Brave faces, big smiles, long hours: Who’d be a campaign wife?

In 2001, Kirilly Brumby was at Brisbane’s Port Office Hotel when she saw a man lumbering towards her with a vodka Red Bull in his hand.

His name was Peter Dutton. They’d been set up by friends, so she had been apprised of his vital stats: about 30 years old, divorced (his first marriage lasted six months – his then wife picked him up from work one day and told him she no longer loved him), an ex-Queensland cop who was hoping to enter federal parliament as the newly preselected Liberal candidate for Dickson.

There was one thing she might not have known then, but would soon find out: his ex-fiancee was pregnant with his first child, daughter Rebecca.

Kirilly Dutton with baby Harry, sitting next to Jeanette Howard during the 2004 campaign for Dickson. Kirilly had met Peter Dutton in 2001, the year he won the seat and entered parliament. Credit: Andy Zakeli

Brumby was unfazed. The drink went well. Dutton was attracted to “her looks, to start with”, he told 60 Minutes, but increasingly to her equanimity. “[She is] completely composed and nothing rattles her, and is just stoic and supportive.” Dutton won his seat, Kirilly embraced Rebecca as one of her own, and they married in 2003.

Leaders’ partners are not public figures. Little is formally required of them, beyond being a companion at state engagements. Neither Kirilly nor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’ fiancee, Jodie Haydon, have been seen much on the campaign trail – a BBQ here, a quick kiss there – and neither has yet been recruited to soften their spouse’s blokey image, as Jenny Morrison was for her husband, Scott, although both accompanied their partners for the sombre work of Anzac Day ceremonies on Friday.

But the partners our politicians choose, the relationships they have and the way they talk about them give us an insight into the leaders themselves.

As a result of that fateful drink, Kirilly Dutton has spent more than 20 years in the role of political spouse. It’s a tough gig; spouses keep the family running, while their politician partner – who’s often in Canberra, or soothing constituents or dealing with party drama – becomes a guest star in the family’s life.

Kirilly came with Peter Dutton to a Sky event at a Brisbane pub at the start of the campaign. Credit: James Brickwood

She once compared it to being a soldier’s wife. “You can’t ring them in Afghanistan and ask them what they’re doing because they can’t answer you,” she told the Courier Mail. “It’s not like you sit around and wait for the other person to get home.”

She has juggled raising three children (she and Dutton had two boys), managing the family’s property on Brisbane’s semi-rural north-west fringe and running two childcare centres. Dutton talks about an “instinctive understanding of each other,” and their similar approach to parenting. While he is away, “the kids have been raised in exactly the same way as I would have wanted them raised if I’d been there,” he told 60 Minutes.

“She’s never complained about that and the sacrifice she’s had to make in her own career.”

Dutton’s job has led to frightening moments for his family. Kirilly has had death threats; her sons have too. Once, they had plainclothes federal officers at their school. Dutton told his embarrassed boys that no-one would notice. “One of them said, ‘Dad, they’re the only people walking around with bum bags, in the school, everyone knows who they are’,” he said.

That pressure led to Kirilly’s famous intervention, in 2019, to address the public perception of then-home affairs minister Dutton as a bloodless enforcer. “He is a really good man. He is a really good father and he’s not a monster,” she told the Courier Mail. The end of the quote was briefly used as an attack post by Victoria’s ALP before Albanese intervened.

In her rare interviews, Kirilly has taken issue with the “perception out there that he’s fairly serious and hard-line,” she once told the Courier Mail; actually, she said, he loves a joke, he grows rose bushes, and he would secretly love to be a cattle farmer. “He’s a great mate, he’s a good son, and he’s an excellent dad,” she told 60 Minutes.

She declined an interview request for this story.

Like Dutton, Albanese knows the pressure of juggling marriage and parenting with politics. He spent 30 years in a relationship with fellow Labor politician and former NSW deputy premier Carmel Tebbutt – more than 20 of them as member for Grayndler - and they have one now-adult son, Nathan. But by the time he became opposition leader in May 2019, he was a single man.

His experience would resonate with many Australians. Albanese announced his split with Tebbutt in January 2019, just after Nathan finished his HSC, saying he was deeply saddened and there were no third parties involved. “It wasn’t my decision, and I found it difficult to understand,” he later said of the break-up. “I thought Carmel would be my life partner and that wasn’t the case.”

Haydon, an earthy daughter of teachers from the Central Coast in her early 40s, entered his life later that year. He was addressing a Melbourne union conference in late 2019 and asked South Sydney supporters to identify themselves. Haydon, who worked for a union super fund, shouted “up the Rabbitohs!” , prompting Albanese to introduce himself.

She then messaged him directly on X (formerly Twitter) to praise his policies, and he asked about her position on craft beer before inviting Haydon for a drink at Young Henrys brewery in Newtown. “To all the single independent ladies out there,” she later said in a 60 Minutes interview, “why can’t we make the first move?”

Haydon might have bypassed the years of absences and electoral ups and downs experienced by Kirilly Dutton, but she did have to conduct her courtship under the glare of the national media.

COVID lockdowns gave the couple cover to get to know each other (in mid-2020, they were caught kissing at Woolloomooloo Wharf). In a moment that recalls the denouement of Anne of Green Gables, Albanese’s injury in a car accident was a turning point for Haydon. “[I] knew then the depth of my feelings towards him,” she told the Australian Women’s Weekly.

When Albanese became prime minister in May 2022, Haydon became the prime ministerial spouse. She moved with him to The Lodge, with its staff and sprawling grounds, and travelled with him to a run of significant events; they walked through Westminister Abbey at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, were back again six months later for King Charles’ coronation, and stayed in the official White House guest residence while visiting Joe and Jill Biden.

Haydon, who works in financial services, has also been careful to keep space within the maelstrom for herself. “I have my own professional path, and my own identity and purpose,” she told The Weekly. “I continue to work full-time and my employer has been very supportive. When I am at work, I’m simply Jodie, not the prime minister’s partner.”

The happy couple, who got engaged on Valentine’s Day, are yet to lock in a date for their nuptials.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Albanese proposed to Haydon on Valentine’s Day, 2024, with a ring he designed himself. He followed the engagement ring with a more controversial purchase – a $4.3 million clifftop home in Copacabana on the Central Coast, with an eye to the couple’s post-politics life. Critics – including within Labor – thought it was a bad look during a cost-of-living crisis.

“Jodie and I are getting married,” Albanese told 60 Minutes. “What you don’t do is move into the family home where Carmel and I raised Nathan together as a family.”

The couple has not revealed the wedding plans, other than to say it will not be before the May 3 election. If he wins, Albanese will be the first Australian prime minister to wed in office (although he won’t be able to wed in a Catholic Church, due to his divorce). “It will be small, intimate,” Jodie told The Weekly. Probably a spring wedding. “Possibly outdoors, in the second half of this year, with our family and loved ones … And you can be sure [their dog] Toto will make an appearance.”

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