What on Earth Was Albo Thinking? The Prime Minister and the Japanese “Melons” Affair

Of all the political blunders Anthony Albanese might reasonably have expected to confront as Prime Minister, explaining whether he made a joke about the breasts of Japan's first female prime minister surely cannot have ranked highly on the list.

Yet here we are.

Anthony Albanese is facing renewed criticism over comments made during a podcast appearance concerning Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and a gift of Japanese Crown melons. Albanese denies that his remarks were intended sexually. His defenders similarly insist that an innocent exchange is being subjected to an unnecessarily salacious interpretation.

There is an important factual qualification. The most explicit part of the exchange was not Albanese's. Podcast host Nikki Osborne reportedly introduced the Pamela Anderson comparison. It would therefore be unfair to attribute that line to Albanese himself.

But that does not dispose of the problem.

Albanese subsequently referred to Takaichi having brought a couple of melons and reportedly accompanied the exchange with a gesture around chest height. The combination of the preceding joke, the word "melons," the gesture and the laughter made the sexual interpretation sufficiently obvious that the controversy has now reached Japan.

This leaves an extraordinary question: what was Albanese thinking?

This is not some inexperienced backbencher caught making an ill-considered remark after a long parliamentary dinner. Albanese has spent decades in professional politics. He has been a minister, opposition leader and Prime Minister. He operates in a political culture intensely sensitive to language concerning women, sexism, workplace behaviour and supposedly unconscious forms of disrespect.

Indeed, Albanese comes from the political Left, where politicians have spent years telling everybody else that intention is not necessarily decisive. A remark can supposedly be sexist regardless of whether the speaker intended sexism. Behaviour can be offensive because of its context and effect rather than the subjective thoughts inside the speaker's head.

Apply that standard here.

Perhaps Albanese genuinely did not intend to refer to Sanae Takaichi's breasts. Let us grant him that defence. The question then becomes whether a reasonable political leader should have recognised how the exchange would be understood.

Surely the answer is yes.

The moment the host introduced a sexual comparison involving the melons, the obvious response for the Prime Minister was to laugh it off without adding anything capable of extending the innuendo, or simply redirect the conversation. Instead, Albanese participated in an exchange whose double meaning was obvious enough for others in the room to laugh.

And this was not merely a joke about an anonymous celebrity.

Sanae Takaichi is the Prime Minister of Japan. She is also Japan's first female prime minister. Australia and Japan are among each other's most important strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific. At a time of growing Chinese military power and uncertainty throughout the region, the Australian Prime Minister should be strengthening that relationship rather than generating headlines about the anatomy of his Japanese counterpart.

Former Japanese ambassador to Australia Shingo Yamagami has now criticised the episode publicly. That alone should tell Canberra that dismissing the affair as partisan Australian outrage misses the point.

There is an additional cultural element that makes the episode particularly unfortunate. Premium melons occupy a distinctive place in Japanese gift culture. Crown melons can be expensive prestige gifts, produced with extraordinary care and presented on important occasions. Takaichi's gift was therefore an expression of goodwill.

Turning that gift, even inadvertently, into the raw material for a sexual joke is hardly elegant diplomacy.

Imagine the political reaction if the parties were reversed. Suppose a conservative male prime minister had received fruit from a prominent Labor woman and participated in an exchange in which the fruit became an obvious reference to her breasts. Would progressive commentators be rushing to explain that everybody had misunderstood his innocent hand gestures?

It is difficult to believe so.

The vocabulary would arrive immediately: sexism, misogyny, objectification, disrespect and inappropriate workplace culture. We would probably be told that the man's intentions were beside the point because political leaders have an obligation to understand how their behaviour affects women.

Those standards cannot reasonably disappear because the politician involved happens to be Anthony Albanese.

There is a broader problem here concerning political leadership. Prime ministers are never entirely private individuals. When Anthony Albanese appears on an entertainment podcast, he remains the Prime Minister of Australia. His comments can be translated, clipped, circulated internationally and reported in countries whose leaders he discusses.

Something amusing inside an Australian studio can look considerably less amusing when replayed in Tokyo.

That is why diplomatic language has traditionally been cautious. The restraint can seem artificial and boring, but there is a reason for it. Heads of government represent countries. Their casual remarks about foreign leaders can have consequences extending well beyond the entertainment value of the moment.

Albanese's defence that he did not intend a sexual reference may therefore be perfectly sincere while still missing the essential criticism.

The problem is judgment.

How does a politician with decades of experience fail to recognise the danger once the conversation has acquired an obvious sexual double meaning? How does somebody from a political tradition exceptionally alert to alleged sexism fail to see the problem in making a chest-level gesture during an exchange about a female prime minister's "melons"?

Perhaps the answer is disappointingly mundane. Albanese was trying to be funny. He was appearing in an informal setting rather than Parliament or a diplomatic press conference. The atmosphere encouraged joking, the host supplied the innuendo, and for several seconds the Prime Minister's political risk-management machinery apparently switched off.

That explanation is more plausible than imagining some deliberate attempt to insult Sanae Takaichi.

But it is hardly reassuring.

Australia needs a close relationship with Japan. Whatever Australians think of Takaichi's domestic politics, she occupies one of the most important offices in our region. Basic diplomatic prudence requires treating that office, and the person holding it, with respect.

There was nothing to be gained from this episode. No policy was advanced. No Australian interest was served. No difficult truth was spoken that justified diplomatic discomfort. It was simply an unnecessary embarrassment created during an attempt at humour.

And perhaps that is what makes the affair so remarkable.

Governments sometimes damage foreign relations because vital national interests collide. Leaders sometimes deliberately use harsh language because circumstances require it. Those are calculated political risks.

But creating an international controversy over a pair of gifted Japanese melons?

That takes a special kind of political own goal.

Anthony Albanese says he was not joking about Sanae Takaichi's breasts. He may well believe that, and the more explicit Pamela Anderson line certainly came from somebody else.

But prime ministers are judged not merely by what they privately intended. They are judged by their judgment.

On this occasion, whatever was going through Albo's mind, good judgment appears to have temporarily left the building.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/anthony-albanese-denies-he-made-a-crude-joke-out-of-japanese-prime-minister-sanae-takaichis-melons/news-story/5f12baf6694d5c20c7a5ce482073d986