KATINA CURTIS: Copacabana purchase lands Anthony Albanese in a hot spot

Politicians are people too. But as they rise higher up the ladder of power, the personal becomes more public and comes under closer scrutiny.

It’s a maxim Anthony Albanese seems to have forgotten as he decided to buy a $4.3 million clifftop house in the evocatively named Copacabana, 100km from his electorate.

A parade of ministers found themselves defending their boss in media interviews on Wednesday morning.

He’s human too, he’s entitled to a private life, he’s getting married, and it’s not unusual to buy and sell property.

“Anthony cops it when he sells the property. He cops it when he provides a rent holiday to his tenants. He cops it when he buys a property,” Cabinet minister and NSW colleague Chris Bowen said.

Meanwhile, senior Liberal frontbencher Simon Birmingham sang along to Barry Manilow with a TV host: “Copa, Copacabana/The hottest spot north of Havana.”

The problem is not that Albanese bought a new house in which to start a life with his soon-to-be-wife.

The problem is that he bought a new house with what sounds to most Australians like a hefty price tag at the same time as his Government is trying to mount an argument that it is doing everything it possibly can to help low and middle-income people buy their own homes.

Couples with kids, working good jobs, have found themselves saving and saving, only to need another several thousand dollars by the time they finally reach their deposit goal.

The growth in house prices is slowing but that is little comfort to people trying to enter the property market given the highs they reached during and just after the pandemic.

And that’s before you get to the growth in rents, which are also hitting those people trying to save for deposits.

Some ministers are convinced that, as inflation eases and wages rise, housing affordability will surpass the cost of living as the top concern for voters — and stay there, probably for years.

That heightens the political risk of the PM’s new house purchase.

Some have leapt to a comparison with Scott Morrison’s family holiday to Hawaii while bushfires raged practically the whole way down the East Coast.

That offence was compounded in voters’ minds by his office trying to cover up the fact he was out of the country.

While Albanese’s team went into damage control, they never denied the story.

And 24 hours later, on Wednesday he was answering all questions about whether Copacabana was a good look by listing off what the Government is doing on housing — and what it’s trying to do.

After a delay while the legislation was negotiated through the Senate, the Housing Australia Future Fund is finally distributing money, leading to press conferences in empty paddocks around the country where politicians promise there will be plenty of houses soon.

Albanese has already heaped scorn on the Coalition and Greens for holding up schemes for shared equity arrangements (a Federal version of WA’s Keystart) and incentives for property developers to build more rent-to-buy places.

Yet more than three-quarters of voters surveyed by polling outfit Redbridge think young people will never be able to buy a home unless they have help from family.

That is a stark number.

Effectively, 77 per cent of people are saying the great Australian dream is dead.

On another question, 71 per cent of people said the standard of living would be worse for the next generation of Australians.

Compare this with the fact just 12 of the 227 Federal politicians don’t own any property, far fewer than the roughly one-third of the wider population.

About a third of the Parliament owns more than two properties and slightly fewer own two, mostly their home and a place in Canberra.

Little wonder the Greens’ sledges about “property investor politicians” are cutting through.

Doorknocking MPs have been hearing about housing woes from punters for months now.

Maiy Azize, from the housing advocacy body Everybody’s Home, told this column the focus on the PM should be on what he was doing in his public capacity, not his private life.

“People are hungry for this Government to do so much more, something substantial on housing,” she said.

There’s a more insidious problem for Albanese in how his new house is being perceived — and it’s one the Opposition has been helping along with carefully chosen phrases.

As Labor appears to be floundering in the polls, it risks looking like the PM has one eye on sorting out his retirement plans.

“I hope that through popular demand in six months he gets to use it because he will be retired by the Australian people,” Nationals leader David Littleproud helpfully said, looking ahead to the election.