Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is someone who wants to be liked even more than respected. He wants to be seen by Australians as one of them, a bloke’s bloke, one of the lads. In politician-speak, authentic.
Australia is different these days: it’s now a woman’s world, and an increasingly puritan and humourless society, in which many voters would not even have understood Osborne and Albanese’s humour, let alone appreciated it
That’s the only explanation for Albanese choosing to invite a ribald Australian podcaster, Nikki Osborne, to his official residence for a boisterous sit-down chat that has gone globally viral, for all the wrong reasons.
Osborne is an ‘actress and comedienne’ who’s dabbled in Australian breakfast FM radio, which doesn’t hesitate to be lewd and crude in attracting listeners. She has a podcast caricature persona she calls Bush Barbie, dressing like the late Steve Irwin but with short shorts showing much more leg. In whisky-fuelled conversations, Osborne has a knack for drawing her subjects into saying things more sober heads might avoid.
So it was with Albanese. Osborne initially didn’t offer Albanese a drink, instead the prime minister gave Bush Barbie a double measure of whisky. Saying ‘I got two fingers from the Prime Minister’ should have put Albanese on his guard, but he dived straight into an interview trap.
