Why shouldn’t Anthony Albanese admit he fancies Kylie Minogue?

Like most politicians, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese isn’t celebrated for his honesty. Yet, to prove that even the most hardened and lifeless political creatures are still human, ‘Albo’ has let his guard down. He has said what he really thinks and said it in plain English… He would like to sleep with Kylie Minogue.

This unexpected admission was made on Friday, when Albanese was speaking to Australian comedian Nikki Osborne on her Bush Deep podcast. Albanese was asked to play a game of ‘shag, marry, date’ – a sanitised variation of what most of us would know as ‘fuck, marry, kill’. He was offered the choice of Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman and entertainer Rhonda Burchmore.

It was a sharp bouncer that, at least initially, Albanese tried to duck. ‘I’ve just got married – I’m only six months in’, he said – probably the right answer, for both personal and political reasons. ‘But if it goes tits up?’, Osborne asked. ‘Kylie, clearly’, Albanese responded. ‘You’d marry Kylie? And shag her? And date her?’, she probed. ‘All of the above’, Albanese said. ‘She’s terrific.’

For this admission – and, no doubt, the implication that he finds some women more attractive than others – Albanese has been branded a sexist. Popular independent MP Zali Steggall called his comments ‘entirely inappropriate’. ‘He needs to learn to push back, to lead by example and call it out as sexist’, she said. A columnist in the Sydney Morning Herald condemned Albanese’s ‘garden-variety sexism’ and ‘confirmation that not as much has changed as we would like to think’. ‘Is it not possible’, she wrote, ‘to be casual and jocular, and also respect women? Make non-sexual jokes?’

Albanese offered a swift, grovelling apology. ‘I apologise unequivocally for the comments’, he said. Luckily for him, his prime ministerial duties have since taken him to Fiji, leaving his senior ministers to face the media backlash. They have wheeled out all of the predictable defences – that no prime minister has done more to advance the interests of women, or had a cabinet with more women – and so on.

Surely this is an overreaction. Indeed, if you only read the commentary, rather than watched the interview, you might have expected Albanese to be drooling as he speculated on the ‘things he’d do’ to the Aussie songstress. Instead, all he did was respond honestly to an admittedly juvenile question, admitting he would like to do ‘all of the above’ with Kylie Minogue – a sentiment probably shared by many men.

It isn’t only an overreaction – the tired, predictable outrage of the Australian commentariat is also deeply hypocritical. Modern politicians are constantly told to be more ‘human’. That is, they need to be ‘relatable’, ‘authentic’ and show that they are ‘one of us’.

No doubt, this is why so many of them go on podcasts like Bush Deep (get it?), where the title might have been thought to have offered a clue as to the standard and nature of questions. And why the prime minister, sitting next to a woman with an affectedly broad Australian accent, was not only forced to answer questions about what well-known Australians he fancied, but also whether he would prefer to eat ‘shit that tastes like lollies’ or ‘lollies that taste like shit’. It was a humiliating spectacle.

Albanese’s appearance on Bush Deep was an own goal in more ways than one. Not only did it fail to endear him to the humourless liberals who find such shows amusing – the real failure was that Albanese still came across as awkward and weird. Even as he was trying to be ‘normal’ and ‘relatable’ by professing his admiration for Minogue, an uncomfortable grimace broke out across his face. This expression, combined with his description of her as ‘terrific’, produced a mildly disturbing effect. In any event, it was evidence that we weren’t dealing with someone very normal at all – much like the time Keir Starmer, as he was being abused by an angry publican, offered the man a pen as he was led off.

None of this is likely to seriously endanger Anthony Albanese’s premiership, which is at least a good thing. There are many reasons to be critical of his record – particularly his failure to stand up to anti-Semitism – and it is for these reasons that he should be dragged over the coals, not for his failed attempt to be funny, or normal. We already knew he was neither.

Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.