Sussan Ley, faced with internal turmoil over climate and environment issues while trying to extinguish simmering challenges from a disgruntled backbench who want to philosophically reshape the very party she leads, has elevated a critical new political issue to the top of the national agenda.
The prime minister’s decision to wear a Joy Division T-shirt.
The opposition leader was criticised by those inside her own party for instantly jumping on criticisms of Kevin Rudd after Anthony Albanese’s successful meeting with Donald Trump. Ley leapt too early, and once it was clear that few in her party were joining her – and that, by all accounts, Rudd had actually done a decent job – she backtracked on her own demands to sack the US ambassador.
Having learned from that mistake, Ley waited five days this time to launch an even stranger and politically puzzling attack on Albanese’s choice to wear the T-shirt of seminal British post-punk band Joy Division as he departed his plane on arrival from Washington DC last Thursday. Discarding the traditional suit and tie, Albanese sucked in fresh air from 24 hours in transit in a tee with the famous artwork from the band’s influential 1979 Unknown Pleasures album.
In a speech to parliament on Tuesday – which her office helpfully typed out and swiftly blasted to the entire parliamentary press gallery, just in case you missed it – Ley claimed it was a “profound failure of judgment”. She pointed out, correctly, Joy Division was named after “a wing of a Nazi concentration camp where Jewish women were forced into sexual slavery”.
“At a time when Jewish Australians are facing a rise in antisemitism, when families are asking for reassurance and unity, the prime minister chose to parade an image derived from hatred and suffering,” Ley told parliament on Tuesday.
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Sympathy and sensitivity toward the Jewish community, in and of itself, is of course a worthy cause. But it’s important to note here that Australian Jewish groups weren’t exactly lining up to endorse Ley’s comments on Tuesday. None of the major community organisations chose to back her in, or complain about Albanese’s sartorial choices.
A senior source from one of the most-respected Jewish groups, which has had no problem criticising the Labor government on occasion, was bemused by Ley’s claims. They noted Albanese’s well-known history as a music fan, and said if their group had problems with his clothing, they’d complain to him directly.
Which they hadn’t.
Amid the clothing kerfuffle, Albanese was in Malaysia for international summits a day after meeting the Chinese premier. While Ley was criticising his clothing, he posted online he was “getting things done”.
Ley timed her remarks in the prime spot just before question time, the speaking slot used by canny politicians hoping their remarks will be picked up by TV broadcasts beginning early or journalists filing into the chamber. This goes to the fact that Ley wanted her remarks, off-kilter as they were, to be seen and heard.
Why it took Ley five days to pick the fight is a question one could ask. That it came the day after the Sky News host Sharri Markson ran a segment on her TV show, making points which Ley’s statement closely mirrored, is another interesting note.
“It’s a T-shirt of a band he’s a fan of … their music has been around for a few decades,” the assistant minister Pat Gorman told the ABC.
“There’s big issues in the world, I don’t think T-shirts of mainstream bands is one of them.”
The origin of Joy Division’s name is well known. The band dissolved after the death of its frontman, Ian Curtis, and its remaining members formed New Order. Their famous single, Love Will Tear Us Apart, has been voted among the best songs of all time in numerous respected polls, and placed number one as the greatest song of all time in both the 1989 and 1990 Triple J Hottest 100 votes.
David Rowe, an emeritus professor of cultural research at Western Sydney University and a student in the UK during the punk movement, said the band’s provocative name was typical for the period.
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“It was quite common for people to have shocking names or shocking forms of appearance,” he said. “[Ley] seems to be suggesting that there was a connection between the band and Nazis, which obviously there absolutely isn’t other than the connotations of the name.”
Joy Division’s heyday in the late 1970s would have coincided neatly with Ley’s oft-mentioned history of a “punk phase” and “rebel teenage years”, which she said led to her adding the extra s to her name. Ley has never mentioned any affinity with Joy Division, but amid bubbling tensions inside her own party room, perhaps the lyrics to the band’s most famous song would not be entirely foreign ideas to the opposition leader:
When routine bites hard
And ambitions are low
And resentment rides high
But emotions won’t grow
And we’re changing our ways
Taking different roads
Then love, love will tear us apart again
Josh Butler is a Guardian Australia political reporter and chief of staff in Canberra. Additional reporting by Penry Buckley
