Albanese is about to overtake Keating in time as PM, but the clock is ticking

August 6, 2026 — 5:00am

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For someone who claims not to have considered himself leadership material until he reached 50, Anthony Albanese is certainly racking up some impressive stats. He’s led the Labor Party for seven of the 13 years since his moment of self-revelation. By the end of next week, Albanese will have served longer as prime minister than Paul Keating.

Next year he’ll become the fourth-longest-serving Labor leader, overtaking Kim Beazley and Andrew Fisher. By the likely time of the next election in May 2028, he will have overtaken Bob Hawke’s eight years and 314 days, and only Gough Whitlam and John Curtin will have led the party for longer. That is storied company, given Labor’s habitual focus on its history.

One more number: if Albanese leads Labor to victory in 2028, securing a third term of office, he’ll be 65 – the same age as John Howard when Howard scored his last election victory in 2004. Sixty-five is old. It used to be the official age of retirement. But is it necessarily too old? As medical knowledge and treatments progress and lifestyles change, it’s getting harder to determine just how seriously old “old” is. All the same, it’s worth asking how much longer Albanese plans to remain in the job.

Albanese has improved in the prime ministerial role as he’s continued to inhabit it. Success can help with that. One advantage he has over most of his five prime ministerial predecessors, going back to Kevin Rudd, is that when he became prime minister he was a........

© The Sydney Morning Herald