CAMERON MILNER: Anthony Albanese’s ego bars him from being a true defender of democracy

Anthony Albanese is on a global mission to defend democracy.

If he hadn’t pronounced this from the Labour Conference stage in Liverpool we may have never known.

It’s left some wondering whether he was taking the piss, as well as taking four cans of Albo pale ale, to 10 Downing Street to have with under pressure UK PM Sir Keir Starmer.

Without a shadow of humility, Albanese stood on a stage that once hosted Nelson Mandela and said his mission was to save democracy. I kid you not.

To think all along Albo’s guiding philosopher was Socrates, not Mediocrates.

The Prime Minister’s world tour for democracy has had plenty of highlights.

His turn at the UN recognising Palestinian statehood without conditions was a big move for democracy. Hamas runs the place while Mahmoud Abbas robs the place. No elections since 2005, but hey Albo is now the global champion of democracy.

There’s the democratic Solomon Islands where the Chinese police fingerprinting everyone doesn’t rate a mention from Albanese. That’s Pacific Islands democracy on show.

The PM won’t be returning to Australia before he and and fiancee Jodie Haydon drop into the United Arab Emirates. A democracy in the Middle East? No, it’s a tribal theocracy where diversity policy extends to allowing women to have a job. If you hail from the LGBTQIA+ community you will be flogged or worse.

Democracy is designed to give strong leaders a mandate to govern

Maybe Albanese can convince the Emiratis to hold a referendum on gay marriage as a show of democratic good intent while he makes his apologies for the collapse of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co’s proposed takeover of Santos.

Albanese will be able to fly over the only actual democracy in the Middle East — Israel — on his way back to Australia.

That’s the nation that has since been defending its citizens and democracy every day since Hamas’ brutal actions of October 7, 2023, all while copping nauseating sermons from self-styled defenders of democracy Albanese and Penny Wong.

Albanese is a living example of democracy in action. You win 94 seats and do sweet nothing as a Labor Government.

Your own Parliament sits fewer days in a half-year than ever before.

You pass less legislation because you won a second election promising to do even less than your first.

This is the democracy Aussies live in under Albo.

And of course when Trump offered October 20 for a White House tour, Albanese jumped at the chance to spend even less time in Australia.

To be a champion of democracy you might actually want to deliver the benefits of democracy — a strong government delivering on a democratic mandate.

But in Australia we don’t have that benefit under Albo. We get to vote but not to choose.

Albanese’s offering has always been 50 shades of beige, now with a contrasting off-white highlight.

It’s a parliamentary palette that delivers blancmange government, where every good idea is seen as a leadership challenge and snuffed out.

Democracy Starmer style is to win an overwhelming majority, take freebies, lose a deputy PM to a tax scandal and trail so badly in the polls that Nigel Farage is seen as an alternative PM.

Still, aren’t we all feeling that national pride that Albanese, half a world away, has laid out his raison d’être for public life.

It’s about defending democracy, while his lived experience has been asking for thirds on the gravy train of corporate largesse his entire career.

That he made this announcement in front of ALP national president Wayne Swan makes it all the more amusing.

Swan has kept a low profile since urging a Federal election be called even as tropical cyclone bore down on Brisbane and South East Queensland.

He popped up last week to say Labor’s electoral support in Australia was a mile wide and an inch deep. He said Labor could lose a swag of seats at the next election unless Albanese started governing as a Labor PM.

It was a coded speech. Essentially, it was Swan saying “please start listening to my protégé, Jim Chalmers”.

Regardless of the motive, it was actually one of the few calls Swan has made that’s accurate.

It doesn’t square the ledger of promising five budget surpluses and failing to get any of them up.

The irony of Albanese being the shining light of modern democracy is that he’s just so weak when it comes to actually governing.

Democracy isn’t about being a seat-warmer. A pale imitation of real Labor leader.

It’s inaction that’s the most corrosive.

When you fail to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with democracies like Israel and insult our collective intelligence that Hamas won’t be running Palestine as a terrorist state, that’s what rips the fabric of democracy.

Democracy is a precious right so, so few people in the world ever get to experience. It should never be taken for granted.

Democracy is designed to give strong leaders a mandate to govern, not weak leaders to travel the world giving meaningless speeches and turning a blind eye to human rights breaches like in the Solomons, or comparing the plight of the Gazans under Hamas to Jews under the Holocaust.

As Churchill said “the price of peace is eternal vigilance”.

Defending democracy isn’t about Albanese giving another speech on his world tour. It’s about actually doing something for the people in your own country who elected you to govern, not just hold the title of being Australian PM.