Albanese government flunks transparency test while Coalition fixates on PM's T-shirt

Welcome back to your weekly federal politics update, where Courtney Gould gets you up to speed on the happenings from Parliament House.

As Sussan Ley was attempting to make an exit from a business leaders summit, an adviser stepped in to try to stop her from making any more comments on the prime minister's Joy Division T-shirt but it was already a day too late. 

"No, sorry, we've got to go," the staffer told the waiting camera crew who followed her anyway. Narrowly avoiding a camera, she threw out her hands as she explained she needed to get back to parliament.

Then she doubled down: "I don't take a backwards step on my comments."

When Anthony Albanese disembarked his plane on his return from the United States wearing the band T-shirt, the fashion crime of the too-casual outfit was easy weekend morning television fodder.

Five days later, Ley had a different problem.

She demanded Albanese apologise because the shirt, displaying the post-punk band's Unknown Pleasures album cover was insensitive to Jewish Australians.

She cited the fact the band's name, Joy Division, was derived from a term used to describe women kept as sexual slaves in concentration camps during World War II. And worst of all, the PM had been told about the "dark origins" back in 2022.

By the next morning, the T-shirt saga had returned to the morning television fray.

Her Nationals colleagues Bridget McKenzie and Matt Canavan didn't care about the prime minister's choice of clothing.

Ley's doubling down was sandwiched between two press conferences where members of her own party repeatedly declined to back in her remarks.

Will a shirt tear us apart?

Tim Wilson, who was trying to lash the government and the Greens for blocking an inquiry into the CFMEU, was visibly frustrated. He was peppered with questions about whether anyone in his electorate of Goldstein, which is home to a large number of Jewish Australians, had raised complaints. He abruptly ended his doorstop.

Meanwhile, Ted O'Brien's bid to draw attention to the higher than expected inflation figures met a similar fate.

"Look when it comes to fashion I don't claim to be the right person to ask in this parliament," he said.

The Coalition, it seemed, was as split on the issue of a Joy Division T-shirt as it is on net zero.

Just as she references her time as a rouseabout, an air traffic controller, a mustering pilot and a tax officer, Ley has famously used her "punk" past to add even more colour to the dusty back road she took before arriving at Parliament House.

But the saga is the opposition leader's second gaffe in as many weeks, leading some within her party to privately question her judgement.

After a week focused solely on the will-they-won't-they of Barnaby Joyce and One Nation, the Coalition wasted yet another day responding to yet another self-inflicted saga.

It wasn't as if there weren't a number of stories the opposition could have championed in the prime minister's absence.

Political games afoot

Take transparency, for example. The Centre for Public Integrity this week failed the government on six of seven fields, raising concerns about the tightening of freedom of information laws, jobs for mates, and parliamentary accountability.

A deep frustration with how the government has handled these matters has been simmering for some time now. There is real annoyance within Coalition ranks about how Labor responds to Senate requests for information and the cutting of staff numbers.

Spotting an opportunity for some mischief, David Pocock posed the question to the Greens and the Coalition: we have the numbers, so why don't we force an extension of Senate Question Time until a key report on 'jobs for mates' is released?

For the uninitiated, the Senate is a stickler for a time limit. So while Question Time in the lower house can, and has, gone on for as long as the prime minister wills it to, the Senate has a strict cut off of 3pm.

As a fan of the upper house, it was a stroke of genius that dared the government to come out and fight against additional transparency.

The threat of retribution was swift. The government threatened to strip deputy chair committee positions (which come with a pay bump) from Coalition MPs. Labor then ran down the clock on private senator's business (the time where non-government senators can introduce bills) in a bit of political game play.

"It is extraordinary that the moment I start talking about transparency that games start being played," a furious Jane Hume said.

Destination Asia

But one person who wasn't caught up in the shenanigans was the prime minister. After spending two days at home, Albanese packed up his bags. Destination: ASEAN and APEC.

Dates with leaders of Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Cambodia and China's Premier Li Qiang followed.

But an opportunity for a dinner date with US President Donald Trump and others had Albanese skip out on the final day of the ASEAN summit to arrive in South Korea for APEC a day earlier.

The dinner, held in a banquet room of a Hilton Hotel in Gyeongju, had a curious guest list and had all the intimacy of a reality television dating competition. Leaders from New Zealand, Canada, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore also scored an invite.

Albanese clinked glasses with Trump as he sat at the president's right hand side (something the prime minister said he was aware was going to happen).

Praise was lavished on Albanese for the "fantastic" job he'd done striking the critical mineral and rare earth deal last week.

It was a warm and affectionate embrace from a man, and by extension his policies, that Albanese weaponised only a couple of months ago during the election campaign.

The supper was just the prelude to a more consequential meeting the US president held with China's Xi Jinping. 

Trump will then fly home to celebrate Halloween at the White House. A scarier fate awaits Albanese: A Senate that's annoyed and ready to raise hell.