Why Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese Missed the AFL Grand Final

Albo’s no-show 

Anthony Albanese has apparently found one sporting event he could comfortably do without. The Prime Minister did not attend Sunday’s AFL grand final, explaining that he had only returned from an overseas trip that morning—even though the match was held in the afternoon.

For a leader who is usually eager to appear before cameras, mingle with sporting crowds and take part in corporate hospitality, the timing of his absence was certainly convenient.

That is particularly true given that the taxpayer-funded Commonwealth aircraft has a bedroom and ensuite, seemingly providing plenty of time for Albanese to freshen up before joining the crowd—and seeing one of his favourite pop stars.

Kylie Minogue performed during the pre-game entertainment, and that may explain more about the Prime Minister’s decision to stay away than his travel schedule does.

This was, after all, the same Kylie Minogue he mentioned during the controversial podcast exchange in which he was asked which woman he would like to ‘shag’. The accomplishments of one of Australia’s most internationally successful performers were turned into an opportunity for the Prime Minister to offer a remark more suited to an immature schoolyard conversation.

During that same discussion, he also spoke about melons given to him by Japan’s first female prime minister, accompanying the comment with gestures intended to represent breasts.

The irony is hard to miss: Albanese’s overseas journey, which provided the stated reason for missing the AFL grand final, included accepting an award recognising him as a good ‘global citizen’.

It is worth imagining the television coverage his presence at the MCG might have generated.

If Albanese had been seen applauding Minogue enthusiastically, footage of his podcast comments would almost certainly have resurfaced. If he had attended the match but remained out of sight during her performance—perhaps inside a corporate suite with its frosted windows—he could instead have faced claims that he had deliberately snubbed the singer.

By staying away from the entire event, he avoided both potential lines of questioning.

An education for the Opposition 

The Opposition has recently announced an education agenda focused on changing the way Australian children are taught. Its proposal includes a stronger emphasis on history, although the Coalition may first need to confront aspects of its own record in government.

Julian Leeser, the Opposition’s education spokesman, says a Coalition government would rewrite the national curriculum, tighten classroom discipline, reduce students’ screen exposure and place greater weight on the foundations of Western culture.

Some of those proposals may appeal to voters. But before the debate turns once again to flags, national identity and cultural symbols, the Coalition faces a more basic question: what did it do during its years in office?

The Liberal-National Coalition governed federally for almost nine years between 2013 and 2022. Before that, apart from the six-year Rudd-Gillard period, John Howard was Prime Minister for almost 12 years.

I am no mathematical expert, but close to two decades in government during the 26 years before Albanese’s election represents a substantial opportunity to shape Australia’s education system. Unless, of course, the Coalition failed to make sufficient use of it.

The Liberals and Nationals have hardly been powerless observers of Australia’s direction over the past quarter-century. Their long record in office is also part of the reason they are now facing growing pressure from One Nation.

They’ve had many chances. 

Yet listen to the latest diagnosis of what’s wrong within our schools, and you could imagine the Coalition had spent its time peering helplessly through the school gates.

Leeser describes declining academic performance, disengaged boys, disrupted classrooms and teacher shortages, despite ever-increasing expenditure. These are serious concerns to be sure. But describing them as longstanding failures makes the Coalition’s own record the real issue here.

Children who began primary school when Tony Abbott became PM in 2013 were in secondary school by the time Scott Morrison lost office in 2022. For much of their education, the federal government belonged to the party now offering to rescue them from the poor results.

Ironic, isn’t it? It gets richer when you realise Leeser spent much of his pre-parliamentary career advising the federal Liberal Party on policy – first as an adviser within the Howard government, before heading up the Liberal Party’s official think tank, The Menzies Research Centre. During that time he produced precisely zero policy proposals on how to improve teaching within our schools.

I don’t object to a political party developing better policies. Opposition is supposed to be a period of reflection and renewal. What I object to is renewal without the reflection: the implication that identifying an enduring problem somehow absolves you of responsibility for having presided over it in the first place.

To be fair to Leeser, that’s far from entirely on him personally. But it’s certainly a Coalition failure given their time in office this millennium versus Labor.

As education minister, Christopher Pyne commissioned a national curriculum review in 2014. Arguments about balance, educational basics and Australia’s cultural inheritance were already familiar then. This isn’t new territory for the Coalition.

More awkwardly, education ministers endorsed version nine of the Australian Curriculum on April 1, 2022. Morrison was still prime minister at the time. His government approved the revised framework the Coalition is now railing against just weeks before losing the election.

Was it inadequate? Were the reforms badly implemented? Or has the diagnosis changed, and if so, why?

Any of those answers would be more useful than another promise to just start again.

There is an obvious qualification here too. State and territory governments run public schools, and the Commonwealth can’t simply dictate everything that happens in a classroom. National curriculum changes require negotiations between the Commonwealth and the states.

But federalism is a condition of governing Australia, not an excuse that expires when a party enters opposition. Leeser knows that, because as head of the MRC he did produce research on fixing the federation.

The constitutional arrangements haven’t suddenly become more accommodating because the Liberals desperately need another policy announcement. Which is why the Liberal government Malcolm Turnbull led shouldn’t have junked the tax and federation white papers.

That was our moment to reform sectors like education, but it was lost, on the Coalition’s watch.

Nor should scrutiny of the Coalition’s woeful record be used as an excuse to dismiss the substance of Leeser’s proposals out of hand.

Teachers deserve support in maintaining orderly classrooms. Students can’t learn effectively amid persistent disruptions. Making it easier for capable graduates and experienced professionals to enter teaching is worth examining, provided competence is maintained, of course.

So is whether schools are using screens because they improve learning or because technology has become a substitute for thinking about teaching.

There is also a legitimate debate about curriculum overload. Removing Indigenous history, sustainability and engagement with Asia as cross-curriculum priorities isn’t necessarily the same as removing those subjects from education. Leeser explicitly proposes retaining Indigenous history in dedicated topics.

That distinction deserves an honest hearing. Students should learn about Indigenous Australia, the British inheritance and the country’s multicultural development. Arguing about how to organise that teaching is not, of itself, an assault on any of these areas.

Other elements of what the Coalition want to do warrant more scepticism. A flag doesn’t teach a child to read. Veterans may make excellent teachers, but military service is no substitute for teaching ability, and classroom management requires more than an appreciation of delivering discipline.

Which brings us back to the missing explanation as to why we should believe that the Coalition can deliver now what it so comprehensively failed to deliver previously.

With Pauline Hanson challenging the established parties, the Liberals are trying to convince disillusioned voters that they have rediscovered their convictions. National pride, Western culture and discipline all fit rather neatly into that effort.

But there is a reason voters currently prefer an insurgent party to an established one promising to do, next time, what it should have done last time. The established party has a record against which its assurances can be tested, and it’s not a good one.

Labor shouldn’t mistake this for vindication either, by the way. Its own ministers must answer for educational outcomes and the effectiveness of their reforms. The Coalition’s failures don’t make the existing system satisfactory.

After all, Labor has already been in power for four and a half years since Albo was first elected. Enough time to start fixing the mess in Australian education that it inherited.

Instead, it just keeps getting worse.