What might have been an opportunity for the Prime Minister to reassure us that, as our social fabric frays beyond repair and indomitable forces hurtle us towards World War III, a man with calm emotions and rationality is manning the wheelhouse.

It was instead a story in which Albo recollected – not for the first time – that his divorce from former NSW Labor MP Carmel Tebbutt in 2019 after 19 years of marriage came as a “shock”.

HUMPY

It’s one thing for Albo to keep trotting out this anecdote – along with the story about being raised, if I remember correctly, by a single Aboriginal mum in a humpy out the back of Bourke.

But every time his minders let him loose on some poor handpicked sponge cake of a journalist to spout distractions from the worsening crisis, it reveals another thing entirely about his character.

As any divorcee will tell you, the termination of all but the most heinous marriages can and should be blamed equally on both partners.

If, like Albo, you are uncouth enough to talk about it in public, then the least you can do is have the humanity and humility to admit you were partly at fault.

But Albo can’t do that.

The way he remembers it, he was happily cruising along being a good husband when – boom! – his wife decided to spoil everything.

Not his fault, he was just unlucky in love. Or, to put it in a medley of the cheesiest songs from his favourite musical era, the 1980s: Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You, Carmel, but If You Don’t Know Me By Now, well, What’s Love Got To Do With It?

This wouldn’t matter to anyone if:
1. Albo strangely didn’t want to keep reminding us of it;
2. He wasn’t also running the country; and
3. This wasn’t a disturbingly accurate reflection of his relation with us, the electorate.

What he lacks in chivalry towards the woman with whom he once shared a bed and still shares a son, he also lacks in emotional or even intellectual connection with the people whose votes he once sought and now supposedly leads.

CHEAP

He knows we want cheap energy, better opportunities for Aborigines, fewer migrants, more houses and less inflation.

Instead, he is giving us the most suicidal energy transformation in our history; trapping indigenous people in hellish remote “communities”; increasing migrants from non-English-speaking nations (including ones where terrorism and hatred of the West are the only local industries); making housing unaffordable; and spending money on useless vote-buying programs that only push up the price of groceries.

But, like the end of his first marriage, it’s not his fault when things go wrong.

Candid revelations about his failures in love aside, there is one insight that Albo once made into his own character that actually does resonate and reveal his inner character.

It’s this, uttered when he was talking about a Labor leadership spill in 2012: “I, ah, I like fighting Tories. That’s what I do. That’s what I do.”