Dear Albo,

Mate, you've done awesome good for yourself, your family, your party and your country. You deserve to take pride, at least for now, and I hope you take some time to breathe that in and feel it. 

You're possibly the premier example of a long slow, come from behind, Steve Bradbury winner in Australian public life in our shared lifetime. Congratulations! 

I massively underestimated you for a decade. As such I represent Australia and possibly the world. Everyone underestimated you. Big time. Incidentally, hats off to your friend and federal treasurer, Jim Chalmers for that crystal clear one-sentence analysis of you and your leadership of the party and this year's campaign. Albo the most underestimated politician. That says it.

Looking back now I'm awed by your story of patience, conviction, tenacity and staying on the long road even when it kept revealing more unseen crests and potholes. I'd have given up too soon. You didn't. And that patience has been rewarded in abundance at last. 

The first memory I have of you appearing on my political radar as someone to take notice of was during your party's (and the nation's) Rudd-Gillard crisis in 2010. I liked Kevin (an old friend in real life) and felt aggrieved by his party's treatment of him, and you stepped forward for a moral principle, naming a wrong done and calling your colleagues to focus. That call wasn't entirely heeded. But that's another story not for here, and opinions will differ. Either way you marked yourself as loyal to a tee, and that got a private hat-tip from me. You also marked yourself as a solid, dependable, transparent team player, one to be depended upon, a what you see is what you get kind of bloke.

All of that package of character you still have. But it isn't the profile I at least would naturally have rated as Prime Minister material. Not then. I'd be interested in knowing whether you sensed that in yourself at the time. But I didn't remotely. I had you as salt of the earth team player - the kind we need plenty of and plenty more; but nothing more.

Yet that wasn't how you stayed. Come 2013 your hat was in the ring for party leader in opposition for goodness sake. I thought that was a bit troppo to be honest, and wondered what might be in the water in Grayndler. But then again I'd have still picked you over Bill Shorten, given that stark choice. Bill's grown on me big time since, but mainly, ironically, after he announced his retirement from politics. But at that time I thought he was well cast by the ABC as the terrier in "At home with Julia". Sorry, I digress.

Despite my then doubts about you, I think it's a shame the party machine backed Bill over you as leader. Six wasted years, to be blunt. But you proved yourself the same loyal rock on Bill's team as you had on Kevin's and Julia's. And again that stands out from the pack in those years of changing prime ministers or opposition leaders with toothbrushes. You were still not Lodge material to me, nor even close. Were you then sensing more was definitely ahead? Were your colleagues? If so, I didn't notice.

Nothing of major note from me for the years between there and 2019. But when you finally became party leader in opposition, the party having lost the unloseable election, I was glad. You were still a workman-like good bloke, principled and dependable. But I think that would be around the time, for me, you started to show signs of being not just good for Australia but also someone Australia could follow. And from there, your party deserved the narrow 2022 election win, and you the keys to the Lodge. But that said, at that stage, I thought of you as a bit too timid for the ranks of "statesman"; and so I hoped you'd keep the top seat safe and warm for the mythical Labor statesman of unknown identity who'd emerge from the shadows to take the baton.

Now to 2023. And this is the one monumental blotch your copybook carries for me, and I'm going to be honest. The Voice referendum. I loved your clarion 2022 election night victory speech where you solemly committed your government to implementing the wishes of Australia's First Nations people through the Uluru Statement from the Heart, starting with a referendum for a Voice to Parliament. That was at least bordering on statesmanship for me. 

But - and I can't think of a kind way to say this, I'm sorry - it was a balls up fail from there, mate. This is all my opinion, granted. And others may disagree, evenly violently. But to me you'd have done better by our First Nations people by not putting the referendum at all than by putting it and then leading the process so abysmally. I'm sorry, but you failed our indigenous grievously in that. Your #1 failure in my assessment was a naive and catastrophic failure to read the national room .. No wait; the global room. I'm talking about the frightening power misinformation has acquired in such a very short time, to become a political power in its own right. Your political opponents didn't get a lot "right" in that term (as your victory now makes plain); but for their ends they walloped you in straight sets with an "exemplary" misinformation campaign. You handled it with all the finesse of a bunny in the headlights, muttering repeated motherhood mantras about Australian character or something.

After that I felt thoroughly disillusioned, and to be again brutally honest, at that time, I came to the view that a one-term Prime Ministership and government looked both predictable and just. 

So there it is. Again I'm sorry for the arterial spray with meat cleaver communication style. But ... In an odd way all that provides a foundation for this last stretch so far. And it clearly is "so far". 

Albo, you stand tall now. On appearances at least, you have years of productive and inspiring leadership yet ahead of you. And it's only 18 months after the referendum failure. That's extraordinary. And to top it you seem to have a team behind you with none of the throat-slitting instincts that rendered both the previous Labor government and the intervening Coalition one infested swamps of atrophy and death. Granted it might have become my pure blindness by now; but 3 days ago you still looked to me not a lot more than a safe solid Aussie who'd keep us totally safe while semi-awake. The polls probably conned me in that direction. I expected you to be PM, but a meek one, leading a meek government, in a meek parliament for three more grinding years.

But the present Australia unwrapped way before time at just 8:30pm on election night is a stunner. I'm still blinking. We have in you, after that long truncated, at times barely moving race, Steve Bradbury-like in outcome but hardly in verve, a commanding national leader with a very full trust balance. (So you can probably have a failure or two and still hold us). You exude an innate understanding of the Australian psyche, and you may even have built some of it in the best you call us to be. Statesmanship is of course in the eye of the beholder to a fair degree. And you may not be viewed that way by the nation as a whole just yet. But for the record mate, you looked every inch the Statesman to me the other night. So I'll be paying more attention and following to boot.

With that laid out, I want to return to the part I was blunt on. But this time in a very different vein. I'm so glad you gave just enough space in the final week of the campaign to the still to be done work of reconciliation. My #1 plea to you as you face your second (at least!) term as Prime Minister, is please put our First Nations people back at the top and centre of the national conversation, where they should have remained throughout the last term, not just until 2023. Please use the abiding authority you now have granted you by us all to bring a legislated Voice to Parliament to pass, and then chart a course to follow with Makarata and Treaty. Albo, that's on you. Don't fluff it mate.

Sincerely, from my heart