When the prime minister flies out of the country, it’s standard protocol for there to be an acting PM.
In most cases, it’s the deputy prime minister who fills in.
That person is Defence Minister Richard Marles, or “the DPM” as staff call him.
Getting to sit in the big chair clearly offers a point of pride. This week, with Anthony Albanese in the United States, press releases issued under his name were promptly updated to read “Acting Prime Minister”.
Marles might hold the title on paper, but it’s someone else who for all intents and purposes is the nation’s second in command: Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong.
The South Australian senator is a darling of the Labor movement and a close factional ally and confidant of Albanese. It was Albanese who helped convince her to stay in federal politics after Labor’s shock election loss in 2019.
It was perhaps fitting that it would be Wong who would introduce and stand alongside Albanese three years later on election night when Labor stormed back into government. She leads the government in the Senate and had the pick of whatever portfolio she wanted.
A deputy leader typically gets whatever portfolio they want. Insiders say Marles wanted to be the foreign minister but knew it was a job he could never gain while Wong was in the parliament.
Many in Labor see Wong as Albanese’s praetorian guard and enforcer, the person tasked with keeping those with leadership aspirations in check (looking at you, Treasurer Jim Chalmers).
Navigating a different path on the Palestinian territories
Which brings us to this week, and the differences on show between the acting PM and the foreign minister.
For months, Wong, a senior figure of Labor’s Left faction, has been seeking to navigate a different path for the Australian government and the language that it uses about the Palestinian territories.
Speaking to colleagues in August, she said the government was looking to “strengthen the government’s objection to settlements by affirming that they are illegal under international law and a significant obstacle to peace”.
The result of that was the government re-adopting the term Occupied Palestinian Territories, consistent with other countries and the United Nations.
As fighting escalated after Hamas’ attack on Israel earlier this month, while acknowledging Israel’s right to defend itself she called for “restraint” to ensure the protection of innocent lives that could be collateral damage in further outbreaks.
There was no shortage of senior government figures preaching about Israel’s right to defend itself.
That prompted unease for some in the federal Labor about how close the government was to Israel in the aftermath of the attacks.
Fears Palestinans were being forgotten became public when cabinet minister Ed Husic and frontbencher Anne Aly last week spoke out against the “collective punishment” of Palestinians in Gaza.
As the death toll mounts in the region, Wong this week went further than she had previously and described the “dire” state of Gaza, and the “widespread suffering” of Palestinians. But didn’t go as far as to describe the situation as “collective punishment”.
Wong called for a humanitarian pause on hostilities to allow food, water, medicine and other essentials such as safe passage for civilians.
All eyes on the Middle East
About the same time, Marles, a member of Labor’s Right faction, was tying himself in knots in an interview with RN Breakfast, not wanting to call on Israel to do anything.
The acting prime minister said it was Israel’s right to defend itself, that he hoped innocent civilians wouldn’t get harmed and it was a matter for Israel to determine what actions it would take – he just hoped it would be carried out in line with international law.
Hours earlier, UN boss Antonio Gueterres said he was “deeply concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza”.
Both Wong and Marles are working closely on the task ahead should the situation worsen.
Defence Force planes and troops are being deployed to the region in the event Australians need to be evacuated.
In neighbouring Lebanon, home to many more Australians and permanent residents, the Australian government fears people are not listening to their advice to leave the country.
There is little, if anything, Australia can do to change what happens next in the Middle East.
Talking points aside, it won’t matter who is the acting or deputy PM should things escalate further. The task before both politicians will be working out how to get the estimated 15,000 Australians out of Lebanon.
Basking in warm Washington welcomes
With Marles and Wong running the show back home, Albanese has been basking in the glow of warm Washington welcomes.
It was a long-overdue intimate meeting between Albanese and the US President Joe Biden, whose trip to Australia was called off earlier this year when he had to stay home to hold debt ceiling negotiations with congress.
It was the same congress, and its inability to elect a speaker, whose dysfunction dashed any hopes of Albanese addressing a joint session while visiting DC. An address like that would have allowed the PM to make a direct appeal to the US politicians who could stand in the way of Australia gaining access to US nuclear-powered submarine technology.
AUKUS and the Middle East might have dominated talks with the US but the trip brought with it news on other fronts: Albanese announcing billions for critical minerals mining and processing, something the US is keen on to reduce its reliance on China, and that Australian cyber spies will gain a new “cyber shied”… powered by Microsoft.
The pinnacle of the event was slated to be a State Dinner, where there was no shortage of pomp and circumstance. The B-52s had been booked to perform, but as the ABC’s Barbara Miller noted, there was to be no “bopping away to Love Shack and Rock Lobster”, with the President’s Marine Band called in at the last minute to provide entertainment amid fears of the optics given the situation in the Middle East.
Albanese will barely be home before he sets flight again for his next diplomatic outing, this time for a long-awaited trip to China, the first of an Australian prime minister since 2016.
He heads there with a fresh warning from Biden that he shouldn’t be putting too much trust in the country.
While Biden might not have been able to offer a night with rock lobster, he might just get it in China, where trade restrictions imposed on Australian exports have savaged the industry.
Buried bodies in Senate estimates
There was no sight of Sarsaparilla-braised short ribs, sorghum-glazed young carrots or hazelnut and chocolate mousse cake back in Canberra, where senators were getting plenty of time sitting under the fluorescent lighting of Parliament House this week.
Senate estimates are a funny old time. Ministers can sit for up to 14 hours alongside senior public servants as senators grill bureaucrats about government policies and expenditure.
Some officials love it, seeing it as their time to shine. Others sit nervously in holding rooms, much like cattle at the abattoirs awaiting their likely slaughter.
You’ll see some senators spending their meal breaks walking laps of the building to get in the steps being lost to the hearings; others have been known to disguise a brew much stronger than tea being poured into parliamentary mugs.
There are a few things you can always bank on: Labor’s Glenn Sterle repeatedly reminding people he used to be a truckie, or veteran turned politician Jacqui Lambie and the Chief of the Defence Force General Angus Campbell clashing.
Done well, estimates can shed light on decisions and actions governments would rather be kept hidden. So far it’s proving a struggle for the Coalition as it seeks to adjust to life in opposition.
To succeed at senate estimates, it’s about working out where the bodies are buried. Unfortunately for the Coalition, after so many years in government, they know where bodies might be buried… because they put them there.
It was perhaps fitting that one of the great parliamentary performers, Liberal frontbencher Michaelia Cash, this week reveled in quizzing the government about an incident straight out of script for Utopia.
The government department, headed by a former Fair Work Ombudsman, which oversees workplace and employment laws underpaid staff in the year after Labor came to power.
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