LATIKA M BOURKE: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese undone by Qantas flights of fancy

Anthony Albanese is by no means the first politician to be caught begging for upgrades and freebies.

Six years ago, when I wrote about Julie Bishop hawking jewels and clothes while Australia’s foreign minister, an obvious audition for the social media influencer she’s sought to become post-politics, it was impossible to raise a complaint about the practice from the then Labor opposition.

The reason was obvious. Both sides have an interest in protecting the art of grifting for themselves, as last week’s revelations published in Joe Aston’s book The Chairman’s Lounge, detailing how Qantas peddles influence in Canberra, shows.

On Sunday, the underwhelming Cabinet Minister Jason Clare was forced into admitting that he’d asked a Qantas staffer for an upgrade for a personal trip, then cited having had skin cancer surgery on his leg as though that was somehow a justification.

Lots of people have to travel in pain or uncomfortably.

Ninety-nine per cent of the public can’t ease the pain for free by speed-dialling a government relations official at the national airline.

These guys just don’t get it, do they?

The whole point about the freebie upgrades saga is not that upgrades are offered and available, but that they are so aggressively and shamelessly sought by the political class, who in turn are in positions where they make decisions about that company and the regulatory environment in which they operate.

But the end result is that the prime minister has become the symbol of the widespread syndrome and it exposes him uniquely.

Because his reaction has brought into the spotlight what was concealed at the last election due to Scott Morrison’s unpopularity — the Prime Minister appears out of his depth, is tetchy, sulky and brittle and lacks the political smarts to channel an everyman Peter Beattie-esque way of handling stuff ups.

It’s a toxic cocktail for nervous Labor MPs to be forced to sip at this point in the political cycle.

Not only has Mr Albanese failed to set out a compelling vision for the country, but he exhibits appalling judgment — such as using his prime ministerial time to acquire a $4.3 million coast house in the middle of a housing and cost-of-living crisis — and shows no ability to put out political grassfires.

Worse, he becomes testy, petulant and sooky when reasonably challenged about his actions and decisions and is regularly not across the details when he responds.

Take for example his response to the Qantas freebie saga. His instinct was to attack the messenger. The strategy is somewhat understandable, paint the author as a political stooge — Aston did after all work for the Liberals and recently appeared at a party fundraiser — all is fair in love and war, and politics right?

But Albanese couldn’t even get his attack right.

“I don’t see declarations that he’s a former Liberal Party staffer for a number of senior members of the Liberal Party, including Joe Hockey and Bruce Baird,” he said.

“I don’t see declarations that he’s a former Qantas employee.”

Having actually opened the book, unlike the Prime Minister, you don’t even get to the first chapter before Aston makes those declarations. They are literally the opening sentences of his introduction to the book.

This from Albanese was the equivalent of a drunk at a bar picking a fight and swinging punches at the air instead of their target.

It had echoes of when Scott Morrison tried to target a press gallery journalist over the Brittney Higgins saga and flubbed his attack.

Morrison’s style led the Coalition to their lowest-ever representation at the last election. These are not tactics to emulate.

And the incompetence from Mr Albanese is no one-off. It’s a pattern.

It took four days, for instance, for the Prime Minister to say that he had never called Alan Joyce, directly, for free upgrades.

To be fair, that was an improvement on the debacle last year when the government couldn’t get its story straight over why it blocked Qatar Airways from offering more international flights, something that would have lowered fares for Australians.

That drama ran for months as the government struggled to clarify the situation.

And this is why the Qantas episode while snaring all MPs who’ve had their hands out, has exposed Albanese uniquely.

It has underlined yet again for Labor MPs that their leading man is not match fit and time is running out for him to be in form.

The Prime Minister all but fired the starting gun on the election campaign on Sunday alongside one of the country’s genuinely popular Labor leaders — South Australia’s Premier Peter Malinauskus — when he appeared at a US-styled rally and promised 100,00 taxpayer-funded TAFE positions and reduce student debt by 20 per cent.

In the middle of an election campaign, Mr Albanese is not going to have months, weeks or even days to get a grip on troublesome issues.

And unlike in 2022, he goes into this campaign diminished by his time in office rather than strengthened by incumbency.

And this is the other hard truth for the government as it prepares to face voters. Albanese has never recovered from his failed Voice referendum that he mishandled so irresponsibly and at times has verged on blaming the public for the result.

This is another trend of his, there’s always someone else he leaps to blame, the messenger, the voters, the Opposition Leader, but never himself.

Conversely, Peter Dutton, the so-called Potato Head, while no more inspiring than the Prime Minister, has not turned out to be the “frightening” figure that Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles attempted to cast him as at Sunday’s rally.

Indeed, the reception to Mr Dutton’s bold and risky move to propose nuclear power for Australia suggests politics is moving beyond reflexive scare campaign politics.

So Labor is going to need to do a lot better than complain about Mr Dutton if it wants to hold its wafer-thin majority.

And Albanese also won’t have the benefit of the overly long honeymoon that the Australian media gave Labor after its election in 2022.

The next few months will test whether it is that Mr Albanese is unwilling or incapable of changing.