Anthony Albanese may be quietly considering a near-term exit from politics, after tabling deeply\u00a0polarising\u00a0tax reforms with Labor\u2019s May 12 budget.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell on Tuesday said he \u201cgenuinely wonders\u201d if the current PM will contest the next election.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople think I\u2019m mad when I say this, but I genuinely wonder whether Anthony Albanese is running at the next election,\u201d he said to Sky News host Peta Credlin.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s 64 next year, he has done something he\u2019s never really done in terms of putting these big controversial proposals forward… that\u2019s something you might do if you\u2019re not running anyway.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clennell said the PM would face an onslaught of \u201cpromise\u201d-related questions ahead of the next election about \u201cwhat new promises\u00a0are you\u00a0going to break next time\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, there\u2019s just a few things in here which make me wonder whether Anthony Albanese has a plan to go next year,\u201d he continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, almost no-one in politics believes me, especially Labor. They always say \u2018oh, he\u2019s going to go until 2030… he wants to break all these records\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe does love the job and he loves the trappings of it, I know that, but I really feel like after that budget – why would you do it?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clennell said the recent budget \u2013 containing a sweeping overhaul of negative gearing and capital gains tax \u2013 appeared to be the move of a PM parting ways with governance.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like a point of principle of something you wanted to do and be remembered for, taking away that capital gains tax discount and then\u00a0you\u2019re\u00a0handing the baton on,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf his stocks were to lift, maybe he would be convinced to stay on. And he certainly said to me he was running and running hard.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clennell and the Prime Minister were involved in a tense interview at Sky News and The Australian’s Economic Outlook Q&A on Friday.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clennell asked Mr Albanese if he would \u201cdefinitely\u201d run in 2028. The PM said \u201cof course\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clennell said he once made former NSW premier Mike Baird put a bottle of Penfolds Grange on the line over the same question.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWould you be prepared to do that?\u201d\u00a0he\u00a0asked\u00a0Mr\u00a0Albanese.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Albanese indicated he would not.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI got a very nice bottle of wine to declare an interest for speaking today, so I thank Sky and The Australian,” he said.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Credlin on Tuesday, Clennell said he still had the feeling\u00a0Mr\u00a0Albanese was considering an exit.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe issue for [Mr] Albanese is, and you see it in a lot of the social media comments, kind of, the longer you\u2019re in this job, the more chance you have of people basically disliking you and getting over you,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question is whether\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0at that point…\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0not dog years anymore in politics or\u00a0perhaps it\u00a0is dog years if\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0(having) shorter years… because of social media.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m\u00a0not in Anthony Albanese\u2019s head, he could prove me wrong and we could both look like fools, but\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0just saying a lot of these things seem to add up to me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthony Albanese may be quietly considering a near-term exit from politics, after tabling deeply\u00a0polarising\u00a0tax reforms with Labor\u2019s May…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25766,483,22,21,3220,25765,316,156,858,25767],"class_list":["post-27920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-25766","tag-anthony-albanese","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-budget","tag-clennell","tag-election","tag-labor","tag-retirement","tag-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}