Albanounceables galore: Nothing excites the PM like telling you he’s spending your money

Nick Carter I 11 January 2025 I Spectator Australia

Last June, while Nato leaders and partners gathered in New York to discuss the threat from Russia and China, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese went to Leichhardt Oval to make what he described as ‘a very exciting announcement’.

The federal government had committed $20 million to upgrade facilities at the ‘iconic venue’, which sits in Albanese’s inner-western Sydney electorate.

Announceables, as they are known in the trade, are a staple of prime ministerial press conferences. In earlier, less sophisticated times, prime ministers often arrived with an unfeasibly large cardboard cheque to hand to the lucky recipient of public funds.

In the era of electronic banking, however, prime ministers have turned to new theatrical props to gain attention. Albanese’s favourite is the adjective ‘exciting’.

The PM could barely contain his exuberance when he flew to Cairns in September for ‘a really exciting announcement’. Matt Smith, a former captain of the Cairns Taipans basketball team and union organiser, would represent Labor in the seat of Leichhardt at the next election.

‘I am just stunned and so stoked that Matty has agreed to be the Labor candidate,’said Albanese.

Smith may be new to federal politics, but he had learned his lines. ‘It is an exciting day, it’s a really great day and I’m pumped,’ he said. ‘This part is awesome.’

Exciting days and awesome announcements are frequently coupled with unsolicited prime ministerial calls to local radio stations, hard hats, and shiny shovels.

Hosts like 4CA’s Murray Jones who’ve been in the game for a while, are familiar with the protocol.

‘G’day Albo, how are you today,’ he greeted his caller in September. ‘It looks like there might be sod turning today.’

‘That’s right,’ the PM replied, ‘and that’s why this is such an exciting project.’ He outlined the details: 245 social, 223 affordable and 22 specialist disability apartments the government had agreed to fund. ‘I wanted to come by Cairns because I really wanted to show how significant this project was and how exciting it was.’

An anthropological study of exciting announcements would probably conclude that they have a similar semiotic function to the ceremonial presentation of outsized cheques. Both serve as signifiers for the expenditure of public money, often in large quantities.

‘It’s a really exciting day in Gladstone,’ Albanese told MMM Central Queensland’s Pinky Neven in April. Why? Because the government was writing a $400 million soft loan to Alpha HPA to build Australia’s first high-purity alumina processing facility.

In August, Albanese joined the Women’s Agenda podcast with Tarla Lambert to make, ‘a really exciting announcement’ about a pay rise for childcare workers, or ‘educators’ as Labor prefers us to call them. ‘That will cost $3.6 billion over the next two years,’ he said.

In May, the PM told journalists it was great to be back in Launceston for a really exciting announcement of more spending on social housing.

A year earlier, the PM was delighted to be Hobart for the ‘very exciting announcement’ of a $240 million handout to build a new stadium.

On August 23 last year, the PM told us it was ‘a great day to be here in Townsville for what is an exciting announcement… an additional $100 million from the federal government, making our total contribution $180 million’. It would enable the construction Reef HQ 2.0, the function of which was not fully explained by Albanese, other than to say it would be ‘better than what has been here in the past’.

Senator Nita Green and Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek repeated the refrain like the backing singers in a 1970s soul band.

Senator Green: What an incredibly exciting day to be here in Townsville.

Plibersek: That’s so exciting. We’ve doubled funding for the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

To be fair to Albanese, even good prime ministers have raided the announceables cupboard in search of a sugar hit. However, few have been as addicted as Albanese for whom announceables have become an end in themselves. They emerge at random, with litte evidence of a policy structure to explain them or place them in the context of some larger goal.

At the heart of Albanese’s failings is an absence of leadership. Announcing things and travelling in the back of chauffeur-driven cars doesn’t make him a leader, any more than swimming in Lake Burley Griffin would make him a duck. Yet Albanese’s claim to be a leader rests on a failure of propositional logic known as the fallacy of the converse: P implies Q therefore Q implies P.

The absence of leadership was exposed in the first excruciating 20 minutes of a press conference in Perth on the first Friday in December. The PM was accompanied by Michelle Roberts, MP for Pearce, and Resources Minister Madeleine King, both of whom share some responsibility for the atrocity.

‘Good morning, everybody,’ Roberts began. ‘I’ve got the biggest smile on my face, and it’s great to welcome the Prime Minister of Australia… it’s just fantastic to be here and so exciting.’

‘It’s great to be back in Western Australia,’ the PM said. ‘This is so exciting… we have a cracker announcement today.’

The cracker contained more corporate welfare: a $475-million handout to Iluka Resources to build the Eneabba Rare Earth Refinery Project. Cracking smiles all round.

‘This is so exciting for WA,’ the PM continued. ‘I’m very proud to be here today.’

King took the microphone to explain what a momentous announcement this was before handing over to Iluka CEO Tom O’Leary who thanked the PM for ‘a really extraordinary outcome’.

Then it was the turn of the journalists, who asked five questions about things that, in the scheme of things, really didn’t matter that much.

Finally, on the sixth question, the PM was invited to make his first comment on the story of the day.

Journalist: Prime Minister, on the attack on the synagogue in Melbourne, do you have any indication who was responsible and what the motive was?

Albanese: No. Can I just say that this was a shocking incident. It should be unequivocally condemned.

With that answer, the PM stands condemned. He had been briefed on the attack but had judged it to be less important than his cracking announcement. A true leader would have ordered his plane to Perth to be turned around in mid-air. A half-competent leader would have pushed his announcement to the end of the press conference.

The Prime Minister is neither of those things. He is Albo, a man who that day revealed himself as unworthy of occupying the highest public office in the land.

Author: Nick Carter