Anthony Albanese could be Australia’s first separated PM after wife dumped him

Should he win on Saturday, Anthony Albanese would make history as Australia’s first ever prime minister to have separated from his wife after a marriage breakdown. 

Since the introduction of no-fault divorce in 1975, Oppositions in Australia have lost seven elections with a divorced and remarried leader, even as the US and the UK elected leaders who had gone through a separation.

Albanese’s estranged wife Carmel Tebbutt, a 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 during the late 1980s.

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

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

Mr Albanese said the couple’s only child, their son Nathan, had just completed his HSC exams and turned 18 when Ms Tebbutt dumped him. 

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

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

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

The pair were first spotted kissing at an upmarket Sydney restaurant in June 2020. 

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

In March 2019 Mr Albanese took three weeks off and visited London and Portugal – a trip he credits for helping him heal after the break up.

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

Should Albanese prevail on Saturday, he would also be Australia’s seventh Catholic PM (he is pictured with his girlfriend Jodie Haydon)

‘You can tie yourself in knots trying to understand someone else’s decisions and thought processes.’

In March 2020, he attended a dinner event 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 the guests.

‘I said there’s always a random Souths supporter in the room and she yelled out ‘yep, me. Go the rabbits’,’ he said.

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

‘It turned out she lives in the inner west of Sydney and we had a fair bit in common,’ he said. 

‘She suggested we might like to catch up so we caught up for a beer basically and we found that we got on pretty well.

‘We caught up for a beer a few weeks later and things went from there. It’s nice to have someone to spend time with.’

Despite appearing in Women’s Weekly together, Mr 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’re out having dinner, put up with people coming up and photos and all of that. But it’s part of the deal, it’s part of who I am.’

Ms Haydon has more than 20 years experience in the finance industry, her LinkedIn profile said.

She lives on the New South Wales Central Coast and comes from a family of teachers – with both parents and grandparents teaching in the classroom.

The US has had divorced and remarried presidents, in Republicans Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, while the UK has Boris Johnson, a Tory PM with a colourful love life.

Albanese’s estranged wife Carmel Tebbutt, a former deputy premier of New South Wales, announced their separation in January 2019 after almost 19 years of marriage (she is pictured looking after the federal Labor leader’s cavoodle in Sydney as he campaigns in Perth)

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

The losers have included 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 (2019). 

Labor PMs Bob Hawke and Paul Keating divorced after leaving office. 

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

John McEwen, who briefly served as Country Party PM following the drowning of Harold Holt in December 1967, was Australia’s only leader to have been a widower in office.

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

If the opinion polls are proven right, the 59-year-old Labor leader with an Italian surname would also be the first PM since Federation without an Anglo or Irish surname. 

Albanese would also be Australia’s seventh Catholic PM, declaring this as one of his three key faiths 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 1929.

Should Labor win on Saturday, Albanese would become Australia’s 31st prime minister but only the first without an Anglo or Irish surname since Federation in 1901. The Labor leader takes his surname from his Italian father Carlo, who met his mother Maryanne met on a cruise ship in 1962 (he is pictured with his late father, far right, in 2011 with his then wife Carmel Tebbutt and son Nathan

The new separated couple had met in NSW Young Labor during the late 1980s, when Albanese’s Left faction still controlled the party’s young wing (they are pictured at the Parliament House Mid Winter Ball 

Anthony Albanese would join other state premiers with non-Anglo surnames

While his surname would be exotic among Australian PMs, state premiers have had non-Anglo surnames for the past five decades

Queensland’s longest-serving premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen (1968 to 1987), from the National Party, had a Danish surname while the Labor incumbent Annastacia Palaszczuk, in power since 2015, has a Polish surname

Nick Greiner, the Liberal premier of NSW from 1988 to 1992, has a Hungarian surname

His successors on his own side have included Gladys Berejiklian (2017 to 2021) with an Armenian surname and current leader Dominic Perrottet, with a French surname

But NSW Labor had in Morris Iemma (2005 to 2008) a premier with an Italian surname

While Albanese’s surname would be exotic among Australian PMs, state premiers have had non-Anglo surnames for the past five decades. Queensland’s Labor incumbent Annastacia Palaszczuk (pictured), in power since 2015, has a Polish surname

South Australia’s new Labor premier Peter Malinauskas has Lithuanian heritage

Albanese would also be the seventh Catholic prime minister after James Scullin (1929-1932), Joseph Lyons (1932 to 1939), Ben Chifley (1945 to 1949), Paul Keating (1991 to 1996), Tony Abbott (2013 to 2015) and Malcolm Turnbull (2015 to 2018) – who converted for marriage

Bill Shorten and Kevin Rudd were raised Catholic but converted to Protestantism

Should Albanese prevail on Saturday, he would also be the first Labor leader in almost 108 years to win from Opposition after having previously served as a cabinet minister

Andrew Fisher was the last in September 1914, during a World War I-era double-dissolution election, but he had previously served two stints as prime minister

South Australia’s new Labor premier Peter Malinauskas has Lithuanian heritage

James Scullin in 1929, Gough Whitlam in 1972, Bob Hawke in 1983 and Kevin Rudd in 2007 hadn’t been ministers before becoming PM while Anthony Albanese briefly served as deputy prime minister in 2013

Every Liberal Party leader who has won from Opposition Robert Menzies (1949), Malcolm Fraser (1975), John Howard (1996) and Tony Abbott (2013) had previously served as cabinet ministers

A Labor election win on Saturday would also make Albanese the first former NSW Young Labor president to become prime minister since Paul Keating rose to that role in December 1991, at age 47 after succeeding in a second leadership challenge to Bob Hawke

John Howard was the only former NSW Young Liberals president to become PM

But Albanese would be the 11th prime minister to represent a Sydney electorate

His estranged wife Carmel Tebbutt wouldn’t be the first current or former spouse of a PM to have held elected office with Malcolm Turnbull’s wife Lucy serving as Sydney Lord Mayor in 2003 and 2004 while Joseph Lyons’s widow Enid was an MP from 1943 to 1951