Australia: Anthony Albanese will be the first premier of Italian origins The father was from Barletta

Rome. The son of a sailor from Barletta, raised by a single mother in a council house, Anthony Albanese will be the first premier of Italian descent to lead Australia and also the only one who has managed to lead the Labor Party to victory after almost ten years of the domain of the liberals. ‘Albo’ for friends, the new head of the Australian government is 59 years old and has a long political career behind him during which he was also Minister of Transport. Where the defeated prime minister, Scott Morrison, called himself a “bulldozer”, Albanese assures that he is a “builder” who wants to reunify Australia after the divisions between states and cities caused by the Covid pandemic. “I want to unite Australians. I want to seek our common purpose and promote unity and optimism, not fear and division,” he said in his victory speech. A supporter of free public health, always on the side of the rights of the LGBTQ + community, anti-monarchist and a great rugby fan, Anthony often spoke of his humble origins as a strength. Her mother Maryanne Ellery, an Australian of Irish origin and a super Catholic family, met her father, Carlo Albanese, during a cruise to Asia and Europe in 1962, where he worked as a steward. The only overseas trip in her life, the mother of the new Australian premier returned to Sydney alone and four months pregnant. To avoid the scandal in hyper-conservative Australia in the 1960s, the family reported that the child’s father had died in a car accident shortly after their wedding in Europe. Even ‘Albo’ learned the truth only when he was 14 and only 30 years later did he meet his father, who died in 2014, when he went to look for him in Puglia during a business trip to Italy. Albanese has always thanked her mother, who only managed to support him with a disability pension due to severe arthritis, for giving him opportunities that she never had. Thanks to her, he became the first in his family to finish school and go to university. Nathan’s father who, he claims, is the reason he entered politics, the new Australian premier separated from his wife in 2019 after 19 years together and now has a new partner, Jodie Haydon, who has followed him throughout the campaign. electoral. Last year he underwent a radical physical transformation losing 15 pounds after a car accident that he called “a wake up call”. As for his political ideas, he started from the left-most wing of Labor over the years and moved more towards the center, giving up radical positions on climate change and increasing anti-Beijing rhetoric. He also recently supported the controversial decision to turn back all migrants arriving by sea. He remains true to his Labor roots, however, with promises of higher spending in aged care, cheaper childcare and a referendum to establish an Aboriginal advisory body in parliament. In the next few days he will make his debut on the international scene by participating in the Quad meeting in Tokyo, with the leaders of Japan, India and in the presence of the American President Joe Biden.