‘Mum’s aspiration was that my life would turn out better than hers. It was because of her that a working class kid from a council flat would one day become our country’s Prime Minister.’

So begins Anthony’s Story on the Prime Minister’s personal website. It’s his own Australian reworking of the American dream that takes a man from log cabin to the White House.

So enamoured of this vision is the PM that he refers to it repeatedly just on this one page.

‘My mum raised me in public housing as a single parent…. It was because of her that a working class boy from council housing would one day become our country’s Prime Minister…. Anthony was born to a single mum… in council housing.’

If you think that’s laying it on with a trowel, the PM wasn’t finished. The webpage continues, ‘2013. From Houso to Deputy Prime Minister. Anthony was appointed deputy prime minister in the new Rudd Labor Government. In his first speech, he said, “It says a great thing about our nation that the son of a parent who grew up in a council house in Sydney could be Deputy Prime Minister.”’

With his deprived background its easy to see why Mr Albanese wanted to upgrade his inner-city home to a $4.3-million-dollar cliffside mansion with ocean views in a town improbably called Copacabana, presumably after the neighbourhood in Rio de Janeiro.  It’s true he did it during a cost of living crisis when the battlers on Struggle Street are wondering how they can afford to make the mortgage repayments on their first home but as he explained to the press, his girlfriend is a ‘coastie’. What’s a man to do? Sure the nation and particularly New South Wales is in the middle of a housing crisis created in part by the decision of Mr Albanese’s government to bring in more than a million migrants in less than two years, but clearly, after living in Kirribilli House, Houso Albo and Coastie Jodie have developed a taste for ocean views.

Even Albo’s friends at the ABC were concerned about the way it looked. Annabel Crabb helpfully reworked the Barry Manilow hit ‘Copacabana’ into a jingle to demonstrate the point: ‘His name was Albo, he was a battler, Grew up with public housing blues, Now he’s gone for ocean views, Maybe he’ll rent it, and do the cha-cha, Look it won’t be all that weird, If it’s negatively geared. At the Copa, Copacabana, Take it up with my financial planner.’

Still, if you are going to upgrade your house, why not upgrade the road as well? You don’t spend years of your life as the Minister for Transport without coming to understand the importance of bitumen and asphalt. So, coincidentally or otherwise, he dug deep into the taxpayers’ pockets to announce a $100-million upgrade of the road leading to his $4.3-million waterfront property.

Despite his humble origins, Albanese has always stressed his aspirations for a better life. As he website proclaims, ‘A lot of things were uncertain, but one thing wasn’t – Maryanne’s determination that her son’s life would be better than her own.’ Perhaps it was because of his mum’s ambitions that Albanese called the CEO of Qantas on some 22 occasions seeking to upgrade his travel from economy to business class including during the -period he held the Infrastructure and Transport portfolio from 2010 to 2013.

Did this influence Labor’s decision to award more slots to Qantas than to Qatar Airways? Mr Albanese thinks not, although five years ago when then finance minister Mathias Cormann claimed that he had ‘inadvertently’ not paid the full cost of travel after ringing the CEO of Helloworld who was also the Liberal party treasurer Mr Albanese had greater clarity on the issue saying, ‘You say Helloworld, I say hello conflict of interest, prime minister!’

To ask the question another way, what does Qantas seek in return for this largesse? Nothing at all? To answer that question, one might turn to Clive Palmer. He lost his access to the Chairman’s Lounge ten years ago when he used his Senate vote to block a bill lifting Qantas’s foreign ownership restrictions. Mr Palmer has called for politicians to be denied access to the Chairman’s Lounge, calling it a ‘disgraceful perk used to reward or punish politicians’. It would be hard to argue with that but surprisingly the ABC managed to claim that it was Mr Palmer who was being ‘hypocritical’ since he was so wealthy that he hadn’t needed to fly in a commercial aircraft carrier since 1967.

When it comes to the battle between Qatar Airlines and Qantas one is reminded of the immortal words of Henry Kissinger in contemplating the war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s when he said, ‘It’s a pity both sides can’t lose’.

To be fair, Qatar, as the national carrier of the state that funds all the Islamist terror movements from Islamic State and Al-Qaeda to Hamas, is obviously the more morally depraved but Qantas, as the Queen of Woke airlines, has done its best to undermine  egalitarian values of everyday Australians. Either way, Australian travellers are the losers in restricting access to the slots to either of these airlines.

For those with not particularly long memories it was interesting to see that among the destinations for which Mr Albanese asked for upgrades was Hawaii. Who could forget how Labor hounded former prime minister Scott Morrison for almost three years for taking his family on holiday in Hawaii, when Mr Albanese did one better, getting an upgrade to business?

No one can accuse Mr Albanese of not thinking about his family. ‘In 2000, Albanese’s son Nathan was born,’ his website announces. And, ‘Just as his mum Maryanne dreamed of a better life for her son, Anthony dreams of a better life for Nathan’. So it’s easy to understand why Albanese asked Mr Joyce for a Chairman’s Lounge membership for Nathan. Isn’t that what’s meant by intergenerational equity?

In his first speech to parliament, Albanese said, ‘For myself, I will be satisfied if I can be remembered as someone who will stand up for the interests of my electorate, for working-class people, for the labour movement, and for our progressive advancement as a nation into the next century’.

No doubt Mr Albanese will be remembered for what might be called Albo’s Progress. On becoming Prime Minister he has come full circle moving back into public housing once again. ‘In my end is my beginning,’ wrote T.S. Eliot. Yet from houso to houso has a completeness of which T.S. Eliot could only dream.