Within the first 44 words uttered by the new Prime Minister of Australia on May 21 last year, Anthony Albanese had committed his party to adopting a document – in full – that he had never read.

The first 25 words were an acknowledgement of traditional owners. The next 19 words were: ‘And on behalf of the Australian Labor Party, I commit to the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full.’

The Labor faithful at the RSL club went wild. Their socialist warrior had claimed victory with a speech that none of them probably expected. He had fired an immediate arrow from on high, tipped with vibes and loaded with a steely intent carefully shrouded during the election campaign.

But it was 451 days later when the Prime Minister admitted to the nation that he had never read the document he had committed his party to implementing. In full.

‘Why would I?’ he bemusedly responded to Melbourne 3AW radio station host Neil Mitchell.

Good question Prime Minister. Why would you read the document – in full – that you committed to implement – in full – within the first sentences spoken as the incoming Prime Minister of Australia?

In so doing – with Woke halo shimmering – the Prime Minister forced upon a proudly egalitarian nation a political and cultural chalice brimming with the burden of racism. To vote ‘Yes’ would insert racism into the Constitution, creating a forever statement based on the bigotry of low expectations. But to vote ‘No’ would have the average person labelled a racist.

It was shocking enough, that having unleashed the Referendum, the Prime Minister had not read the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full. But it is hard to understand how a man who has spent his life aiming to lead the nation – full of ideas and dreams and details – propelled his signature cause upon a document he had not read…

Is he the first Prime Minister to have done such an audacious thing? Was it a brave move, bold, or bonkers?

‘I haven’t read it – there’s 120 pages – why would I? I know what the conclusion is,’ he told Mitchell.

Even during his South Australian speech on 30 August 2023 to announce the referendum date, Mr Albanese referred to the Uluru Statement from the Heart as ‘…just one page, full of grace and generosity.’

It is worth noting that within that speech, Mr Albanese also said, ‘Voting ‘No’ leads nowhere. It means nothing changes.’

However, others read the Statement – in full – as a 26-page document crammed with grievance and anger – with all roads leading to Treaty, Truth Telling and ‘pay-the-rent’ reparations gorged from an eternal tax on the nation. It assumes ongoing failure.

The 26-page Uluru Statement from the Heart is the document ‘in full’ and ‘in full’ is what the Prime Minister committed to. On 3AW, he knew the document was more than one page – and said so.

It is important to step back from the hustle of the referendum campaign and consider the political and historical ramifications of a man signing a nation up to something he hasn’t read and, it would seem, hasn’t understood for in it is little of the graciousness he readily purports to be.

Such recklessness is akin to a Primary School teacher about to instruct a classroom of wide-eyed prep students on how to spell, without the teacher first knowing the alphabet – all 26 letters.

26 pages in the Statement, 26 letters in the alphabet – and each fundamental to the full understanding of what they can achieve. Each building blocks for something bigger.

On June 24, 1987, former Labor Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, famously devoted himself to eradicating poverty. In his campaign launch speech at the Sydney Opera House he said, ‘By the year 1990, no Australian child will live in poverty.’ It too was a generous, heartfelt, and sincere statement. He was rightly applauded. Labor was re-elected.

But for all his mighty scholarship, it was a statement too great for reality to handle. 1990 came and went, but poverty lingered. The guesswork, the finger-crossing, the good intent was not enough.

However, the Hawke commitment was made pre-election and without the Albanese aid of a step-by-step guidebook, finely tuned across multiple years by industry elites, each page precise, concise, deliberate and determined.

Mr Albanese’s declaration, upon election, on behalf of the Australian Labor Party, was a commitment to this crafted work.

Hawke’s proclamation did not require a massive change to Australia’s guiding rule book. His was to be forged upon myriad unknowns, a political plaything on a wind of constant change.

The difference between Hawke’s desire for a better outcome for all Australians – and that of Albanese’s desire for some Australians – is that the former was pledged with a generosity of heart – the other pledged from the pages of a Statement from the Heart.

It is a Statement Prime Minister Albanese has not read.

There’s no scholarship in that.