Sunlight streams through wide picture windows that look out across lavender hedges and lawns to a flowering cherry tree planted by Diana, Princess of Wales, and on to a rambling native garden that was planted by then-Prime Minister John Gorton’s wife, Bettina, back in 1968. Ghosts are everywhere here at The Lodge, the official Canberra residence of Prime Ministers since 1927. Except perhaps in this sunny dining room, where Jodie Haydon, the Prime Minister’s fiancée, greets The Weekly team with a warmth that sends apparitions scattering.
The PM bounds down the stairs in a navy polo, chinos, and a smart pair of trainers. The very same shoes he wore to our interview three years ago. “Anthony isn’t a big fan of unnecessary shopping,” Jodie Haydon notes. Treasurer Jim Chalmers would approve.
When we last met, there was still a hint of tentativeness between these two. There was a newness in the relationship and uneasiness with the sudden attention. The Weekly was the first media interview and photoshoot that the then-Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese and his partner of two years had undertaken together.
“The first time I was out with him, and people were wanting photos and to shake his hand, I remember thinking, that’s right, this guy is running for PM,” Jodie said at the time. “It felt completely surreal.”
Today, she’s more relaxed in the spotlight. And they’re easier and more affectionate in each other’s company. They are holding hands, finishing each other’s sentences, laughing at the antics of Toto, the prime ministerial pooch. They are patently, joyfully in love. Even after three far-from-easy years in politics which, one imagines, would try any relationship.
While she doesn’t travel with him everywhere, Jodie has accompanied the Prime Minister to the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, King Charles’ coronation, the White House, the G20 Summit in India and an inestimable number of events in Australia. In her official capacity as the Prime Minister’s partner, she is also a Patron of the National Portrait Gallery and Ambassador for childhood cancer charity Redkite. It’s a role that has stolen her heart.
“Before coming to that,” she says, “I saw firsthand the incredible support that Redkite gives to families after the young daughter of one of my closest friends was diagnosed with cancer.”
Jodie is also a regular volunteer on one of The Rev. Bill Crews Foundation’s food vans, “providing a hot meal to people doing it tough or just needing a helping hand”.
All this while actively pursuing her own career as Head of Strategic Partnerships at Teachers Mutual Bank. Jodie manages that with some fleet-footed commuting between Sydney and Canberra, and when she can, working from home at The Lodge.
“I have my own professional path, and my own identity and purpose,” she’s quick to point out. “I continue to work full-time and my employer has been very supportive. When I am at work, I’m simply Jodie, not the Prime Minister’s partner.”
Back in 2022, the couple shared with us some of the difficulties involved in holding a relationship together in the political maelstrom. Anthony was not new to this. He had been married for 19 years to former NSW Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt, and together they’d raised their now 24-year-old son, Nathan. He admitted that a career in politics presents domestic challenges.
“Of course it does,” he said. “If you look at the challenges, especially in Federal Parliament — the travel, the time away from home — it can put a lot of pressure on relationships. But at the same time, a whole lot of people, in their working lives, spend time apart — fly-in/fly-out workers, people doing shift work. It can be difficult, but politicians are not alone in that.”
And this time he has stepped up to the challenge with proactive plans. The pair compare diaries at the start of every week.
“We make the most of the time when we are together,” Jodie explains, and not just at events, “but time to sit and chat with each other, have dinner together, watch a show on Netflix. Though it takes forever for us to get through a series…
“It’s the same for Nathan. We make sure there’s time when we’re all together too, and Anthony would speak to Nathan every day.”
They both believe that the forces drawing them together are far stronger than those that would pull them apart. One of those forces is their common experience of old-fashioned — though very different — Aussie childhoods.
The Prime Minister, famously, grew up with his single mother, Maryanne, in council housing in inner Sydney’s Camperdown. It’s the stuff of legend that she raised him “with three great faiths: The Catholic Church, the Labor Party and South Sydney Rugby League football club”, and the values of justice and fairness that went with them.
Jodie’s childhood is less well known, but no less formative.
“We both had mothers who were strong female role models,” she begins. “We were both raised with strong Labor Party values and households that cheered on the South Sydney Rabbitohs.”
Jodie’s parents were public school teachers, and she has one brother, who is seven years younger.
Growing up on the NSW Central Coast, her childhood was “like most coasty kids — idyllic and I wouldn’t change it for anything. I loved the outdoors. I relished every day we could spend at the beach, jumping off the rocks into the ocean like daredevils with our friends and riding my BMX bike around neighbourhood streets
’til it was dark. Then it was time to go home for dinner. I loved netball and played it until I was old enough to get my first weekend job,” which was in the CD department at Grace Bros.
“To this day it was one of my favourite jobs,” she adds. “I will never forget my first pay cheque and the sense of accomplishment. I was always an independent kid. And Mum and Dad instilled in me a strong work ethic … They were both children of large Catholic families — Mum one of nine and Dad one of eight. They never got handed anything for free; they had to work for it, and I learnt from them.”
Getting to know Jodie’s big, exuberant family has, the Prime Minister says, been a joy.
“That’s one of the differences between our families that has been quite nice. Growing up, there was just me and my mum. I haven’t got any brothers or sisters. I’ve got one really close relative, my son Nathan, and I cherish that relationship — we’re great mates. But I added up just this week, and I’ve got six first cousins. Whereas Jodie, it seems, has hundreds … Well, there must be 70 at least.”
“I do,” she chimes in.
“And Jodie’s parents,” he adds, “her brother, sister-in-law, niece and extended family, her grandmother, who just turned 96 — they’ve all been so welcoming.”
Both Jodie and the PM have a history of strong, resilient women in their families, and they’re proud to honour them in The Weekly’s International Women’s Day issue.
“My mum and my grandmother have been the greatest influences on my life,” Jodie explains. “I’m very lucky. My mother is a schoolteacher. She worked throughout her life, as did my grandmother, who was a teacher as well. My grandmother is simply remarkable. Her life wasn’t easy, growing up in the country with no electricity, living off the land, going through times of trauma and hardship, then putting herself through teachers’ college. It shows true grit and determination. She is the glue that holds our family together and I love her dearly.
“Both she and Mum have taught me those values around resilience, care and kindness. I think it’s because my mother and my grandmother raised me to believe that I could do anything and achieve anything, and it’s because of their guidance that I’ve never felt held back as a woman when it comes to the workforce. So I’m grateful to them for that.”
Anthony adds that Maryanne “would have seen herself as a feminist, though she might not have used that language. She taught me to respect women. She had a difficult life but she never complained about anything at all — she just got on with it.”
What that has meant in his political career, the Prime Minister says, is that “advancing the cause of women” has always been something that he’s regarded as central.
This year, on March 8, he will be at an International Women’s Day breakfast. “But for me,” he explains, “it’s not just about a morning tea or one particular day. It’s not an afterthought or an add-on. It’s something that’s at the core of the development of a good society … When we improve gender equality, we lift up — not just women — we lift up the whole society.”
Jodie believes the most critical unresolved issues facing women in Australia are “domestic violence and the gender pay gap. We all have a shared responsibility to address these,” she says.
The last time we met, a few months out from the 2022 Federal Election, we asked the then-Opposition Leader for five promises that would improve the lives of women.
They were: More affordable childcare; fairer wages and conditions for people working in aged care and the guarantee of one registered nurse in every aged care facility; to implement all the recommendations of the Sex Discrimination Commissioner’s Respect@Work Report; to fund 500 additional family violence workers; 30,000 more emergency and social housing units over five years.
We found that — aside from the social housing units, which are progressing slower than planned — the government has met each of those promises in its first term.
Yet not everything has gone smoothly. The result of the Voice referendum was not the one the Prime Minister had hoped for. It took years of negotiation to pass Labor’s housing initiatives. While inflation has lowered and employment has remained steady, the cost of living remains high, and despite the government’s relief measures, Australians are hurting.
Through all this and some of the most adversarial party politics that Australia has seen, the Prime Minister has had Jodie’s unwavering support. Not that public criticism is easy to deal with.
“If I see something I disagree with, at the end of the day, I come back to the fact that I know Anthony better than anybody,” she says. “He’s kind, he’s strong, he’s considerate and he genuinely cares about people.”
Time is short. The Prime Minister must prepare for a Cabinet meeting. So now he is up and off, Toto at his heels, to show us the northern garden where Queen Elizabeth II planted a tulip tree in 1982. En route, we pass through what was originally a billiards room. The prime ministerial turntable sits on a sideboard, ready to spin a few tunes.
Of course, beyond the political fray, perhaps the most widely reported news from The Lodge this past year was of the Prime Minister’s proposal.
Was there anything in particular that precipitated it? He ponders for a moment …
“This,” he says, and he gestures to the house, the garden, the media adviser waiting to whisk him away, “will end one day, and the thing about our relationship is that we enjoy spending time together. Just us. So, when it became clear to me that Jodie was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and that I couldn’t imagine a life without her, I made the decision.”
There were months of planning involved and a good deal of secrecy.
First, he spoke with Nathan. “I respect him and have a good relationship with him, and with his mother. So I asked him to think about it, and then he came back to me and Nathan was supportive. He wants me to be happy, and Nathan and Jodie have a really nice relationship as well.”
With Nathan on board, Anthony approached his friend, Nicola Cerrone — a jeweller in Leichhardt in his electorate of Grayndler — a fellow Italian and a man who can keep a secret.
Of course, a secret visit (or three) to a jeweller is not as simple as it sounds for a Prime Minister whose every move is recorded and observed.
“The greatest difficulty of all was not to put it in the diary,” he grins. “My executive assistant was very shocked by the fact that it could be done without her knowing.”
He oscillated a little over when to pop the question but eventually settled on Valentine’s Day 2024. They began with a quiet dinner at Canberra restaurant Italian and Sons, then headed home around nine. There, Anthony suggested champagne on a terrace overlooking the north garden. It was chosen, he says, “because it’s beautiful — from there you look out and all you can see are trees”.
Jodie was surprised — the secret hadn’t leaked — and overwhelmingly happy. They celebrated by waking her parents with a Facetime call to share the news.
“Since our engagement,” Jodie says, “there is no doubt that we have become even closer … As we go through this journey, I find more reasons to admire him. He works harder than anyone I know and still invests in our relationship every day. I’ve never felt more loved.”
Until now, they’ve shared very little about their wedding plans, but they assure The Weekly it won’t be before the election. It means too much to both of them to have it tangled up in politics and publicity.
“Our wedding,” Jodie says, “will be a moment when we make that commitment. We’re doing it in front of family and loved ones, and I see that as … for us. It’s something we’re looking forward to — an important and symbolic way to reaffirm our commitment with each other.”
It can’t be a Catholic church wedding, though their families would perhaps have liked that, because of Anthony’s divorce. “It will be small, intimate,” Jodie adds. Probably a spring wedding. “Possibly outdoors, in the second half of this year, with our family and loved ones … And you can be sure Toto will make an appearance.”
A small, intimate wedding with 70 cousins!
“I know,” Jodie laughs. “I say small and intimate, but now you know how large our family is … Well, that’s what we’re aiming for.”
This article appears in the March 2025 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Subscribe so you never miss an issue.
