Qantas the only voice reaching Anthony Albanese

So Australia is complacent, decrepit, tone deaf, immensely greedy, a bully, a welfare bludger, a horrible boss and a voracious influence trafficker? Little wonder we all suffer from the cultural cringe.

“The Spirit of Australia says yes!” he proclaimed. Since when does the Prime Minister of Australia subjugate his high office to the marketing tagline of a vendor, of a rapacious corporation? His next stop was a Suncorp event, where he told the faithful “Lucky you’re with AAMI.”

The PM’s political antenna is clearly not functioning. How could he possibly believe the Yes campaign might reverse its flagging popular support by aligning with Australia’s most complained about company, with a brand suffering from “new levels of distrust”? How could he think that holding joint campaign stops with Joyce, Australia’s most reviled business leader, is beneficial for the Voice’s prospects?

By our rudimentary grasp of it, the Voice is the pathway, preferred by First Nations leaders, to repairing entrenched Aboriginal disadvantage. And Albo is barnstorming with Alan Joyce, who earned $24 million last year and just sold another $17 million of Qantas shares to buy his neighbour’s apartment. Knocking out the wall between his penthouse and the penthouse next door – that’s Alan’s idea of closing the gap. As if mug punters identify with this guy or his values. You’d be forgiven for wondering if Albo is trying to lose his referendum.

Best of all, Albanese and Joyce invited a battalion of journalists but then refused to take a single question. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re here to pull the dust covers off our flying corflutes and to say some things that don’t make sense. Then we’re all moving on, thanks very much.”

“Here’s my stunt on the biggest political issue of the day. The end. Show’s over.”

Since when has that been a thing in Australia? Does Albanese think he’s Narendra Modi? It’s incredibly poor form and everyone can see what’s going on here. The Prime Minister is running away from having to explain the propriety of his conduct in relation to Qantas.

He won’t take questions because some of them might be, “Why did you hit up Alan Joyce for a Chairman’s Lounge membership for your adult son? How many free upgrades has he received? Why haven’t you declared this?”

Equally, Joyce will not want to clarify the commerciality, as he sees it, of his arrangement with the Albanese family – or indeed with all parliamentarians. Incidentally, someone should ask Joyce how many Indigenous Australians he’s invited to join the Chairman’s Lounge. Not very many is a safe bet.

The problem with Albanese’s covert Chairman’s Lounge gratuity is that he is now beholden to Joyce. He needs Joyce to protect him and not admit that in fact the PM solicited a gift. Therefore, Alan Joyce now has the Prime Minister of this country over a barrel. That’s how even the smallest favours can trap you.

Remember, the great Mick Young, a hero of the post-war ALP, resigned from Bob Hawke’s ministry over an undeclared teddy bear. Were Young alive today, what would he think of Albanese’s grasping ways?

It’s a serious lapse of judgment – especially from someone who apparently cannot restrain himself from intervening in aviation policy in a manner so clearly detrimental to the economic interests of ordinary Australians.

At face value, the decision of the Albanese government to refuse Qatar Airways’ bid to operate 28 new flights per week to Australia is a disgraceful one. Albo is smiling and nodding along to Catherine King’s comical, mutating justifications for it. Her decision was really his decision, and the only beneficiary is Qantas.

The entire travel sector, airports, wall-to-wall state Labor governments and even his own Trade Minister can barely believe it. Albanese is preventing 150,000 additional foreign tourists from arriving in Australia each year. They catch Ubers, drink coffee and buy clothes. They are customers of businesses who overwhelmingly employ low-paid workers.

Albo should talk to the struggling housekeeper at the Mantra in Brisbane who misses out on extra shifts as a result of his Qatari fatwa. She just wants to get her bad teeth fixed and buy her granddaughter a Christmas present. Could the PM explain to her why her job is less important to him than Alan Joyce’s?

This is where Albanese misunderstands the politics of this issue badly. These cleaners, those shop assistants, they’re Labor’s constituency, not fabulously rich Qantas executives. People getting off welfare into casual work – some of them might even be Aboriginal. They are the battlers enduring a cost-of-living crisis. They are the single mums so central to Albo’s heroic personal origin myth. And they’re the ones most harmed by his venal decision.

That’s the realpolitik here, but Albanese seems to have no grasp of it. His self-declared priorities are fighting inflation (which would include democratising airfares) while lifting wages for working people, but he is so totally captured. He’s lived at Kirribilli House a mere 15 months. Maybe long ago he saw a light on the hill. Now he only sees the mastlights on superyachts as they pass by.