.

But Lachlan Murdoch has certainly made his presence felt since he took over as executive chair at News Corp in September 2023. And there is perhaps no issue on which he has been more outspoken and more highly engaged in Australia than the need to condemn antisemitism. He spoke passionately about it at News Corp’s journalism awards last November, saying there was “no room for equivocation”, and in January he visited Israel and met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. To a man and woman, Murdoch’s employees have got the message loud and clear.

Whatever one thinks of Netanyahu’s conduct of the devastating retaliatory campaign in Gaza since the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7, it is inarguable that there should be zero tolerance of antisemitism here in Australia. Whether you call Israel-Gaza a just war, or by now call it a genocide, there seems no doubt that the conflict is fuelling a rise in antisemitism here, which must be combated urgently. It is appalling to see the firebombing of a synagogue in Melbourne – now being treated as a terrorist attack – and there were more frightening incidents overnight with a car torched and houses vandalised in Woollahra in Sydney’s inner east.

This is where the PM, despite his protestations, has put a foot wrong. Never mind the geopolitics … why did the PM take four whole days to visit the Adass Israel synagogue in Ripponlea? OK, he was in Perth but The Australian’s front page showing Albanese playing tennis the day after the attack was a classic political “gotcha” – this masthead ran that story too. Could he or one of his well-paid flacks not have seen that coming?

From what I can tell, there is not yet an all-out war on the Albanese government by News Corp, unlike in 2013 when The Daily Telegraph rounded on Kevin Rudd with its famous “KICK THIS MOB OUT” headline, or in 2022 when the Herald Sun decried “TOXIC DAN” in a campaign against then-Victorian premier Daniel Andrews’ government (he won by a landslide).

But the days of The Daily Telegraph’s “Save Our Albo” campaign, when Albanese was in a death-struggle with the Greens in Grayndler in 2016, are long gone.

The PM is in a fight whether he likes it or not. News Corp is powerful, but not as powerful as it used to be. Albanese might as well start punching – maybe even land a few.

Paddy Manning is author of The Successor: The High-Stakes Life of Lachlan Murdoch (Black Inc, 2022) and reporter on the ABC’s Background Briefing podcast, “Murdoch’s Endgame”.

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