MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been criticized for buying a multimillion-dollar waterfront home during a national housing crisis with federal elections just months away.
Critics argue that the purchase of the 4.3 million Australian dollar ($2.9 million) clifftop home at Copacabana, north of his hometown of Sydney, made him appear out of touch with many Australians who are struggling to buy or rent a home due to elevated interest rates, rising prices and limited supply.
Albanese brushed off criticisms Wednesday when questioned by reporters about concerns raised privately within his own government.
“We want to get on with helping Australians, whether it be public housing, whether it be rentals or whether it be buying their own homes,” Albanese said.
Copacabana and several other beaches in the area have mainly multi-million dollar price tags on their waterfront homes, owned by Sydney-siders who still have homes in the city or have moved to a more tranquil lifestyle.
Opposition lawmaker Sussan Ley described the purchase as evidence that Albanese was “out of touch,” and her colleague Angie Bell described the timing as “questionable.”
“The real issue for Australians is a lot of people want to be able to buy a home, but they’re finding it very, very difficult and the current government is doing a very poor job at getting the policy settings in place to make it easier,” opposition lawmaker Paul Fletcher told Sky News Australia.
Government lawmakers have publicly backed Albanese.
“I think the average Australian says, 'Fair enough, leave him alone, I'll criticize his policies or I'll support his policies, I'll criticize or support his government, but I'm not going to criticize or support what he does with his own bank account with his own money,'” Cabinet minister Chris Bowen told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Albanese’s center-left Labor Party seeks a second three-year term in office at elections due by May next year.
Monash University political scientist Zareh Ghazarian described the buy as “politically risky” ahead of an election in which housing affordability will be “at the top of the policy agenda.”
“For the prime minister to make this purchase in this climate is just distracting for the Labor Party," Ghazarian said.
Ghazarian said the home also damaged Albanese’s political brand. Albanese, who is paid an annual salary exceeding AU$600,000 ($400,000), maintains that being raised in public housing by a single mom gave him an appreciation of the financial struggles of low-income families.
A Sydney radio station first reported the real estate transaction on Tuesday. Albanese’s offer for the four-bedroom house was made in September and the sale was expected to be completed by the end of October.
On Tuesday, Albanese explained he was buying the house because the family of his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, lived on the Central Coast. Albanese lives in the prime minister’s official residences in Sydney and the national capital Canberra. He said he was selling his private Sydney house which would help pay for the Copacabana home.
“I am much better off as prime minister. I earn a good income. I understand that. I understand that I’ve been fortunate,” Albanese said. “But I also know what it’s like to struggle. My mum lived in the one public housing that she was born in for all of her 65 years. And I know what it’s like, which is why I want to help all Australians into a home, whether it be public homes or private rentals or home ownership."
Australia’s property market is among the most expensive in the world, with Sydney regularly featuring in lists of the world’s least affordable cities.
Residential property prices rose by 32.5% across Australia in four years as of February, despite the cash interest rate rising from 0.25% to 4.35% in that period, according to financial data company CoreLogic.
Sydney is the capital of New South Wales state, where real estate prices are Australia’s highest. The price of the average New South Wales dwelling was AU$1.2 million ($817,000) in the latest June quarter, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gestures during a press conference in Logan City, near Brisbane, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. (Darren England/AAP Image via AP)
BEIRUT (AP) — Israeli strikes have killed at least 15 people in the southern Lebanese town of Qana, which has long been associated with civilian deaths after Israeli strikes during previous conflicts with Hezbollah. Israel meanwhile struck Beirut's southern suburbs early Wednesday for the first time in nearly a week.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strikes in Qana late Tuesday. Lebanon's Civil Defense said 15 bodies had been recovered from the rubble of a building and that rescue efforts were still underway.
In 1996, Israeli artillery shelling on a United Nations compound housing hundreds of displaced people in Qana killed at least 100 civilians and wounded scores more, including four U.N. peacekeepers. During the 2006 war, an Israeli strike on a residential building killed nearly three dozen people, a third of them children. Israel said at the time that it struck a Hezbollah rocket launcher behind the building.
The strikes on southern Beirut were the first in six days, and came after Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the United States had given him assurances that Israel would curb its strikes on the capital. There was no immediate word on casualties.
Hezbollah has a strong presence in southern Beirut, known as the Dahiyeh, which is also a residential and commercial area home to large numbers of civilians and people unaffiliated with the militant group.
The Israeli military said it targeted an arms warehouse under a residential building, without providing evidence.
It posted an evacuation warning on the X platform ahead of the strike, saying it was targeting a building in the Haret Hreik neighborhood. An Associated Press photographer saw three airstrikes in the area, the first coming less than an hour after the notice.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8 in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, following the surprise Hamas attack on southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza. A year of low-level fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border escalated into all-out war last month, and has displaced some 1.2 million people in Lebanon.
Some 2,300 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since last October, more than three-quarters of them in the past month, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry.
Hezbollah's rocket attacks, which have extended their range and grown more intense over the past month, have driven around 60,000 Israelis from their homes in the north. The attacks have killed nearly 60 people in Israel, around half of them soldiers.
Hezbollah has said it will keep up its attacks until there is a cease-fire in Gaza, but that appears increasingly remote after months of negotiations brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar sputtered to a halt.
Israel invaded Lebanon earlier this month after airstrikes killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and most of his senior commanders, and has been carrying out ground operations along the border. It has vowed to continue its offensive until its citizens can safely return to communities near the border.
Israel is still at war in Gaza more than a year after Hamas' attack, in which some 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and another 250 were abducted. Around 100 captives are still being held in Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel has been carrying out a major operation for more than a week in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp in northern Gaza dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation. Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to Jabaliya and other areas after saying that Hamas militants had regrouped.
Hospitals have received around 350 bodies since the offensive began on Oc. 6, according to Dr. Mounir al-Boursh, the director-general of Gaza's Health Ministry.
He told The Associated Press that more than half the dead were women and children, and that many bodies remain in the streets and under the rubble, with rescue teams unable to reach them because of Israeli strikes. “Entire families have disappeared,” he said.
Israel's offensive has killed over 42,000 people, according to the Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters but says more than half were women and children. The offensive has left large areas in ruins and displaced around 90% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million people, forcing hundreds of thousands into crowded tent camps or schools-turned-shelters.
Magdy reported from Cairo.
Find more of AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Smoke rise from Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Smoke rise from Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Smoke rise from Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Smoke rise from Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Smoke rise from Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
