Now he is no longer prime minister, will Scott Morrison have to scramble with the rest of Australia for tickets to Taylor Swift’s 2024 Eras concerts? And will his successor Anthony Albanese get his for free?
The last time Swift toured in 2018 Australia Morrison was the country’s newly minted leader and the Australian Hotels Association New South Wales made him a gift of four tickets to the pop star’s Reputation tour. It appears to be the only cultural event Morrison accepted free tickets to while PM, according to the Australian parliament’s pecuniary interests register, where gifts valued at more than $300 received by politicians, their spouses and children must be declared.
A trawl through the registers of successive parliaments gives some indication how politicians spend their leisure time, if the entertainment accepted is gratis.
And the registers reveal the very different personal tastes of our three most recent prime ministers.
A year into his leadership, Albanese has already managed to attend an impressive number of live music events.
He has accepted free tickets to Jimmy Barnes and Midnight Oil concerts, both given to him by the artists themselves, as well as tickets to a concert by alternative US rock band the Pixies courtesy of the Sydney Opera House, Nick Cave courtesy of the Canberra Theatre and earlier this year accepted from Allianz Australia Insurance two tickets to one of Elton John’s Sydney concerts.
And while he surrendered to parliament most of the usual gifts showered on him in his capacity as a country’s leader, including sports memorabilia, valuable trinkets and mounted pig tusks (that appears to be a thing for Australian prime ministers when they visit some Pacific nations), he chose to hang on the T-shirts and CD sets sent to him by Aussie rock bands King Stingray and Lime Cordiale.
Also declared and retained is the Kiwi vinyl haul he scored during the famous record swap with Jacinda Ardern.
Albanese’s music-heavy register is hardly surprising, given he appears to be the only Australian leader who has ever moonlighted as a DJ, launched his campaign to become the 31st prime minister of Australia with the Ramones’ rallying cry “Hey ho let’s go” and introduced the country to his first cabinet ministry with the Billy Bragg lyrics “Just because you’re going forwards doesn’t mean I’m going backwards”.
While all this might make Morrison’s Swift jaunt pale in comparison (and to be fair, in the months leading up to him rolling Malcolm Turnbull, he did accept tickets to an Adele concert), the frequency of his attendances at sporting events while Australia’s 30th prime minister is positively heroic, particularly given that about half his tenure as leader played out during Covid-19.
Morrison accepted dozens of tickets to NRL and AFL matches, cricket tests and netball games while PM, many of them gifted by the team he cherishes, the Cronulla Sharks.
Albanese too has accepted tickets to NRL matches by the team he has been a lifelong supporter of, the South Sydney Rabbitohs. And like Morrison, he received the customary invites to the NRL, AFL and State of Origin finals.
A very different picture emerges from the register of Australia’s 29th prime minister. Turnbull appears to have accepted tickets to just one sporting event while prime minister, a match between the Sydney Swans and Hawthorn.
He and and wife Lucy did however manage to catch a couple of musicals, the Carole King story Beautiful courtesy of MC Productions, Muriel’s Wedding courtesy of the Sydney Theatre Company and a number of live theatre productions as guests of the 2018 Sydney festival. They also accepted free tickets from St George Bank to see the Washington Post political thriller The Post and the Guillermo del Toro fantasy The Shape of Water.
Of course, like Albanese and Morrison, that does not mean to say Turnbull did not attend other sporting and cultural events. Only those where the tickets have been gifted do they need to be declared on the register, and all three may have dipped into their own pockets to pay for other leisure pursuits.
And all three leaders appeared to surrender most of the gifts showered upon them during their tenure, including a considerable amount of sporting memorabilia.
Turnbull didn’t keep his hand-signed mounted cricket bats as a souvenir from the Australia v Pakistan tour, and Albanese surrendered his signed cricket bats from this year’s Australia v South Africa test.
Morrison accepted his cricket bats signed by the Australian and India teams (estimated value $5,000), but later donated them to the McGrath Foundation.
And he kept the pig tusks.
