Anthony Norman Albanese (born 2 March 1963) is an Australian politician who has served as the 31st prime minister of Australia since 2022. He has been the leader of the Labor Party since 2019 and the member of Parliament (MP) for the New South Wales division of Grayndler since 1996.
Born in Sydney, 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. He was elected to the House of Representatives at the 1996 federal election, winning the seat of Grayndler in Inner West Sydney. He was appointed to the shadow cabinet in 2001 by Simon Crean. 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, a role he retained after Kevin Rudd was replaced as prime minister by Julia Gillard in 2010. He supported Rudd's challenges against Gillard in 2012 and 2013. Following a final leadership ballot in June 2013, which saw Rudd return as prime minister, 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.
After the party's election defeat, Albanese stood for leadership of the Labor Party against Bill Shorten in a leadership election. Although Albanese won a large majority of the membership, Shorten received more support from Labor MPs and became leader. Shorten subsequently appointed Albanese to his Shadow Cabinet. 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. He led the party to victory at the 2022 election, defeating the Liberal–National Coalition.
In his first term, Albanese led his government's response to a cost-of-living crisis caused by the 2021–2023 inflation surge, held an unsuccessful referendum to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in the Constitution, updated Australia's climate targets to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, oversaw an acceleration of renewable energy projects, made major changes to industrial relations laws, enacted the Future Made in Australia industrial policy, created the National Anti-Corruption Commission, introduced a ban on children under sixteen from using social media platforms, established the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme and expanded access to paid parental leave and subsidised childcare. 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 oversaw an easing of tensions and trade restrictions put on Australia by China. He also administered the official commencement of the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and navigated Australia's response to the Gaza war.
Albanese's government was re-elected in a landslide victory in the 2025 election, resulting in one of the largest Labor governments in Australian history. In his second term, Albanese's government reduced university education fees, responded to Australia's housing unaffordability crisis, set the country's first 2035 emissions reduction targets, established the National Environmental Protection Agency and Centre for Disease Control, responded to the 2025 Bondi Beach shooting and the oil crisis caused by 2026 Iran war, and initiated the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. On matters of foreign policy, his government recognised the State of Palestine, responded to President Donald Trump's tariffs, pledged support for US and Israeli attacks on Iran and finalised a free trade agreement with the European Union. Despite being ideologically aligned with the Labor Left faction, Labor has shifted towards the political centre during Albanese's tenure as prime minister.
Anthony Norman 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 (1936–2002). His mother was Australian, while his father was from Barletta in Italy. They met in March 1962 on a passenger ship from Sydney to Southampton, England, on which Albanese was conceived. His parents did not maintain contact after the journey. Albanese's mother adopted Carlo's surname, and named Anthony after his cousin Anthony Howett, who had died in a car accident four years earlier.
Growing up, Albanese was told that his father had died in a car accident; he did not meet his father until 2009. He made contact with his father in 2009, visiting him a number of times in Italy, and also took his family there. 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 automatically confer Italian citizenship, Albanese's father was not recorded on his birth certificate and thus he met the parliamentary eligibility requirements of section 44 of the Constitution.
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. 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 ten 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 living 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. While at school, he worked part-time selling newspapers. He captained St Mary's on several episodes of the children's game show It's Academic in 1978. Albanese joined the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in 1979 at the age of 15, as a member of Young Labor. He subsequently helped found a Labor Club at his high school.
After finishing school, Albanese worked briefly at the Commonwealth Bank before enrolling in an economics degree at the University of Sydney. There, he became involved in student politics and was elected to the Students' Representative Council (SRC). He stood unsuccessfully for the SRC presidency in 1983, losing to Belinda Neal. It was also there where he started his rise as a key player in the ALP's Labor Left. During his time in student politics, Albanese led a group within Young Labor that was aligned with the left faction's "Hard Left", which the Australian politician Andrew Leigh said maintained "links with broader left-wing groups, such as the Communist Party of Australia, People for Nuclear Disarmament and the African National Congress".
Pre-parliamentary career and travel
After completing his economics degree in 1984, Albanese took on a role as a research officer to the then Minister for Local Government and Administrative Services, Tom Uren, who became a mentor to him. In 1989, the position of Assistant General Secretary of the New South Wales branch of the Labor Party became vacant when John Faulkner was elected to the Senate. The election to replace him was closely disputed between the Labor Left's Hard Left and Soft Left groupings, with Albanese being elected with the backing of the Hard Left, taking on that role for the next six years. In 1995, he left the position to work as a senior adviser to New South Wales Premier Bob Carr.
Albanese's first overseas trip was in 1986, accompanying his friend Jeremy Fisher to Vanuatu. In 1987, Albanese joined his boss Tom Uren on a visit to South-East Asia, which included: a meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, Thailand; an Anzac Day dawn service at the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery with John Carrick; and a tour of Cambodia alongside Bill Hayden's daughter Ingrid. He then travelled extensively in 1988, visiting Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Western Europe on a Contiki tour, and Eastern Europe and Scandinavia as a backpacker. Upon returning to Australia, he began dating Carmel Tebbutt, with whom he would holiday in Europe and South-East Asia, plus a backpacking trip to India in 1991. Sometime during his 20s, Albanese also took part in a tour of the United States by the U.S. State Department, with a thematic focus on the interaction of advocacy groups with the U.S. Government.