August 11, 2026 — 4:38pmIt might have been simpler to just own the mistake of hosting a bawdy podcast in The Lodge and move on, but that just isn’t Anthony Albanese’s style.Now the Coalition is ramping up its attacks on the prime minister for playing along with the host’s joke about the Japanese prime minister smuggling in melons under her shirt “like Pamela Anderson”.The Japanese government does not want to make a meal out of this, but the blowback does raise questions about Labor’s “embrace all audiences” strategy that gives podcasters extraordinary access to Albanese.The prime minister has long embraced a media strategy that has seen him sit down regularly with everyone from Sydney shock jock Kyle Sandilands to conservative columnist Andrew Bolt through to high-minded interviews on the ABC’s 730.It was a natural step to include podcasters and YouTubers, even the slightly more risque ones, as these interviews tend to be longer form and allow Albanese, or any politician, to showcase their “real” selves.Some of the loosest interviews can work well because they let a politician sound authentic – but they are also higher risk. It is all too easy to overstep the mark.The prime minister wasn’t in the mood to back down in question time on Tuesday.Alex EllinghausenAlbanese’s appearance on the bawdy Bush Deep podcast on July 3 with host Nikki Osborne was certainly an overstep.Initially, Albanese took flak for playing a game of “shag, marry, date” and choosing Kylie Minogue when offered a choice of three names by the host. The comment landed badly and the prime minister quickly apologised.The controversy only flared for a hot minute. But then “melon gate” was re-ignited this week when former Japanese ambassador to Australia Shingo Yamagami wrote a scorching opinion piece in The Australian that labelled Albanese’s gesture “insulting” and ignorant.Yamagami went further on Tuesday, urging Albanese to make a bilateral visit to Japan to smooth things over.“It’s not for me to say if he should apologise, it’s up to the Prime Minister of Australia if he should apologise or not,” Yamagami told this masthead.“I don’t think this issue is well known in Japan, no legacy media has reported about it so far. But because it has become a controversy in Australia it has started to reverberate in Japan. Looking at the response on SNS [social networking services], on YouTube and X for example, there is a growing upset among the Japanese public. But the Japanese government is trying to keep face and wants to maintain a good working relationship with Australia, they don’t want to upset the strategic partnership with Australia.”The former ambassador is no friend of the Albanese government: he crossed swords with Foreign Minister Penny Wong more than once and his term ended early.But that doesn’t mean his point is invalid.The misstep is now haunting Albanese, and it’s not the first time he has essentially caught himself out.It was in a rapid-fire Q&A with the Herald Sun in February that Albanese landed in hot water for describing former Australian of the year Grace Tame as “difficult”. His appearances on Sandilands’ show were often cringeworthy.The Coalition, for its part, was slow to criticise the prime minister. On the day the podcast appeared, three senior members of the Coalition’s frontbench declined to comment on the melon comment.Now, they’re all in, with backbench Liberal MP Mary Aldred asking Albanese twice during question time on Tuesday if he would apologise to Takaichi for his comments, while frontbenchers such as Michaelia Cash and Tim Wilson claimed the prime minister had created a diplomatic incident. Albanese didn’t say much in his first answer, then shut down question time before he was to answer the second. In the Senate, Liberals Dave Sharma and James Paterson demanded explanations from Wong about the melons.No, it’s not a diplomatic incident, at least not yet, as a note sent by the Japanese government to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet this week made clear.Albanese, for his part, told Aldred the two nations had never been closer, were working together to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific and that “I have a very good relationship with the PM of Japan”.But the cavalcade of ministers out defending the prime minister in recent days, including Tanya Plibersek, Murray Watt and Katy Gallagher, underscores the government’s problem.Albanese has not held a press conference in Canberra for more than a month, which is unusual for this prime minister, who in the past mocked former opposition leader Peter Dutton for his unwillingness to appear before the Canberra press pack.Privately, people close to the prime minister concede that he made a mistake and that if they had their time again, the prime minister would either not have answered the question or redirected it.But Albanese and his team have no plans to stop making appearances on independent podcasts and smaller media outlets, as well as presenting for scrutiny by traditional media outlets.The firm belief is that what might once have been an off-broadway strategy to reach people who don’t consume traditional news media is now the main game – while the podcasters and YouTubers take their cues from the traditional media, they talk to different audiences that the government wants to reach.The Lodge podcast was great for Bush Deep, generating enough outrage to keep people clicking for weeks. But a month later, this is not the kind of attention Albanese would have wanted.Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.From our partners