In this Seinfeld election, Anthony Albanese is our own George Costanza
We thought this was a Seinfeld election about nothing, but it turns out to be more of a spin-off in which the PM is playing the role of truth challenged George Costanza, writes James Morrow.
When Election 2025 kicked off, the running gag was that this was a Seinfeld election – that is, a poll about nothing.
With just a few days left until it’s all over, it turns out that wasn’t quite true.
Instead this campaign has been more of a Seinfeld spinoff centred around Jerry’s hapless, truth challenged pal George Costanza who went down in history for his immortal line, “it’s not a lie if you believe it.”
No prizes for guessing who’s been playing the role of George, but let’s just say he lives in the Lodge with a fluffy white pooch called Toto.
The problem for Australia of course is that Anthony Albanese, our own homegrown Costanza, is in a position to cause a lot more damage than a feckless sitcom character.
A catalogue of the various half-truths, dissembling, and outright lies told by Albanese over the past three years would fill this newspaper (even George would have been impressed by his ability to explain away that missing $275).
But what is especially concerning given that Albanese appears a lot more capable of holding down a public service job than our mate Costanza and may even get another three years is that, yes, he actually believes it.
And all jokes aside, that’s a real danger to Australia.
On Monday night’s 7:30, Albanese was challenged over his government’s promiscuous use of “off-budget” spending measures.
This is a bit of accounting trickery that allows the government to hide billions of dollars in various investments and slush funds without the funds counting against the overall deficit because the idea is they might make a profit one day.
The only problem is, the ratings agencies have gotten wise to the trick and said that if Labor keeps it up we might lose our AAA credit, making it that much harder to service the commonwealth’s lazy trillion dollar debt.
Albanese’s response? Pure George.
First, he tried to explain it away: “off-budget measures are funds such as the National Reconstruction Fund, which invest but produce a return,” he said.
“It can only be off-budget if essentially it’s going to produce a profit for the government.”
To her great credit, the ABC’s Sarah Ferguson wasn’t letting it go.
“It includes the Whyalla Steelworks and the NBN. These aren’t profit generating yet, are they?” she hit back.
“But they will be,” replied Albo.
Ferguson, again: “What about student debt? How does that generate a return when you’ve just taken such a large chunk off it?”
“Well, that’s a benefit. That’s about intergenerational equity, Sarah.”
Hey, if Labor’s C-suite mates can scoop subsidies out of various off-books future funds and lay their risks back off on the government, why shouldn’t the kids be allowed to wet their beaks?
Ferguson wasn’t done, and this was where things got really weird.
“All of this adds up to what Standard and Poor’s are saying is that there’s too much spending and it’s putting Australia’s AAA credit rating at risk,” she said.
And here an increasingly frustrated Albanese said with a straight face, “Well, there’s no suggestion, frankly – the AAA credit rating is there,” before launching off on another rant about Peter Dutton.
Except that it might not be for long.
Echoing last week’s routine where he tried to dance his way out of being caught flat footed over Russia’s efforts to station long range bombers in Indonesia, Albanese just created his own reality.
The good rating is there, but as a pair of Standard & Poor’s analysts wrote Monday, “The ‘AAA’ rating on Australia may be at risk if election promises result in larger, structural deficits, and debt and interest expenses rising more than we expect.”
Or to put it another way, he “believed it.”
Again, Albanese’s habit of creating his own reality would be funny if this were a sitcom and not a contest to lead a large, strategically important, and resource rich continent a long way from its friends.
We’ve seen this pattern time and again.
Most famously there was the $275 drop in power bills which he glossed over by picking our own pockets to subsidise price rises while at the same time walking away from his own Reputex modelling that led him to make the promise.
And the whole business with Russia and Indonesia being blamed on the Coalition.
But there are plenty of other examples, from whether or not his team looked at negative gearing changes to what he knew about bad behaviour in the CFMEU to the controversy over protecting Qantas from Qatar Airways (remember that one?)
The great joke of Seinfeld was that George was a failure in life because of his dissembling behaviour.
The great danger for Australia is re-electing our own George to lead us, with similar results.
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Originally published as In this Seinfeld election, Anthony Albanese is our own George Costanza
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