PVO: Albo is developing a very distasteful habit. It’s taking a toll

• PM developing unhealthy tendency of speaking out of both sides of his mouth
• Abandoned Marrickville office farce is just the latest example 

The contradictory excuses being given by Team Albo for why his electorate office has been left vacant since January highlight what no politician wants to be accused of. 

This Prime Minister is developing an unhealthy tendency of speaking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time. Saying contradictory things at different points in time with the aim of deceiving the public. 

Pro-Palestinian protestors have set up out the front of the PM’s office in his inner city Sydney seat. They have attached all manner of banners and signs to the office walls to make their point. 

They camp out there day and night, even though no one is home. The taxpayer funded office just sits there abandoned, and, extraordinarily, has been so since January. 

The excuse used to justify why the Federal Police can’t simply move the protestors on, so the office can reopen is that ‘citizens in a democracy have a right to peaceful protest’. 

That is what former Guardian Australia political editor – now Albo spin doctor – Katharine Murphy told me this week. You can hear the pious tone just reading the words. 

But how does the notion of law-abiding peaceful protesting mesh with the excuses being used for why the office has remained closed for so long and can’t coexist with the protestors? 

To justify that situation we are told that ‘safety concerns’ and ‘security threats’ are the reason the office can’t reopen. 

If the protest is peaceful, what’s the security threat? If there really is a security threat, why issue statements justifying the ongoing protests on the grounds that they are peaceful?

It is a textbook example of speaking out of both sides of one’s mouth. 

In reality Albo doesn’t want to shut down protests outside his electorate office that encroach on the property in the same way protests that encroach on Parliament House are regularly shut down. 

Why? Because he doesn’t want the attention locally. Because the Greens will point out what he’s doing to an electorate that largely agrees with the cause of the protesters. 

But he also doesn’t want the ongoing spectacle of constituents and his staff walking past pro-Palestine protestors on a daily basis for the distraction it might cause. 

We all saw how frustrated he got at former Labor senator Fatima Payman distracting from his tax cuts sales pitch. 

The PM said the quiet part out loud and specifically pointed out in a radio interview that her decision to cross the floor annoyed him for that reason. 

Albo has made the judgement call that when it comes to his constituent office the lesser of evils is to leave the rag-tag protest to fester outside, even if it means the elderly and the disabled who go there for help can’t get it because the office is closed. 

You be the judge as to what that says about the values and priorities of our PM. 

Speaking out of both sides of his mouth isn’t a new concept for this PM or this government. 

Take for example the attacks on the Coalition’s nuclear policy. While there is plenty to pick apart when it comes to costings and the price competitiveness of Peter Dutton’s nuclear power policy, compared to other forms of energy, that’s not where Albo and his team decided to direct their attacks.  

They began by highlighting safety concerns, albeit via the use of childish images of three eyed fish and deformed Koalas. 

Yet Labor supports the AUKUS nuclear submarines. Do they hold similar safety fears for Australian sub-mariners who will serve on those vessels? Or do they claim that nuclear reactors deep under the ocean are somehow safer than ones on land? 

What about the way the PM and his party seek to paint the Australian Greens as a radical left wing party that should be ostracised yet Labor continues to do preference deals that get both of them elected. 

Just watch Labor drop the attacks on the Greens if they need their support in the aftermath of the next election to form minority government. Just as occurred when Julia Gillard needed their support in 2010. 

To be sure, all politicians try and spin their way out of trouble. Prime Ministers tend to do it more than most because they get the most attention and they have the biggest taxpayer funded media team in town. 

But problems begin to arise when they become too brazen or too reliant on spin over substance, and that is what we are witnessing the deeper Anthony Albanese goes into his term.

And with an election possibly just around the corner, that tendency to rely on false narratives and double speak won’t be going away. 

Do Australians wise up to it and punish Labor at the polls, or do they do what voters have done for nearly 100 years now, and give a first term government a second chance? 

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