The contradictory excuses Team Albo is making for why its polling station has been vacant since January underscore something no politician wants to be accused of.
This prime minister is developing an unhealthy tendency to speak out of two mouths at once. Saying contradictory things at different points in time with the aim of misleading the public.
Pro-Palestinian protesters have gathered outside the Prime Minister’s office at his seat in central Sydney, pinning banners and placards to the office walls to make their point.
They camp there day and night, even though no one is home. The taxpayer-funded office is simply deserted, and has been since January, exceptionally.
The excuse used to justify why the federal police cannot simply send the protesters away so that the office can reopen is that “citizens in a democracy have the right to peaceful protest.”
That’s what former Guardian Australia political editor – now spin doctor Albo – Katharine Murphy told me this week. You can hear the pious tone just reading the words.
But how does the idea of peaceful protest under the law square with the excuses used to explain why the office has been closed for so long and cannot coexist with the protesters?
To justify this situation, we are told that “security concerns” and “threats to safety” are the reason the office cannot reopen.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is seen with supporters this week. This prime minister is developing an unhealthy tendency to speak out of two mouths at the same time, writes PETER VAN ONSELEN
Pro-Palestine protesters have put up signs outside the Prime Minister’s electoral office in Marrickville, in Sydney’s inner west. It is closed, but he will not persuade protesters to reopen it.
If the protest is peaceful, what is the security threat? If there really is a security threat, why are statements being made justifying the ongoing protests on the grounds that they are peaceful?
It is a textbook example of talking with two mouths.
In reality, Albo does not want to suppress protests outside his polling station that are spilling into his constituency grounds, as he does with protests at the parliament building.
Why? Because he doesn’t want the local attention. Because the Greens will point out what he’s doing to a group of voters who largely agree with the protesters’ cause.
But he also doesn’t want voters and his staff to walk past pro-Palestinian protesters every day, because that could be distracting.
We all saw how frustrated he became when former Labor Party senator Fatima Payman distracted him from his sales pitch on tax cuts.
The prime minister said the silent part out loud and indicated in a radio interview that her decision to leave the room irritated him for that reason.
Albo has decided that the lesser evil is to let the protest in his constituency fester outside, even if it means that the elderly and disabled seeking help cannot get it because the office is closed.
Judge for yourself what that says about the values and priorities of our Prime Minister.
The fact that this Prime Minister or this government speaks with two mouths is not a new concept.
Take, for example, the attacks on the Coalition’s nuclear policy. While there is plenty to dissect when it comes to the cost and price competitiveness of Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy policy compared to other forms of energy, that is not where Albo and his team decided to focus their attacks.
Pro-Palestine protesters I met this week when I visited the closed Albo polling station
The prime minister’s polling station in his inner-city seat has been closed since January
They started by highlighting safety concerns, but did so by using childish images of three-eyed fish and deformed koalas.
Yet Labor supports the AUKUS nuclear submarines. Do they have similar safety concerns for the Australian submarines that will serve on those ships? Or are they arguing that nuclear reactors deep under the ocean are somehow safer than those on land?
And what about the way the Prime Minister and his party are trying to portray the Australian Greens as a radical left party that should be excluded, while Labor continues to make preferential deals that get them both elected?
Just look at how Labor drops its attacks on the Greens when they need their support after the next election to form a minority government, just as Julia Gillard needed their support in 2010.
Of course, all politicians try to wriggle out of trouble. Prime Ministers do it more often than most, because they get the most attention and have the biggest taxpayer-funded media team in town.
But problems arise when they become too blatant or rely too much on spin over substance, which is what we are seeing as Anthony Albanese gets further into his tenure.
And with elections likely approaching, the tendency to rely on false narratives and ambiguities will not go away.
Will Australians wake up to this and punish Labor at the ballot box, or will they do what voters have been doing for almost 100 years: give a first-term government a second chance?