Australian Prime Minister Apologizes For Saying He’d Have Sex With Kylie Minogue

We last checked in on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last Halloween, shortly after he sparked some bad-faith outrage by wearing a Joy Division T-shirt. Now he's back in the news thanks to a more genuinely scandalous intersection with the music world.

Albanese, a member of the center-left Labor party, was the guest on Bush Deep, a video podcast hosted by Australian comedian Nikki Osborne. Sipping Canadian whisky at his Canberra home, Osborne played various party games with Osborne — who, as the NME points out, is a proudly crude YouTube-borne comedian who bills herself as a "wildly inappropriate journalist," willing to ask "questions no one else would dare."

At one point in the chat, Osborne suggested a game of "marry, shag, date," submitting age-appropriate Australian stars Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman, and Rhonda Burchmore as candidates for 63-year-old Albanese's romantic interests. The PM held back at first, noting that he married his wife Jodie Haydon less than a year ago. "I've just got married," he objected. "I'm only six months in." It didn't take much prodding to get him to play along, though. "But if it goes tits up?" Osborne replied. "Let's just pretend." Albanese quickly and definitively answered, "Oh, Kylie, clearly." Osborne clarified, "You'd marry Kylie? And shag her? And date her?" Albanese confirmed, "All of the above. She's terrific."

Albanese's comments led to condemnation from many in Australia, including Shadow Communications Minister Sarah Henderson, a member of the center-right Liberal party, who wrote the following on X:

Anthony Albanese’s whisky-fuelled comments on the ‘Deep Bush’ podcast are disrespectful to women, embarrassing to Australians and demean the office of Prime Minister.

Comedian Nikki Osborne is very good at her craft and cleverly skewered the Prime Minister throughout her interview.

Rather than politely decline to engage, Mr Albanese got into the gutter with his grubby remarks which show extremely poor judgement at a time when trust in Labor is collapsing.

Mr Albanese's crude locker room talk makes a mockery of Labor's claim to be champions of women.

How low can this Prime Minister go? Australians deserve better than this.

Henderson's fellow Liberal senator Andrew Bragg said Albanese's comments were "beneath his office." Community Strong MP Zali Steggall, an independent, characterized the podcast interaction as "entirely inappropriate" and said Albanese "needs to learn to push back, lead by example and call it out as sexist."

Richard Marles, who is serving as acting prime minister while Albanese visits the Pacific, told ABC News the government under Albanese is "utterly committed” to defending and elevating women. He added, "From time to time, we obviously do different interviews to the one we are doing now, but I think the other point to make here is that the government that the PM leads is the first in history that has had equality in terms of the number of men and women in cabinet."

Today Albanese issued a one-line statement: "I apologise unequivocally for the comments." Minogue has yet to address the incident.