How Anthony Albanese could become Australia’s first prime minister who’s separated

If he wins on Saturday, Anthony Albanese would make history as Australia’s first prime minister to separate from his wife after a marriage breakdown.

Since the introduction of no-fault divorce in 1975, the opposition in Australia has lost eight elections with a divorced and remarried leader, even as the United States and the United Kingdom elected leaders who had undergone a separation.

Albanese’s ex-wife, Carmel Tebbutt, former deputy premier of New South Wales, announced their separation in January 2019 after almost 19 years of marriage.

The couple had met in NSW Young Labor in the late 1980s.

The potential future prime minister later said he “didn’t see it coming” when Tebbutt abruptly ended their marriage on New Year’s Day 2019.

‘I found it very hard. The relationship was 30 years old,’ she told ABC Radio in 2022.

Albanese said the couple’s only son, Nathan, had just completed his HSC exams and turned 18 when Tebbutt left him.

‘It is made for a difficult period. I will certainly always, always remember New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day for that momentous event in my life,’ she said.

‘I think part of going through a difficult period and coming out on the other side is recognizing that you’re going through it. I found it very hard. The relationship was 30 years old.’

Albanese, 59, has since moved in with First State Super finance worker Jodie Haydon, 43, who is 16 years his junior.

The couple were first seen kissing at a luxury Sydney restaurant in June 2020.

He has maintained a strong relationship with his son, who was only 18 when his parents divorced.

In March 2019, Albanese took three weeks off and visited London and Portugal, a trip he credits with helping him recover after the breakup.

“I needed to stop trying to understand it and just accept it and accept that it was a decision that had been made and that she was moving on with her life in a different direction and I needed to do the same,” he said.

“You can tie yourself in knots trying to understand another person’s decisions and thought processes.”

In March 2020, he attended a dinner in Melbourne where he met his future partner, Ms Haydon.

The avid South Sydney Rabbitohs NRL supporter said he took to the stage and addressed guests.

“I said there was always some random Souths fan in the room and she shouted, ‘Yeah, me.’ Go rabbits,” he said.

Mr Albanese said he was walking around the function introducing himself to other guests when he met Ms Haydon.

“It turned out she lives in Sydney’s inner west and we had quite a bit in common,” he said.

‘She suggested we might like to catch up, so we basically met up for a beer and found we got on quite well.

‘We met up for a beer a few weeks later and it all started from there. It’s good to have someone to spend time with.’

Albanese said he was “protective” of their relationship.

“I’m the one running for public office,” he said.

‘Jodie has to put up with… if we go out to dinner, put up with the people coming and the photos and all that. But it’s part of the deal, it’s part of who I am.

Haydon has more than 20 years of experience in the financial industry, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He lives on the Central Coast of New South Wales and comes from a family of teachers, with parents and grandparents teaching in classrooms.

The United States has had divorced and remarried presidents, including Republicans Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, while the United Kingdom has Boris Johnson, a conservative prime minister with a colorful love life.

But since Gough Whitlam’s Labor government introduced no-fault divorce in 1975, the Liberal and Labor oppositions have lost eight elections with a divorced and remarried leader.

Among the losers are, on the Liberal side, Andrew Peacock (1984 and 1990) and John Hewson (1993), and on the Labor side, Kim Beazley (1998 and 2001), Mark Latham (2004) and Bill Shorten (2016 and 2019).

Labor prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating divorced after leaving office.

Only one prime minister had never married, Australia’s only female prime minister, Julia Gillard of the Labor Party, who led Australia from 2010 to 2013.

John McEwen, who briefly served as Country Party premier following the drowning of Harold Holt in December 1967, was Australia’s only widowed leader in office.

Billy Hughes married a second time in 1911, five years after the death of his first wife and four years before he became pro-conscription Labor and later nationalist prime minister, from 1915 to 1923.

If opinion polls are right, Albanese would be the first prime minister since the Federation without an Anglo or Irish surname.

The Labor leader, 59, takes the surname of his late Italian father Carlo, who met his mother Maryanne on a cruise.

The future prime minister was raised by his single mother in public housing in Sydney’s now gentrified inner west.

Albanese would also be Australia’s seventh Catholic prime minister, declaring this to be one of his three key religions along with the South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Australian Labor Party.

This would be occurring 93 years after Australia elected its first Catholic leader, James Scullin, in October 1929, just before the Wall Street crash and the Great Depression.