CAMERON MILNER: Anthony Albanese’s decision to wag last week of Parliament speaks volumes about his priorities

To govern is to choose.

So, Albo’s decision to be Paddington bear at APEC followed up with a Carnival of foreign leaders in Rio sure makes an odd choice when apparently it’s all about Australians and their cost of living.

It all has a strong touch of Nero fiddling as Rome burns. This is Anywhere Albo. Anywhere but in Australia and fronting up to his place of work — the Australian Parliament.

There’s no doubt that attending international meetings of leaders are in our nation’s interest, but so is having a functioning Parliament led by a PM who actually wants to be there.

Trump’s election shouldn’t have come as either a shock or surprise, but if as we are being told at APEC and G20 that the world is pushing back against Trump’s tariffs, why hasn’t Albanese extended his Americas trip and gone to Mar a Lago?

If Parliament wasn’t important enough to re-schedule, what is so important back in Australia that Toto One can’t fly from Rio to Miami and have Albo kiss the ring for Australia?

I’m sure if Albo can’t arrange a meeting, Kevin Rudd could intercede.

If APEC and G20 were so important to attend, then going to see Trump is a no brainer. After all, he more than anyone not currently in South America will influence Australia’s immediate future as a trading nation.

But perhaps this was all about the avoidance of parliamentary scrutiny.

After all, he’s got to fly there and back on Toto One, wear a weird brown scarf and be praised as the best friend of China and the very model mendicant, weak as, leadership example for the rest of the world to follow.

Being praised in Beijing doesn’t pay the rent in Biloela. Hugging Trudeau and giggling with yesterday’s man, Joe Biden, isn’t a real plan to tackle the crippling cost of living back home in Australia.

Albanese has this confected view, perpetuated by his Albanistas, that almost three decades of being an MP has made him a master of parliamentary debate. His purile descent to sledging an opponent as “having Tourette’s” sits pretty uncomfortably with that narrative.

Labor, and more importantly Albanese’s office, knew when the US presidential election was going to be. It was the same Tuesday it was held on four years ago, and four before that.

APEC and G20 were well scheduled, so why not adjust the Federal parliamentary sittings to have Albanese present for the full two weeks?

Albanese has chosen to be absent for half of the only guaranteed fortnight of sittings before the next Federal election. As speculation swirls about a Federal poll as soon as late February next year, why didn’t Labor want its supposedly best parliamentary performer at the despatch box?

Instead, Labor’s legislative program lies in pieces. The Greens and the Liberals combined to keep the flood gates of student migration open, even as Labor struggles to land a deal over housing with the chastened Greens.

The Nature Positive laws are gone, Labor reforms elsewhere are stalled or deferred.

Labor is spending tens of millions on advertising their Future Made for Mates Bill that is yet to pass into law. Curiously, they’ve chosen the ad agency behind the Voice’s Yes campaign for the creative.

Apparently the agency had to endure a tender process, but was just lucky enough to be picked after such an auspicious failure.

This is a Government that at the end of only its first term has run out of a legislative agenda. Labor is led by a guy who can’t be stuffed actually turning up to work to even answer some lame Dorothy Dixers.

Labor could’ve scheduled Albo to do APEC, G20 and even the COP in Baku that British PM Keir Starmer is attending and still fitted in two weeks of parliamentary sittings. They chose not to.

That Parliament no longer gives Labor home ground advantage speaks volumes for how the Government has trashed the benefit of incumbency and ceded the power of the Parliament to the Greens, teals and the Coalition.

Labor’s long suffering backbench and even a few front benchers with tight margins must wonder: when their bloke can’t even be in Canberra, how is he going to be campaigning in Campbelltown in Macarthur or Craigeburn in McEwen?

This Thursday as Albo takes to the air and sets course for Mascot rather than Miami, Bill Shorten will rise to give his valedictory speech to Parliament. It will have lots of words about a lifetime of parliamentary achievement and what coming from the trade union movement has meant.

It will no doubt reflect on the cost of leadership of actually having the courage to take a plan to voters as was done in 2016 and 2019 instead of this pale, insipid excuse for a Government that is barely Labor in name only.

The piece that will hit the cutting room floor is actually what should be said.

That is that the absent Albanese should be challenged for the leadership.

It’s time to stop Thelma on the highway while Labor still has a chance.

Labor caucus, at what could be its last meeting before the election campaign, should reflect that a bloke who burnt a week on his retirement home purchase and cremated a week over Qantas upgrades and then couldn’t even schedule a week of Parliament when he was actually going to be in the country — might just not be fit to be a Labor leader in the midst of a cost of living crisis.

There’s Voice Albo, Absent Albo, Upgrade Albo … none of them are PM Albo.

Albanese has lurched from crisis to crisis, having got to the job by default thanks to Scott Morrison’s failures.

He hasn’t grown in the job and thinks it’s all a bit of a lark. So much so, he’s not even bothering to schedule Parliament so he could attend his place of work.

It tells Australians doing it genuinely tough that he’s now Anywhere but Here Albo.