Anthony Albanese gets emotional about his mother

Anthony Albanese has paid tribute to his late mother in a press conference on the second last day of the election campaign.

The Labor leader’s mother, Maryanne, raised him on her own in housing commission in Camperdown, inner-west Sydney.

Mr Albanese never met his father, Carlo, until much later in his life. 

Speaking in Adelaide alongside former PM Julia Gillard, he said his mother was brave for bringing him into the world.

Anthony Albanese has paid tribute to his late mother in a press conference on the second last day of the election campaign

‘She made the courageous decision in 1963 to keep a child she had out of wedlock,’ he said.

‘She chose, in order to – to deal with the pressures that were on a young Catholic woman at that time, in those circumstances, to take my father’s name, and I was raised, being told that he had died.

‘That’s a tough decision. It says something about the pressure that was placed on women.

‘And pressures that are still placed on women, when faced with difficult circumstances.

‘So, the fact that – that young kid is now running for prime minister, says a lot about her. And her courage.

‘But also says a lot about this country. About this country.’

Anthony Albanese’s mother Maryanne Ellery (right) on the cruise ship Fairsky with the handsome Italian steward Carlo Albanese (standing, left) who secretly fathered her only son

Mr Albanese believed his father had been killed in a car accident until he was about 15 when mother Maryanne revealed she had had fallen pregnant after a brief fling with an Italian steward she met on a voyage from Sydney to England.

Maryanne died in 2002 aged 65. ‘She was spent and compared with her life mine’s been an absolute dream,’ Albanese says.

Albanese finally met his father, Carlo, in Italy in 2009. Carlo died of cancer in 2014. 

Albanese is driven by a philosophy of ‘no one left behind, no one held back’. It can be traced to his childhood and his mother’s circumstances.

‘I want people who are disadvantaged to get a leg up in life, to not leave people behind,’ he says. ‘That strengthens the whole society. 

‘This idea that essentially people who are disadvantaged should know their place, I think that is something that comes through sometimes from some on the other side of politics.’