Anthony Albanese labelled ‘out of tune’ over ‘cringe’ social media post making light of cost-of-living crisis

Australians have labelled Anthony Albanese “out of tune” over a “next level cringe” social media post appearing to make light of the cost-of-living crisis.

On his official X account, the Prime Minster posted, “New album just dropped” alongside a picture of an album cover imitating the old-school So Fresh Australian compilation CDs, titled “So helpful: cost of living relief — Winter 2024”.

Instead of songs, the album cover lists several policies promised by the Labor Government, including “paid prac for students”, “increased rent assistance”, “$300 off power bills” and “more paid parental leave”.

But the album did not top the charts like Mr Albanese’s media team might have imagined it would.

Australians certainly aren’t laughing, responding to the post with utter disgust at Mr Albanese for believing it was an appropriate move, given many Australians are struggling to keep a roof over their heads.

“This is seriously cringe,” the comments began.

“You don’t take the PM role seriously!” another X user wrote. “People are losing their homes because of you and what’s your response? This idiotic self-congratulatory boasting about achieving essentially nothing.”

Another labelled the post “embarrassing”.

“You have truly lost your mind, @AlboMP,” they wrote.

“This makes you look plain damned stupid. Do you honestly think that you can buy Australians that have humanity in their hearts. This ad is the most insane thing I have ever seen. You are taking the piss with this one, Anthony. Embarrassing.”

“Man. This just isn’t it bro. You’re making light of a very situation currently happening in our country. Whatever intern posted this, Be better,” another added.

One X user was quick to hit back at the album, redesigning the cover with the title, “So useless” and listing a number of the Government’s failures including rising inflation, decreasing standard of living, falling productivity and the housing crisis.

Others called for Mr Albanese to sack his media team, also labelling him, “out of tune”.

“Kids these days never owned a CD and Gen X aren’t likely to vote for you…So might be time to consider how irrelevant lying to us is,” one commented.

“Bit out of tune, mate, no one’s used a CD since the early 2000s but keep at it,” another said.

The post comes as Mr Albanese brushed off concerns his government is spending too much cash despite the Reserve Bank saying public spending was contributing to inflation.

He said the government had cut “effective inflation in half” since coming to office while delivering two budget surpluses, showing Labor did not have a spending problem.

“Our approach is to make sure that no one gets left behind … that we have an economy that works for people, not the other way around,” he told the ABC on Thursday morning.

“Fee-free TAFE, cheaper childcare, energy price relief — all of these measures are aimed at making sure we look after people but do so in a way that’s designed to see inflation continuing to moderate which is what we want to make sure happens.”

However, the RBA’s chief economist Sarah Hunter has cast doubt over Labor’s $300 power bill relief putting downward pressure on inflation. Dr Hunter said because the energy rebates were temporary, they didn’t do much to get inflation back under control “sustainably”.