PETER VAN ONSELEN: Albo’s mask has suddenly slipped. Now a simple truth has been exposed to the Australian public

Anthony Albanese is getting to the point where even if he were to walk on water through Sydney Harbour, he would be criticized for not paying the bridge toll.

When political fortunes turn and the public develops a view of a politician’s shortcomings, recovery becomes much more difficult to orchestrate.

But Albo has no one to blame but himself. This administration’s mistakes – the serious and the superficial – are all of its own making.

Going ahead with the Voice referendum when it was obvious that it would fail and fail badly was downright stupid. It resulted in division and set back indigenous rights by decades.

And breaking his rock-solid election pledges on income tax cuts and failing to change pensions brought his unreliability to the fore.

Whatever the good or bad of the policy changes, Albo became just another politician whose word means nothing.

Then we have the litany of poor judgment and political optics: the purchase of a $4.3 million oceanfront retirement home; the revelations about business class upgrades during personal travel and the chairman’s 21-year-old son’s membership.

And just on Monday, the decision to go ahead with a trip to Western Australia to play lawn tennis, decked out in his best whites he had brought for the trip, at Perth’s most exclusive waterfront tennis club.

In doing so, alongside the Labor Party’s fundraising in the aftermath of the firebombing of a Melbourne synagogue in a suspected terrorist incident, it lacked fundamental political thinking.

These were all stupid decisions.

Even worse than the political crimes themselves is the prime minister’s unrepentant unwillingness to admit mistakes along the way.

That has only contributed to the perception that the Albanians are shamelessly warlike – and has given voters little reason to exercise restraint on Albo in the future.

Let’s not forget that spending decisions have exacerbated inflation and reduced the likelihood of interest rate cuts sooner or later. Australia is in a per capita recession, suffering from a housing and cost of living crisis that is putting voters under pressure.

It just makes voters more irritated by the waterfront property purchases and the antics of prime ministerial privilege.

The coming of age story of Albo’s cabin now seems little more than a distant memory for a politician who has spent a lifetime living off the state, leaving him out of touch with the background he likes to crow about.

Labor needs a big event now to give Albo the chance to reassert his leadership. To help recover from the shortcomings he has caused thus far. To redeem himself enough to achieve a second election victory.

Terrorist incidents are not so common in Australia that they cannot influence a Prime Minister’s social agenda. Above, the inside of the Adass Israel Synagogue

Albo, above, visits the synagogue four days later

Once the public decides that a Prime Minister is weak, has settled down and doesn’t hold up much philosophically, the benefit of the doubt that Australians typically show their leaders is lost.

It happened to better Prime Ministers than Albo, and now it’s happening to him during Labour’s first term.

A reminder that Albo was never the political genius. His win in 2022 convinced those close to him that he was. It was a victory largely thanks to anti-Morrison sentiment.

If Team Albo wants to win, they need to start by avoiding situations like the ones we saw yesterday in Cottesloe: a Prime Minister in his whites playing a game of tennis at an elite club instead of visiting the site of a fire bombed synagogue.

It is not that such attacks are so common in Australia that they do not disrupt a prime minister’s social agenda.

As well as avoiding such patently foolish decision-making, the Labor message needs to be clear and simple, leaving the rules out of the picture, to sound credible.

When selling why Albo deserves a second term, MPs should say: he introduced laws that protect workers’ wages.

He produced two budget surpluses, brought down inflation and delivered fair tax cuts.

Any of us can argue about whether these things were all good and partly flawed, but they are statements of fact.

The beginning of how to recover politically in the run-up to a tough re-election that didn’t have to be so difficult.