Australia’s 31st prime minister can’t remember a time when life hasn’t required him to think three steps ahead. His mother, Maryanne, was often unwell, and from the time he was born in 1963, it was just the two of them in a council house in Sydney’s inner west. He wouldn’t meet his father, Carlo, until he was an adult.
When Maryanne was incapacitated, young Anthony was in loco parentis. He did the finances, paid the rent and the household bills. When he was 12, he got himself a paper round. After school, Albanese sold copies of The Sun and The Daily Mirror on Bligh Street, amid peak-hour traffic. He chose that location because the kids got $16 a week instead of $12. Maryanne had rheumatoid arthritis. Management of her chronic pain was sporadic and ineffectual until a mate from university, Mark Jones, came around for dinner one night and saw Anthony having to cut up his mother’s food so she could eat. Albanese recounts this experience a lot, because humans curate our biographies. The stories we share from our past are often didactic, and this particular anecdote explains how he came to understand the value of accruing a network.
