Anthony Albanese‘s decision to buy a $4.3million waterfront mansion in the middle of a housing crisis has achieved a rare political feat: uniting both conservative and leftwing political commentators against him.
It was revealed on Tuesday that the Prime Minister is the new owner of a five-bedroom home at Copacabana, just south of Avoca on the NSW Central Coast.
Mr Albanese will share the $4.3million cliffside home with his fiancee Jodie Haydon, whose ‘Coastie’ family have lived in the area for several generations.
The PM was grilled about whether he thought his expensive new purchase was a ‘good look’ during the nation’s cost-of-living crisis which is largely due to staggering real estate prices, high interest rates and skyrocketing rents.
But Mr Albanese insisted he was not planning to move into the property any time soon, telling reporters that he would remain in his ‘current job for a very long period of time’.
Entirely expectedly, his decision to buy the sprawling mansion proved an open goal for the country’s conservative media, with Sky News host Andrew Bolt accusing Mr Albanese of ‘hurting his party’.
‘He was selfish to buy this house at this time, when millions of Australians are struggling to afford a roof over their own head,’ Bolt thundered in a Herald Sun column.
But perhaps less expectedly, Mr Albanese’s growing property empire has also fired up his usual cheerleaders and sympathetic sections of the media, with many likening it to Scott Morrison‘s ‘Hawaii moment’.
ABC star Annabel Crabb penned a blistering takedown on Wednesday, claiming it was the ‘most baffling strategic initiative’ since Mr Morrison’s ill-fated Hawaiian holiday during the bushfires in December 2019.
‘The cold truth is, nevertheless, that this purchase just made the prime minister’s professional life — and those of his colleagues — much, much harder,’ Crabb wrote.
The Kitchen Cabinet presenter’s piece came hot on the heels of a similarly critical column from the Guardian Australia, whose former political editor Katherine Murphy took up a job spinning for the Mr Albanese in January.
‘It’s hard to think of a more politically tone-deaf decision than Anthony Albanese’s purchase of a $4.3m clifftop mansion six months before a cost-of-living election,’ seethed Ms Murphy’s erstwhile colleague, senior reporter Sarah Marsh.
Ms Marsh also took apart the Prime Minister’s defence of the property purchase on Tuesday when he repeated that he ‘know(s) what it’s like to struggle’ because he was raised by a single mum in a public housing flat.
‘Having been in parliament for almost 30 years, and now on an income of $550,000, the “battler from Marrickville” trope rings hollow when you’re having to defend the timber-lined cathedral ceilings of your third property at Copacabana (of all places),’ Ms Marsh wrote.
She added: ‘The judgment is appalling, the optics truly terrible.’
Left-wing writer Rachael Withers pointed out that people were not criticising Mr Albanese for being wealthy.
‘They’re criticising him for showing poor judgment (many think it a bad look, including Labor MPs, whether or not you agree), and failing to do enough for those struggling *now*, for whom his wealth trajectory is impossible,’ she wrote on X.
Others, such as lecturer and social commentator Ben Eltham, opted for sarcasm.
‘I don’t know why anyone is getting upset,’ he wrote on X.
‘It’s just a $4.3m house on beachfront purchased in the middle of a housing crisis.’
Ex-ABC journalist Quentin Dempster labelled Mr Albanese a ‘drongo’.
‘Politics is about popular perception. E.g. the “pub test”,’ he wrote on X.
‘Like ScoMo’s secret Hawaii holiday Albo’s beachhouse buy in a cost of living/housing crisis has given & free kicks which will resonate all the way to the next federal election.’
However, a small minority came out to bat for the PM.
‘The childish attack on the PM for buying a house with his partner is astonishing,’ political biographer Professor Jenny Hocking wrote.
‘Is there really nothing more important to write about?’
Walkley-award winning feminist social commentator Jane Caro posted: ‘Albo bought a house. Good luck to him.’
