Where is Albo's vaunted compassion and kindness now?

Ian Warden

Canberra Times

0
27.02.2026

"Q: Why do so many people take an instant dislike to Bronwyn Bishop?

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A: It's because it saves time later on."

- Former foreign minister Gareth Evans' unkind (but fair) assessment of his Liberal nemesis.

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Readers, if you heartily dislike prime minister Anthony Albanese, is it that you at some point took an early, instant dislike to him or is it that your case for utterly disliking him evolved over years and months until one day it was too big, too vivid to deny?

Life is short and the days of our lives trickle away like sands through the hourglass and I have been taking far, far too long to be sure that I dislike Anthony Albanese.

With my naive, pro-Labor biases, one is always expecting Liberals to be obnoxiously, bronwynbishoply hard to like while always hanging on to the shy hope that a Labor leader will, one day, blossom into someone worthwhile, something Whitlamesque.

But over time one's expectations of anything noble from Albanese's prime ministership have ebbed and faded.

Now in recent days one feels oneself being nudged further in the direction of unhesitatingly disliking the man. There is a banal nastiness in what he has been snarling against the group of 34 once Isis-linked Australians marooned in Syria and hoping to come home to Australia.

The PM is insisting that his federal government will not repatriate them, lecturing that "As my mother used to say 'If you make your bed you must lie in it'."

"I have nothing but contempt for these people," he has snarled, expressing what may be a hybrid of what he really feels and of what he thinks most voting Australians want to hear him say. He, Albanese, is competing with Liberal leader Angus Taylor to show which of them hates the 34 wayward Australians (including 23 children - my aghast emphasis) the most.

Ah, the banality of populism! How low can a prime minister go when he is in populist mode? Can he possibly go any lower than invoking the folk wisdom of something banal and unkind his late devoutly Catholic mother used to say?

What if she perhaps sometimes said kinder things about the necessity of forgiveness that Albanese this week is politically-selectively choosing to forget? What if in doing so she often quoted Jesus, for whom the necessity of forgiveness was a recurring theme? What if she was fond of saying "To err is human, to forgive, divine"?

In this vexed matter of whether or not the 34 Australians (11 women and 23 children - my italics, again) living wretchedly in the camp in Syria, what would Jesus do?

For everyone, Christian or not, who knows the Jesus who emerges in the New Testament and sets an example there of love and compassion and forgiveness, the answer is a no-brainer. He, Jesus, especially moved by the plight of the 23 utterly blameless children (my italics, again) would forgive the 34 their misguided Isis trespasses and want them brought home, now. He would want them to be cared for and to be lovingly Australianised.

Last year, in interviews, Albanese, a cultural Catholic, made some substantially Christian claims for his Christian better self.

"It's a part of who I am, my upbringing," he said when asked about the Catholic faith.

"During the election campaign, one of the statements I made that resonated ... was that kindness isn't weakness. And that really is something that's a part of how I was raised in the Catholic faith about having compassion and kindness for people, particularly vulnerable people."

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Where is Albo's vaunted compassion and kindness now?

Ian Warden

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