The Bush Barbie podcast was a train wreck that keeps on going. Photo: Screenshot.
Anthony Albanese makes a pretty decent effort on the diplomatic front, engaging domestically and abroad with world leaders.
At home, the Prime Minister is a gracious host to his visiting counterparts and other international dignitaries.
Around the globe, he pays due respect to those who welcome him and express good relations with Australia.
The PM has an impressive track record of looking after Australia’s interests on the world stage without causing overt offence or pushing the envelope too far.
He has never been in the foreign service as an actual diplomat, but as the country’s leader he has shown that he gets the importance of good international relations and the need for circumspect diplomacy.
So how come the nation is again talking about Albo in terms of sexist commentary, and this time towards a female head of government?
We’ve had his “difficult” definition of Grace Tame during a silly rapid-fire Q&A live on camera, which allowed Tame to highlight that misogynists use the word to describe women they can’t control.
A mealy-mouthed prime ministerial effort to explain what he really meant just served to make the matter worse.
That was in February, but not having learned the lesson that dignified prime ministers shouldn’t engage in such gotcha interviews, Albo was at his hip coolest again in July, taking part in a podcast interview with the very funny and very “wrong” Nikki Osborne on her Bush Deep podcast.
In character as the scantily clad and bawdy Bush Barbie, Osborne got the PM to confess he’d give Kylie Minogue a shag given half a chance.
It was great viewing and should help send Osborne on the path to becoming almost as much a national treasure as the goddess Kylie.
But for Australia’s Prime Minister it was a disaster – cue another grovelling apology.
Just as the outrage (feigned and genuine) over the massive gaffe has finally settled down, up jumps a renewed focus on that same interview and another clumsy prime ministerial utterance.
This one, however, has the potential for far more serious consequences – because it involves another head of government, and a woman at that.
During the podcast interview, Albanese was asked about some of the worst official gifts he had been given as PM.
He went straight to two crown melons presented to him by Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
As if disparaging a gift from a counterpart wasn’t bad enough (although he did say they were beautiful), the PM used suggestive hand gestures to describe them.
He talked about Takaichi’s “couple of melons” while making big squeezing hand gestures in front of his chest.
We can give the PM the benefit of the doubt that he wasn’t intentionally mimicking the squeezing of breasts, but was rather trying to express (no pun intended) how big the gifted melons were.
But Osborne, on top of her game, chimed in with: “She brought two. She just came in looking like Pamela Anderson.”
There’s no getting away from it that the whole interview and that particular exchange was filled with double entendres and sexual innuendo.
Not a good look for a prime minister.
Albanese receiving a melon from Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on 5 May 2026. Photo: X.
It has come back to haunt him this week thanks to an opinion piece in The Australian penned by Tokyo’s former ambassador to Canberra, Shingo Yamagami.
He described the Australian Prime Minister’s remarks as insulting, and suggested they would damage his standing in Japan.
Not only did the diplomat explain that a crown melon is “the most prized fruit in Japan and treasured as something special”, he described it as “appalling to note the ignorance” about what this gift means.
But he went further and chastised Albanese for engaging in sexist banter for all to see.
“However lighthearted it was intended to be, the recent joke delivered by PM Anthony Albanese at the expense of Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi is how he might be remembered by Japanese who most value the friendship with Australia,” the former ambassador wrote.
“It is a time for toiling and not for crude jokes at another’s expense.
“So, Prime Minister, please enjoy Japan’s sweet and juicy melons without thinking about a woman’s anatomy, and instead focus on what our two countries must do together.”
The PM’s office issued a statement to News Corp on Monday, strongly denying the comments were a joke about breasts.
“This assertion is wrong,” the statement said.
Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek came to the PM’s defence on Monday too, slapping down questions about it during a morning TV interview on Sunrise.
“I completely disagree with that interpretation of what the Prime Minister was saying,” she said.
“I completely disagree that he was in any way making the suggestion that you’re proposing or that the former ambassador is proposing now.”
That hasn’t stopped Opposition Leader Angus Taylor calling on the Prime Minister to formally apologise to his Japanese counterpart for comments that were beneath his office.
“They were insulting, and the Prime Minister should make a personal apology,” Taylor said.
“He’s done it through a statement. I mean, the hypocrisy of Labor and the Foreign Minister [Penny Wong] on this topic.”
Deputy Opposition Leader Jane Hume called the PM’s words and gestures “grubby” and “inappropriate”.
It’s worth noting that when Yamagami was the ambassador to Australia, mostly while Labor was in Opposition, he didn’t enjoy a good relationship with either Albanese or Wong.
It is also worth noting that the Japanese government has not bought into this episode at all yet.
And it is also worth noting that Australia’s Prime Minister is not really sexist or a misogynist – he’s just too clever by half sometimes for taking part in these shows at all.
Original Article published by Chris Johnson on Region Canberra.
