Albanese dips toe back into comedy after ‘melon’ podcast gaffe

Anthony Albanese has waded back into alternative media after his fraught appearance on a satirical podcast earlier this year – though notably with a script this time.

As the major parties struggle to engage voters online to the same degree as firebrands like Pauline Hanson, the prime minister has made his latest pitch to younger voters in a social media clip with a comedy sketch duo.

In the clip posted on Friday, Swag on the Beat’s Jack Say and Isaac Gibbons pose as a couple meeting the parents for the first time. The unsuspecting boyfriend is confident he can charm his girlfriend’s father, until the door opens to reveal Albanese.

The prime minister leans in and whispers: “I’m very protective of my daughter, and if you break her heart I can reinstate your HECS debt.”

The clip ends with a mock political endorsement, with Albanese saying: “Brought to you by the Australian government swag.” It had more than 90,000 likes on Instagram on Saturday morning.

Albanese is ploughing ahead with his social media outreach despite the protracted backlash to comments he made on the Bush Deep podcast in July.

After initially being forced to apologise for saying in a crude game he wanted to “shag” pop darling Kylie Minogue, the Liberal Party later hammered Albanese over a separate reference to the “couple of melons” he was gifted by the Japanese prime minister.

Albanese denied he made a sexual innuendo about the leader but the media storm was such that the Japanese ambassador had to intervene and downplay the controversy. Albanese later said he would not have done the podcast if he had his time again.

“We have a view which is trying to talk to as many people as possible but clearly that was an error,” he said.

The major parties have so far largely failed to achieve the virality of independents and minor parties, such as independent senator David Pocock’s 25 per cent gas tax push and Hanson’s popular Please Explain cartoon.

The One Nation leader has copped her own backlash for the offbeat series, after using an episode to repeatedly brand Liberal frontbencher and SAS veteran Andrew Hastie as a traitor over his role in accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith’s failed defamation action against this masthead. Hastie launched an attack on Hanson over the “slur” and One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce split from his party leader to apologise.

Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen said on Saturday he thought the prime minister’s sketch was “pretty funny” and part of Albanese meeting Australians where they were in the digital era.

“Plenty of Australians are on various forms of social media. It’s not only an opportunity for members of parliament to talk to Australians, it’s also an obligation to talk to Australians in a way which communicates who we are, what we believe,” the energy minister told reporters in Sydney.

“There are very serious podcasts out there, which I do, and very serious social media posts. And sometimes there’s a lighter approach. I think that’s fair enough.”

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