AAP FACTCHECK – Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was president of the University of Sydney Communist Party, social media users are claiming.
This is false. At university, Mr Albanese was the president of the Australian Labor Party Club.
Multiple Facebook posts have appeared in recent weeks claiming the prime minister was the leader of the university’s Communist Party.
“It wouldn’t let me share the link, but here’s the end of comrade Albenese [sic] and his Communist minions,” one post reads.
“Australian PM Albanese ‘was president of the communist party’ (Sydney University)”, another post claims.
The posts are generally accompanied by a screenshot of a Wikipedia article that reads: “Albanese graduated with a bachelor of economics from the University of Sydney where he was president of the communist party.”
The quote is from the Simple English version of Mr Albanese’s Wikipedia page and appears without a noted source.
A look at the page’s revision history shows the reference was added in May 2024.
The Simple English Wikipedia site uses basic English and shorter sentences to make reading easier for children and people learning English.
As with regular Wikipedia, anyone is able to write and change articles.
However, the regular version of Mr Albanese’s Wikipedia page does not feature the same claim. It reads: “During his time in student politics, Albanese led a group within Young Labor that was aligned with the left faction’s Hard Left, which maintained ‘links with broader left-wing groups, such as the Communist Party of Australia’,” citing an Australian Journal of Political Science article by Andrew Leigh as its source.
Journalist and biographer Karen Middleton wrote in her book Albanese: Telling It Straight that the prime minister joined the Labor Party when he was in high school, and while at Sydney University in the early 1980s he aligned himself with the left faction of Young Labor.
“The main Left faction in Young Labor was known, somewhat melodramatically, as the Radical Leadership Group. Centre Unity represented the Right and other smaller and narrower sub-groups existed on the fringes of both,” Ms Middleton wrote.
“Their battles were as fierce with each other as with the Liberals, the Communists and whoever else wasn’t one of them.”
She also wrote that Mr Albanese and others re-established the defunct Sydney University Labor Club “named the ‘ALP Club’ to represent the views of left-wing students” and was later the president.
This is supported by a 1984 edition of the university’s student newspaper, Honi Soit, which featured Mr Albanese as one of many students vying for a place on the students’ representative council.
Under “Clubs and Societies”, his role as ALP Club president is listed, with no mention of any affiliation with the Communist Party.
A government spokesperson confirmed this to AAP FactCheck: “Prime Minister Anthony Albanese served as president of the Sydney Uni ALP Club.”
Mr Albanese was also later the president of Young Labor NSW from 1985 to 1987, as cited on his parliamentary profile.
In the hours after AAP FactCheck began investigating the incorrect Simple English entry, it was changed, with the “communist party” reference removed.
The Verdict
False – The claim is inaccurate.
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