A no-nonsense Australian has flogged Anthony Albanese and predicted he will be remembered as ‘Australia’s worst ever prime minister’.
Bernard Thompson, from Cowra in central west NSW, wrote a scathing critique of the first half of Albo’s premiership.
“In my view, future history will remember Anthony Albanese as perhaps Australia’s worst ever prime minister, and he is only halfway through his term,” Thompson wrote in the letters pages of the Daily Telegraph.
The irate man denounced Albanese’s spate of foreign travel – which has seen him visit Washington, China and the Cook Islands in recent weeks – and said he wished he would spend more time on the domestic agenda.
‘I wish Anthony Albanese (Mr Photo Opportunity himself) would spend more time visiting the country he is supposed to be Prime Minister of and implement all those ‘plans’ that Labor told us before the last election’ , he wrote. .
Anthony Albanese is being criticized for neglecting the domestic agenda while flying around the world
Mr Thompson then blasted the Labor leader’s grand plans to transform Australia into a ‘world powerhouse’ for renewable energy.
“Good old Albo and his ‘comrades’ have not even managed to deliver on the $275 reduction in household energy bills they promised almost a hundred times in the last election,” he wrote.
The scornful gambler concluded his blistering mission with a scathing one-word critique.
“During his recent visit, the Chinese media described Anthony Albanese as ‘handsome’, I think the word ‘hopeless’ is more accurate,” Mr Thompson wrote.
Mr Albanese was given the flattering nickname by China’s second-in-command, Premier Li Qiang, after visiting Beijing on Monday to hold talks with the Prime Minister and President Xi Jingping.
Prime Minister Li told reporters that he considered Albanese an “old friend” after meeting him four times in the past year.
He said Mr Albanese’s visit circulated widely on Chinese social media, including a video of the prime minister wearing a yellow jersey, which caught the attention of local residents.
“People said there is a handsome boy coming from Australia,” Prime Minister Li told reporters.
Chinese residents were reportedly stunned to see Anthony Albanese during an early morning march through central Shanghai ahead of his trip to Beijing.
The Prime Minister wore a green and gold Matilda jersey and a cap from his beloved South Sydney Rabbitohs as he strolled through the Bund waterfront district in central Shanghai on Sunday morning.
He was accompanied by at least eight security personnel as he stood on the almost deserted boulevard, waving to the occasional passerby and asking someone in typical Australian fashion, “How are you?”
Despite the apparently large security presence, many locals were apparently shocked to see a world leader interacting with people in public.
Mr. Albanese will fly to San Francisco in the coming days for his fourth foreign trip in as many weeks
“Many Shanghainese couldn’t believe how light his security staff was – or that he would talk to passersby the same way,” claimed Will Glasgow, Northeast Asia correspondent for the Australian newspaper Will Glasgow.
“This could never happen in China,” someone told me.
Others were baffled by his identity, with one assuming he was “maybe an actor, an entrepreneur or a CEO.”
Mr Glasgow asked the Prime Minister if he had enjoyed his trip, to which he laughed and said: ‘Yes, it’s quite good’.
Yaqiu Wang, research director at the pro-democracy organization Freedom House, praised Albanese’s “good diplomatic tactics.”
“People in China are so used to leaders being aloof and untouchable that when a leader acts like a normal person, it brings up many heart-warming feelings,” Ms. Wang said.
Mr Albanese traveled to Washington for the first time in October, where he was treated to a state dinner with the Bidens and a host of celebrities and businesspeople (pictured with his partner Jodie Haydon)
Mr Albanese knew back-to-back trips to the United States might not go down well with the Australian public, with the Prime Minister’s team reportedly urging the White House to host him around the same time as the conference.
Critics of Mr. Albanese have dubbed him “Airbus Albo” because of his international jet-setting.
Despite intense domestic pressure, including the cost of living crisis and the Voice referendum, he started the year with a trip to Papua New Guinea, followed by India and then the United States to announce the AUKUS deal.
This was followed by a bilateral meeting in Fiji and then a return to London for the King’s coronation.
The G7 summit was held in Japan in May and the Prime Minister embarked on two-day trips to Singapore and Vietnam in June.
In July he spent three days in Germany and Lithuania, followed later that month by New Zealand.
In September, the Prime Minister visited Indonesia, the Philippines and India – again for just two days in each location.
He traveled straight from this week’s trip to China to the Cook Islands. He will briefly return to Australia next week for the parliament meeting before heading back to San Francisco.
Just last week, retired political journalist Laurie Oakes branded Mr. Albanese an “incompetent wimp.”
Nine News’ iconic political editor said he thought the whole referendum debate was “pretty bad” and said it could damage the Prime Minister’s reputation with the public.
“I think it was quite damaging, I think he (Mr Albanese) handled it incompetently and I assumed the voters noticed there wasn’t a lot of competence involved,” Oakes told 2GB’s Afternoons with Deborah Knight.
‘If you handle something as big as the Voice as poorly as he handles it, people naturally assume that you don’t handle other things very well either.
‘And that is the risk that Anthony Albanese runs. He’s going to come out of this Voice referendum looking like an incompetent dill and he might be stuck with that.”
The veteran journalist also gave his opinion on both the Yes and No campaigns.
He said that while the No side’s disinformation was “quite shameful”, the Yes campaign was “unconvincing and pointless”.
“It didn’t explain anything,” he said.
The Voice was decisively rejected on October 14, with 60 percent of Australians voting against.
Every state and territory except the ACT voted against the constitutional amendment to enshrine an Indigenous voice in parliament and executive government.