Telling it Straight: Behind the Albo Bio

In 2016, political reporter Karen Middleton published Albanese – Telling it Straight which chronicles the life and career of Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese (Albo) who learned his political craft among the tough men and women of NSW Labor, inheriting his mother’s devotion to social justice, the South Sydney Rabbitohs and the party his family had served for three generations. Anthony Albanese was a minister in the Rudd/Gillard governments and is the Member for Grayndler and shadow minister for the portfolios of Transport and Infrastructure, Cities and Tourism. Anthony Albanese remains the most likely alternative Labor leader should anything happen to Bill Shorten. To speak about her book, Karen Middleton addressed The Sydney Institute on Monday 26 September 2016.

BEHIND THE ALBO BIO

KAREN MIDDLETON

When my book was launched three weeks ago, its subject – Anthony Albanese – alluded to the tension that naturally exists between subject and biographer when one is examining the entrails of the other’s life. As Albo told it, at one point during this more-than-year-long process, while I was receiving his latest list of “people who love me who you absolutely must speak to”, I had cause to gently remind him:

“This is not a hagiography.”

To which, he insists he replied: “Why not?”

It’s a good line and, although I don’t remember it being delivered quite like that at the time, it certainly sums up an aspect of the interaction between him and me throughout this process. The subject of a biography always wants to be seen in the best possible light.  Completely understandable. Who hasn’t occasionally asked for soft focus or to be shot from the right, not the left? (Albo was perhaps more often shot from the left….. think about it….) But a biographer wants the clearest possible light. The two are not always the same.

In speaking here tonight, I thought it might be useful to outline the history of this project, offer some reflections on those challenges inherent in trying to write a biography of a still-active politician, and make some observations – about the nature of political relationships, the man himself and the party he has served all of his adult life.

Until I embarked upon this exercise, I’d not attempted to write a biography before. I had dissected a different kind of organism – a war – when I tracked the political back story to Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan in my first book, An Unwinnable War, published five years ago as the military conflict approached its tenth anniversary. I approached this task in much the same way: starting with the basic details of the story at the heart of this book, building a timeline and then drafting lists of potential interviewees. And as it was in the first case, some of the most captivating details were things that I didn’t know when I started out but revealed themselves along the way. Of course, you realise quickly that these lists of people are literally endless – the names just keep being added and when you have a deadline, a word limit and a perfectly reasonable publisher trying to keep you to both, it’s not possible to get to everyone.

So it becomes a containment exercise.

The challenge was to build a structure that captured the most important moments, events, incidents, relationships, successes and failures – enough to form a three-dimensional picture of the person in question. I hope that’s what I’ve managed to do. I wanted this book to be accessible to people who don’t follow all the ins and outs of politics as much as for those who do – to make it interesting to anyone who’s just curious about the person … or who simply likes a good story. But I also wanted to make sure that, for those who do follow politics (or the South Sydney Rabbitohs Rugby League club), there was enough detail about Anthony Albanese’s role historically and contemporarily to both engage and inform.

The first person I had to call was Albo himself. And at this point, I’ll go back to the beginning because to put this book in its accurate political context, it’s important to know how it came to be. This project was at my suggestion. Whatever virtues Albo may have identified in either his participation (and he seems to have identified one or two) or in the timing of the book’s eventual release, he did not initiate it nor control the publication date. I say this because I have watched and listened with some amusement as the various Machiavellian theories have emerged about this book being timed carefully for when Albo would be taking a second run at the Labor leadership in the wake of the 2016 election.

Again, it’s a good line. And had events turned out slightly differently on 2 July, it might even have accidentally become a bit true. Had Labor done badly, there could have been a leadership contest and, had there been, I reckon Albo would probably have been a candidate (not that he will admit that to anyone who looks remotely like a journalist, biographer or otherwise). But that was never a factor in the timing of this book’s release – at least not for the people with greatest influence over it: the author and the publisher. Its publishing timeline was driven by two considerations: the times of year that publishers like to release new non-fiction books like this (before either Mothers’ Day or Fathers’ Day) and how quickly I could get it finished.

Originally, we were aiming for April. But it became clear back in December that the task was well beyond that timeline. And so it was moved.  Come hell, high water or a federal election, it had to be finished in time for an August publication.

But, I digress on my way back to the start.

I proposed this project to Anthony Albanese almost two years ago, in December of 2014, as part of a plan I’d quietly hatched to leave my job at SBS mid-way through the following year. My SBS contract was due to expire at the end of June and I would, by then, have passed a decade as Chief Political Correspondent at the second public broadcaster. I decided a year out from then, that it was time for a change. I had enough accumulated annual leave and long-service leave to sustain me through the first part of 2015 and I was looking for a project to see me through the rest of the year (and, as it turned out, part of the year after). I figured a book about Albo might be it.

The impetus for my suggestion was the personal story about Albo’s parentage and young life. I had known it for some years and I also knew he had never told it publicly in its full detail.

Having first encountered him when I was a young reporter in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery and he was a young Assistant General Secretary of the NSW Labor Party in Sussex Street, I came to know him as a person of whom I could ask naïve, even stupid, questions about the way politics worked and who wouldn’t generally call me an idiot. (I wouldn’t say it is always thus anymore.) As we’d become professional acquaintances, I had also learned more about him personally, including about this background, his closeness to his Mum, Maryanne, and the tale of her shipboard romance. I had tried to persuade him numerous times over the years to let me tell that story, either in a newspaper feature or on television, and he had always declined.

It was the story of how his mother, Maryanne, had met his father on a ship en route to Europe, how they’d had a romance and she’d returned to Australia pregnant and alone, facing all the innuendo that 1960s inner-city Sydney could pour down upon an unmarried Catholic girl. The story continued that she took on her absent lover’s surname, acquired wedding and engagement rings and invented an explanation for whenever anyone asked: they had wed abroad after a whirlwind romance but he’d died in a tragic car crash.When her baby son was born, Maryanne was supposed to give him up for adoption but couldn’t bring herself to do it, so the infant Anthony was given his father’s surname too and brought up by his Mum, believing her ruse like everyone else.

This already intriguing story was made more so by the revelation that when Anthony had reached his mid-teens, his mother had told him the truth: there had been no marriage and no car crash. Carlo Albanese had gone back to his town in Italy to marry someone else and she’d never seen him again. Upon learning this, the teenage Anthony had decided – as much to protect his mother as himself – that he didn’t want to pursue a father who had never wanted to pursue him. It would be the last time he and his mum ever really spoke about it in detail. But after she died some 25 years later and after Anthony had devoted his life to politics, married and had a son of his own – a son who’d begun asking the questions children do – he’d decided to go looking.

Anthony had told me at the time he made that decision that this was what he intended to do. So, periodically when we caught up, I would ask how it was going or he would volunteer some development or other. Then, when he actually found his father, the tale of the serendipitous series of amazing coincidences made an already-cracking-good story, into an incredible one. I pleaded to put it on television. I knew it would make a great profile piece. He still said “No.” So, when I was thinking about a project that might be worthwhile and occupy me for a year, it occurred that the story would make a great book. So I proposed it that way. I made the big pitch about telling the story properly, with his cooperation, about having it set out in full for his son, Nathan, to understand. I said I believed it was a valuable story for the rest of Australia to know because it showed what was possible in this country – how a kid from poor circumstances in Camperdown, raised by a single Mum who was devoted to his education and well-being and who had a gift for politics, can grow up to be deputy Prime Minister of Australia. I talked about how it would be a snapshot of inner-city life and Labor politics in 1960s, 1970s and 1980s Sydney, an opportunity to explain the inner workings of the Labor Party and, yes, a chronicle of his own contribution.

I’m not ashamed to say, I laid it on pretty thick. I really thought this story should be told and I really wanted to be the one to tell it. In a year when I planned to set daily journalism aside for the first time since 1985, it seemed like the perfect project. I remember making this pitch as we sat having coffee at Aussie’s Café in Parliament House. Anthony listened to my spiel without saying much. I half expected the usual blunt and immediate “No”, but that wasn’t what I got. His reaction said he was thinking about it and he confirmed he was. He would talk to his wife, Carmel (something I saw as a hopeful sign) and get back to me. And then we went on to talk politics as usual.

For three weeks, I heard nothing. I assumed he’d dismissed the idea and not got around to telling me, figuring he’d just deliver the news the next time we happened to speak, which wasn’t all that frequently. Then one day he rang and said: “Ok, I’ll do it.” He and Carmel and had talked it over. It was a big, big deal – the prospect of revealing that much of yourself, of holding your mother’s and your father’s actions up to scrutiny, never mind your own. But he figured the story would come out eventually and he didn’t want it to be just some footnote in some news feature. He wanted it done thoroughly by someone he knew and trusted and he said he trusted me. He also said: “We’ll need to set some rules.” I was in deep agreement on that point.

He said he wanted to read the manuscript before it was published. He also wanted the opportunity to offer feedback. I said I was prepared to let him read it to offer feedback to correct or clarify anything that was wrong but I wouldn’t give him a right of veto on its contents.  I did agree to hear representations if he felt something was unfair. I also agreed to consult him on the book’s title when it came to that stage and, when I had a publisher, to keep him in the loop on ideas for the cover. And on that basis we began.

I secured the services of a respected literary agent and planned to conduct some intensive early interviews with Anthony as soon as we both returned from summer holidays after Christmas. These would form the basis of a rough outline, which my agent would then circulate among appropriate potential publishers. As we wished each other well for Christmas 2014 and agreed to convene after the festive season, Anthony mentioned Tom Uren, the man who had served as a mentor and father figure for him in Labor and in life. He told me that once we got underway, I would need to move quickly to seek to interview him because his health was deteriorating. Alas, before I’d even sat down for my first interview with Anthony, Tom died – on Australia Day 2015. Anthony was MC at the celebration of Tom’s life at the Sydney Town Hall. Fortunately for me, Tom had written about his relationship with Anthony in his memoir Straight Left. The subtitle of my book, Telling it Straight, was in part a nod to that.

I waited a couple of weeks after the funeral before I sought to make an appointment with Anthony to begin the interviews. I remember when we sat down formally for the first one, I warned him it would be a long and intense process and that the personal elements of it might prove emotional and difficult for him. I said I would try to be sensitive and asked him to remember my undertaking. In that vein, throughout the process, whenever I wanted to discuss something that might be emotional, I thought carefully about how and where to raise it. For example, I didn’t ask him to recount deeply personal and difficult things during interviews in his office in Canberra when Parliament was sitting. I didn’t think it was fair to him to open up such issues when he might have to rush off in the middle of it.

I also didn’t think I’d get the best out of those particular conversations if he was watching the clock or the chamber. So those most difficult personal conversations – the discussions recounting deaths, final goodbyes and other emotional experiences — were mostly conducted in his office in Sydney and occasionally at his home.   I did a lot of day trips. And I saw a lot of the Hume Highway.

In all, Albo and I had some 40 formal interviews between February 2015 and mid this year. In between, I interviewed almost 80 other people, many of whom are quoted and some of whom are not. I moved beyond those lists he gave me and the other friendly names that emerged along the way to the ones belonging to those who didn’t love him. I’d always like to have got more of both. The success of the endeavour is for others to judge, based on whatever criteria their expectations set.

Writing a biography with the cooperation of the subject is a complicated exercise in compromise – but then so is writing one without it. I’m not keen on the descriptor “authorised” because not all of it was authorised. There are bits of it that he doesn’t especially like. He’d be happier if they were taken out. But he has had the chance to have his say. There has been some back and forth. And without the concession on my part to allow at least that, I don’t think this story would have been told.

Without Albo’s co-operation, telling such a deeply personal story publicly (and accurately) for the first time – and placing it in the political landscape of his life – would have been impossible. There would have been no access to his crucial family members and he would have used those lists of names to get the message out that nobody was to talk to me. It would have been a very different book, absent the story I thought needed to be at the heart of it, the story that made me interested in writing it in the first place. And it would have jeopardised my future journalistic relationships. To be frank, without his agreement, I wouldn’t have done it. It would have run counter to the ethical contract between journalist and politician that what’s off the record stays off the record until such time as both parties agree it’s on. Call me old-fashioned, but I think it’s a principle that deserves to be upheld. But in taking this approach, its inbuilt tensions notwithstanding (and there were occasional raised voices on both sides – and tears), I did not avert the critical eye.

I read, with interest, the first review of the biography, which on the whole was fairly positive but in which the writer asserted, apparently regretfully, that the book was “absent the seasoned political commentator”. I’m not sure what kind of commentary she felt was missing but I wonder if the reviewer was actually missing something: the point. The analysis – the commentary – is there in the structure of this book, in the choice of quotes and in the pulling together of threads as much as in anything I say directly.

There are visible patterns of behaviour and suggestions of influence. There are contested assertions. But there are not the conclusions of someone wearing a white coat without a degree to match.

I’m not a psychoanalyst, a mind-reader or a fortune teller and I quite deliberately don’t pretend to be. This is a life that is not yet complete. For those analyses, I’ve relied on those who know him best and many have made observations about what makes him tick. My voice is very much present in this book. But quite deliberately, I am not. That’s not to say it’s without reflection. I certainly go to motivations.

I think – well, I hope – the reader is left with the impression that the actions of Albo and his ilk are driven by a shifting but interlocking set of political priorities. Sometimes he’s acting in what he genuinely believes to be the national interest, sometimes in Labor’s interest, sometimes in the interest of the Left. Sometimes it’s just to advance his part of the Left (and I try to explain those divisions for the uninitiated) and sometimes it’s to advance himself. And regularly, it’s a brew of any or all of those at once. His shrewdness, if you want to call it that, is in managing to have the presence of one motivator create plausible deniability for whichever of the others he doesn’t want to highlight.

I think this book also shines an interesting light on the nature of political relationships – who can be friends with whom, why they are friends and just how deep the friendships run.

Former treasurer Joe Hockey told me, nostalgically, just before he headed off to Washington how he and Albo had become mates, bonded professionally over their joint campaign on aircraft noise from Sydney Airport before and after both were elected in 1996 and then personally on a parliamentary trip to the Palestinian territories in 1998. It was a privately sponsored trip – something that would be more controversial today than it was at the time – and Joe paid for his Bethlehem-born father, Richard, to join him. As many of you would know, Richard Hockey had anglicised his name from Hokeidonian on his arrival in Australia in 1948. Anthony Albanese found he and Richard had much in common, both having grown up without a father around.

On return from what was an emotional trip, Joe and Anthony established the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine. The book quotes Joe saying of Anthony that he is a man whose word is binding. In fact, as an aside, I found it interesting that some of the warmest tributes came from those not in the Labor Party. There are certainly some current and former Labor colleagues who don’t trust him, thanks in particular to his closeness to former prime minister Kevin Rudd. But I’ll come back to that.

Joe Hockey told me he likes Anthony a lot and that “he will always be welcome in my home”. But when I asked him if he’d ever had Anthony in his home in two decades of being mates, he looked sheepish and laughed. “No,” he admitted. “But I would happily have him in my home…” I think that says something about the nature of cross-party political friendships and probably even friendships within parties. There is a degree of artifice about them, almost invisible to the naked eye.

Parliament is an unreal environment and it throws people together who establish what look like close personal relationships but in many cases that don’t survive the end of a parliamentary career. Anthony’s factional colleague and friend Mark Butler observed this in his interview with me for the book. Butler said that often parliamentary colleagues would ask: “How are your kids?” “But really, they don’t know them,” he said. “They’ve never met your kids. It’s not that they don’t care – it’s just that they’re not the sort of friendships you have with people where they’re invested in your personal life.” He described politics as “a game of relationships” that worked best when it involved people who knew and trusted each other. I thought it was an interesting observation.

Others of Anthony Albanese’s colleagues going back to his earliest days in politics talked about him having a “gift” for relationships – being able to move easily in different groups of people – and how this had served him well. He certainly has that reputation now. The affability, easiness and quick wit which has taken some of the hard edges off the angry, sharp-tongued persona of his youth (he made an absolutely putrid speech about John Howard in his early days in Parliament) can mask what is actually a very determined and extremely strategic outlook. Albo plays the long game – much more than I realised when I started out in this endeavour. He is very good at working out where he wants his party, his faction, his sub-faction or himself to be, if not immediately then eventually (and he would probably add his community and his country to that list). He is also very good at pre-positioning to achieve that. And he’s used to getting his way.

Consequently, when Albo lost the leadership ballot in 2013, it’s my observation that he took it quite hard. I think he went into that contest with a genuine take-it-or-leave it attitude – I don’t think he grew up with a burning ambition to be prime minister. But once he had committed to it, I think he wanted to win and was bitter that he didn’t, especially given he won majority support from Labor’s rank and file. And the reason he didn’t was because nine members of his own Left faction in the parliamentary Labor Party – those loyal to the old Ferguson sub-faction and to Anthony’s current chief factional nemesis Kim Carr – voted for Bill Shorten.

As I mentioned, some of Anthony’s colleagues are suspicious of his closeness to Kevin Rudd and accuse him – mostly without putting their names to it – of being more involved in returning him to the prime ministership than he ever admitted. Their relationship is officially founded in some similarities of upbringing but I believe they’ve stayed close because they are both strategic thinkers who are good at planning ahead. I spoke to both of the most recent former Labor prime ministers about Albo’s role in 2013 and Kevin, unsurprisingly, backs Albo’s version. Julia Gillard is more philosophical. She insists Albo was always clear that he supported Kevin and had opposed his removal from the start – and this is true. She says he never betrayed her – but also that she believes his loyalties became conflicted towards the end.

Anthony denies he was actively involved in the campaign to return Kevin to office.

He was certainly careful to avoid the plotters’ meetings that others, such as Alan Griffin and Chris Bowen, attended. But, in contrast to what I’ve just said about many political relationships being artificial, there are exceptions. Those exceptions more reflect what you might see in a rear-view mirror: that some things – and people – can be closer than they seem.

Anthony refuses to say now what his future plans are. I do believe he wouldn’t do anything that could be seen as running counter to the Labor Party’s interests. That is what those tears were about back in 2012 during the Kevin versus Julia period. But I also think it remains unfinished business for him. And how he resolves the tension between those two sentiments will be very interesting to watch.