BEN HARVEY: Anthony Albanese has been shagged by his own arrogance

I don’t know exactly where Bushie-gate sits in the pantheon of political gaffes, but I doubt it would make the first page.

Was anyone genuinely offended by Anthony Albanese’s ill-advised decision to get on the couch with comedian Nikki Osborne? I mean properly appalled?

Watching the Prime Minister talk about his sex life, even in the obtuse way he did, was certainly icky but it was hardly a “grab them by the pussy” and getting spanked by a porn star, a la The Donald.

The 20-minute video of Albo talking to Osborne’s character Bushie, a gonzo journalist styled as a female Steve Irwin, dropped onto YouTube late last week.

Nobody really took any notice of it until Monday, when the PM apologised.

That apology appeared to galvanise a lot of people who, having been previously plussed, became not just nonplussed but hysterically so.

“It’s demeaning of the office of the Prime Minister,” the church elders cried as they clutched their pearls.

The appearance in the skit wasn’t a measure moral decay in The Lodge; it was a measure of political arrogance.

The Office of the Prime Minister knew what it was in for, and they went ahead anyway.

Albanese, like all prime ministers, has an army of public relations experts advising him. They did their due diligence on Osborne before letting her come within cooee of the PM.

You don’t need to be as ASIO-trained espionage agent to uncover the fact Osborne uses eroticism to sell her program.

She has amassed a considerable subscriber base by, in part, throwing a healthy dose of sexualised content into her interviews.

The PM’s flak catchers knew her on-the-couch moment was never going to be a classy affair, so why did they agree to it?

“I’m just imagining you naked.”

“Still bonking like rabbits.”

“Getting double-fingered by the PM.”

Watching Osborne dribble the innuendo while Albo sat gormlessly was surely excruciating for the media minders who were in the room.

It was always going to be a minefield for the very model of a modern prime minister and Albo stepped on a Claymore when Osborne invited him to play the game “shag, marry, date”.

Offered the choice of Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman and Rhonda Burchmore, Albo answered “Kylie, clearly” before doubling down by saying “all of the above” when asked whether she was shaggable, marriable or dateable.

A subsequent appearance on Sunrise by Barnaby Joyce proved that even one of Australia’s more morally compromised MPs realised this was a no-win situation.

“Avoided the question like most people,” was his answer to the query “What would you have done if they’d asked you, Barnaby?”

Albo’s problem is that he’s gone out of his way to present as someone so woke, he looks like he is about to start lactating.

Watch Julia Gillard’s barnstorming misogyny speech and you’ll see Albo behind her, nodding furiously and yelling “here, here”.

It now looks like he’s having a bob each way, being a blokey bloke when it suits and an enlightened progressive when it doesn’t.

If Bob Hawke had been asked the Kylie, Nicole or Rhonda question he might well have said “all three, all at once”. He would probably have got away with it, as well, because he never tried to present as anything other than blokey.

Albanese’s press advisers surely know there are enough gotcha moments out there without politicians engineering them.

The immediacy of social media means public figures are increasingly having to make split-second calls about how to act in curly situations.

Remember when Peter Dutton refused to do that shoey in last year’s campaign?

Chants of “Shoey! Shoey!” gave way to a roar of booing when he declined the opportunity to skoll beer from one of his Julius Marlows.

An unguarded, and seemingly innocuous comment by Scott Morrison (“Jenny and I are blessed”) to a woman who had a disabled child had him on the ropes in 2022.

Before that, a freshly elected Tony Abbott was castigated for adding a seedy wink to a knowing nod during a talk back radio segment about the lengths an ageing sex worker was going to in order to make ends meet (financially speaking, not biologically).

Those clangers were in the heat of the moment; Albo’s predicament was premeditated.

Here’s hoping he has learned that if you’re going to engage with an influencer to appeal to the lowest common denominator there’s a good chance you’ll come off looking common.