No matter how crappy your Christmas is, be thankful you don't have the 'shitty touch'

The Shitty Touch. Heard of it? It’s real, and it happens to all prime ministers eventually, when everything they touch turns brown and sticky, their judgment goes to … you get the idea, and every way they turn there’s another brick wall they can’t help but beat their head against.

You might remember it happened to John Howard with the arrival of the bright, shiny thing from Queensland in 2007. The electoral wizard who won four elections suddenly couldn’t buy a friend with a pocket full of 50s.

And then the sheen wore off that shiny thing when “the greatest moral challenge of our time” suddenly wasn’t. One by one the wheels fell off.

To paraphrase Hemingway’s quote about bankruptcy, how does a PM get the shitty touch?

“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

Tony Abbott lost it when he tried to give the man with more baubles than a shopping centre Christmas tree one more he didn’t want, need or ask for. Arise, Sir Philip. Sheesh.

The end was then inevitable.

Scott Morrison probably shouldn’t have holidayed in Hawaii, and certainly shouldn’t have said, “I don’t hold a hose, mate”. In the end, it wasn’t a hose he was holding.

So it happens to them all. And we are now watching it happen to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. It’s not pretty.

You could say Albo’s shitty touch started with the Voice, and there were certainly some major missteps during the referendum. These were obvious at the time, so this is not 20/20 hindsight.

He probably should have sought some compromise from Liberal leader Peter Dutton. Maybe tried to legislate it first instead of going all-in on his first hand, but instead, borrowing from his hero Gough Whitlam – he sought to crash through but crashed instead.

The Voice outcome was certainly a lowlight, but it was his reaction that exposed Albo’s flawed character and unleashed the curse.

The referendum was held on 14 October 2023.

After just two days of pressure to explain the thumping referendum defeat, Albo, a man who rocks up to the Garma festival every year and sits in the dust, said the Voice defeat was not a loss for him personally or his government.

“I’m not Indigenous, so it wasn’t a loss to me; that stays exactly the same way it is,” he said on 16 October.

So while he says today he has our back, on that occasion, if you were First Nations, he didn’t. You were on your own.

It got worse.

“I do think that it was disappointing for First Nations people, but they’re used to, you know, getting the, they’re used to hardship.”

It’s hard to find words to explain how heartless and tin-eared his response was.

His shitty touch was confirmed a year to the day after the Voice when on 14 October 2024, it was revealed he had purchased a $4.3 million home.

For a man who has done nothing in his life but politics, there must have been a small warning light going off in his head somewhere that this was not the smartest thing to do. You know, buying a house that costs about three times the Sydney average, four times the Canberra average, five times the Melbourne average and doing it with cash, even if he was giddy with love.

The optics weren’t good.

Then he fronted the media. Yikes.

His argument had three legs. Each one worse than the last.

First, he earned good money.

“I am much better off as prime minister … as prime minister I earn a good income.”

Fair enough. But the timing, sir. Cost-of-living crisis. Remember that? The timing. Do you get that? Probably not.

Then he ran the ‘log cabin’ argument.

“I also know what it’s like to struggle. My mum lived in the one public housing [flat] that she was born in for all of her 65 years.”

Mate, this is not the time to call on your mum. And you may have done it tough decades ago, but you’re doing fine now. Again, the timing.

Speaking of classy, then the wheels fell off entirely. He blamed his fiancee.

“Jodie and I are getting married. Jodie’s a Coastie. She’s a proud Coastie – there are three generations of Haydons on the coast there and when your relationship changes, your life changes and you make decisions.”

For the record, “proud Coastie” is not a thing.

And “when your relationship changes, your life changes and you make decisions” has a familiar ring. Remember when he changed course on tax cuts? He told the National Press Club in January: “When economic circumstances change, the right thing to do is change your economic policy.”

The lesson is simple: his word is worthless.

More recently, the curse returned following the terrorist attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue.

Instead of rushing to the scene, he stayed in WA. He did go to a synagogue in Perth to pay his respects, and he did some worthy work, but then the face hole started moving.

“I had six appointments on Saturday, after they had concluded, late in the afternoon, I did some exercise. That’s what people do.”

So he doesn’t hold a hose, but he does hold a racquet.

Does this mean the curse will manifest as it has for other prime ministers?

Not necessarily, but at best he is wounded and doubt must be growing in his colleagues about his decision-making capacity. He is wounded. And the shitty touch is a rotten infection.

Merry Christmas, Prime Minister.