Anthony Albanese

His parents met in March 1962 on a voyage from Sydney to Southampton, England, on the Sitmar Line's TSS Fairsky, where his father worked as a steward, but did not continue their relationship afterwards, going their separate ways.

Anthony Norman Albanese ( or ; born 2 March 1963) is an Australian politician serving as the 31st and current prime minister of Australia since 2022.

Albanese was born on 2 March 1963 at St Margaret's Hospital in the Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst.

He is the son of Carlo Albanese and Maryanne Ellery.

His mother was an Australian of Irish descent, while his Italian father was from Barletta in Apulia.

Coincidentally, the Fairsky was also the ship on which Albanese's future parliamentary colleague Julia Gillard and her family migrated to South Australia from the United Kingdom in 1966.

His grandfather died in 1970, and the following year his mother married James Williamson.

He was given his stepfather's surname, but the marriage lasted only 10 weeks, as Williamson proved to be an abusive alcoholic.

Albanese's mother worked part-time as a cleaner but suffered from chronic rheumatoid arthritis, with the family surviving on her disability pension and his grandmother's age pension.

Albanese attended St Joseph's Primary School in Camperdown and then St Mary's Cathedral College.

After finishing school, he worked for the Commonwealth Bank for two years before studying economics at the University of Sydney.

Albanese was elected to the House of Representatives at the 1996 election, winning the seat of Grayndler in New South Wales.

He was first appointed to the shadow cabinet in 2001 by Simon Crean and went on to serve in a number of roles, eventually becoming Manager of Opposition Business in 2006.

He held various ministerial positions from 2007 to 2013 in the governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

Albanese was born in Sydney to an Italian father and an Irish-Australian mother, who raised him as a single parent.

Albanese attended St Mary's Cathedral College and studied economics at the University of Sydney.

As a student, he joined the Labor Party and later worked as a party official and research officer before entering Parliament.

After Labor's victory in the 2007 election, Albanese was appointed Leader of the House, and was also made Minister for Regional Development and Local Government and Minister for Infrastructure and Transport.

Growing up, Albanese was told that his father had died in a car accident; he did not meet his father, who was in fact still alive, until 2009, tracking him down initially with the assistance of John Faulkner, Carnival Australia's CEO Ann Sherry (the parent company of P&O, which acquired the Sitmar Line in 1988) and maritime historian Rob Henderson, and then later the Australian Embassy in Italy and ambassador Amanda Vanstone.

He made contact with his father in 2009, visiting him a number of times in Italy, and he took his family there as well.

In the subsequent leadership tensions between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard from 2010 to 2013, Albanese was publicly critical of the conduct of both, calling for party unity.

Albanese previously served as the 15th deputy prime minister under the second Rudd government in 2013.

After supporting Rudd in the final leadership ballot between the two in June 2013, Albanese was elected the deputy leader of the Labor Party and sworn in as deputy prime minister the following day, a position he held for less than three months, as Labor was defeated at the 2013 election.

Rudd retired from politics, so Albanese stood against Bill Shorten in the October 2013 Australian Labor Party leadership election.

Although Albanese won a large majority of the membership, Shorten won more heavily among Labor MPs and became leader.

Shorten subsequently appointed Albanese to his Shadow Cabinet.

His father died in 2014.

He subsequently discovered that he had two half-siblings.

During the Australian parliamentary eligibility crisis of 2017, it was noted that, although birth to an Italian father would ordinarily confer citizenship by descent, Albanese had no father recorded on his birth certificate and thus meets the parliamentary eligibility requirements of section 44 of the constitution.

Albanese's maternal grandfather George Ellery ran a printing business on William Street in Darlinghurst.

He provided printing services to the ALP.

Albanese grew up with his mother and maternal grandparents in a Sydney City Council home in the Inner West suburb of Camperdown, opposite the Camperdown Children's Hospital.

He has been leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) since 2019 and the member of parliament (MP) for the division of Grayndler since 1996.

After Labor's surprise defeat in the 2019 election, Shorten resigned as leader, with Albanese becoming the only person nominated in the leadership election to replace him; he was subsequently elected unopposed as leader of the Labor Party, becoming Leader of the Opposition.

In the 2022 election, Albanese led his party to victory against Scott Morrison's Liberal-National Coalition.

He was sworn in on 23 May 2022.

Albanese's first acts as prime minister included proposing a change to the Constitution to include an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, updating Australia's climate targets in an effort to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, and supporting an increase to the national minimum wage.

His government legislated a national anti-corruption commission, made major changes to Australian labour law and established the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme.

In foreign policy, Albanese pledged further logistical support to Ukraine to assist with the Russo-Ukrainian war, attempted to strengthen relations in the Pacific region, and held several high-level discussions with Chinese president Xi Jinping, overseeing an easing of tensions between the countries and leading to easing of trade restrictions put by China on Australia.

He also oversaw the official commencement of the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.