Albo’s self-consciousness could also be attributed to the fact that while the Archbishop talked in his ecclesiastic style about this and that, just over his shoulder, across the road from the cathedral, was Hyde Park, the starting point of the annual procession that is much closer to Albo’s heart and social circles, the gay Mardi Gras.

It’s a no-brainer, really. Celibate men in dresses serving vinegar-tasting wine – or often overweight and promiscuous men in sequinned underpants buzzing on party drugs and gaily abandoning the “oppressive” restrictions of religious persecution.

RAINBOW

Broadcast live, of course, by the rainbow collective itself, ABC TV.

Last month’s Mardi Gras, at which Albo was one of the star participants, even included a couple of traditional indigenous gay men re-enacting Christ’s crucifixion as if it was performance art for a sado-masochistic night club.

Albo thought this not offensive enough to require distancing himself from them. Why would he?

He’s a secular atheist republican. Iconoclasm is what won him the prime ministership in the first place.

This federal election campaign has not been a strenuous test of the candidates’ intellect or charisma, but it has tested their ability to hold two contradictory thoughts or take two contradictory stances at once.

They move from one isolated fragment of Australian society to another soliciting votes with money and obsequious affection.

Albo’s opponent Peter Dutton has tried, but he’s a mere novice in the presence of the master, whose ability to adopt whatever demeanours are demanded by widely varying circumstances is unrivalled.

Not only can Albo attend two fundamentally contradictory events — the Mardi Gras and Easter Sunday Mass — only a month apart. He somehow manages to endure the Easter message by privately recalling more exciting highlights from the homosexual extravaganza.

There are times, however, when the poker face slips. Albo’s no saint, after all.

A man can only maintain the illusion of interest for so long until he must let his real self off the leash.

There was one such moment last Tuesday, and it was for me the defining and most realistic moment of the entire campaign so far.

SNUCK IN

Albo was in the foyer of the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne, passing time looking at his phone until the next choreographed event for the media began, when an ordinary bloke snuck in and approached for a chat.

“Mr Albanese, I have a question for you on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Australians around the country,” he said, holding his camera in front of him.

Clearly, he wanted to talk about the cost of housing and the rate of immigration.

Can you imagine? The absolute nerve of the bloke. Albo looked at him in the way an overfed rabbi would look at a bacon sandwich.

The footage is poorly lit, and Albo’s security cordon are well trained in taking a shot for their leader — well, a shot from a handheld low-resolution camera, at least — but his expression could not have been better captured if it was painted by Caravaggio.

Albo’s contempt for this humble voter was part bewilderment that the bloke had got this close and part don’t you know who I am?

He seemed to enjoy conveying his disdain to the uppity pleb for a second or two, then looked away, flicking his wrist limply like a diva who wants to wave away a fly but is worried she might scratch her $200 nail job.

The audacity of this moment was compounded by the fact that the very next day, Albo slipped on a high-vis vest and walked around a building site in Melbourne.

He excitedly expounded his government’s program to build hundred of thousands of homes, starting with the two being built at that very site. Utter contempt one day, smiling for the cameras the next.

Perhaps this rapid transition is just a psyop.