EDITORIAL: Era of integrity is actually age of entitlement

Anthony Albanese’s defence for soliciting and accepting flight upgrades from Qantas worth tens of thousands of dollars appears to boil down to one thing.

Everyone else is doing it too.

He genuinely appears not to understand what all the fuss is about.

After all, the upgrades, some of which he received when he was transport minister, were included on his register of interests (though it’s been revealed that upgrades gifted to his former wife, NSW politician Carmel Tebbutt, were not, despite guidelines which stipulate that upgrades for spouses should be declared).

It should go without saying, but for the Prime Minister’s benefit, we can spell it out.

Soliciting benefits from the CEO of a company in an industry for which you have ministerial responsibility is both morally questionable and astoundingly stupid.

It creates a significant conflict of interest, whether actual or perceived.

That conflict of interest can’t be erased simply by writing vague details of the benefit received on a list somewhere.

In Mr Albanese’s case, it has raised questions over whether the Federal Government’s decision to block Qatar Airways from putting on more flights was a quid pro quo arrangement to repay Qantas’ many years of generously ushering him to the front of the plane.

In a desperate attempt to deflect the story, the Prime Minister’s office on Tuesday released a list of flights Opposition Leader Peter Dutton had taken on the private jet of mining billionaire Gina Rinehart.

Mr Albanese has also named Coalition politicians who have enjoyed flight upgrades, including Paul Fletcher and Bridget McKenzie.

The intent being to say: see, it’s not just me.

Putting aside the fact there’s a significant difference between those scenarios, that is one of the major problems with Australian politics.

Pointing the finger at others doesn’t make Mr Albanese’s actions any less morally dubious.

Australians already hold politicians in extremely low regard.

Many would be unsurprised by the revelations of Mr Albanese’s shameless freebie-seeking, despite his protests that he has always “acted in a way that is entirely appropriate” and “declared in accordance with the rules”.

Just another politician with his snout buried in the trough of corporate largesse.

For a little while at least, Mr Albanese — he of the log cabin story and the single-mum-in-social-housing childhood — had us thinking he might be different.

It’s been less than three years since he came to power on a promise to “change the way politics operates in this country”.

But instead of a new era of integrity, we’re in the age of entitlement.

An international business class flight is a privilege very few Australians will ever experience.

To Mr Albanese, it appears to have been an expectation.