Anthony Albanese wants Australians to believe a Welcome to Country is nothing more than good manners. His own analogy says something else entirely.

Asked this week whether Labor's push on Welcome to Country ceremonies was a debate Australians should be having, the Prime Minister reached for a metaphor.

“If I come into your home, I'll knock on the door and I'll say, ‘is it okay if I come in?’, and you go, ‘yeah, welcome’,” Albanese said. “I don't think it hurts anyone. And that’s all it is. It’s an act of politeness.”

Think about what that analogy actually says.

In the Prime Minister’s telling, Australia is a home. Indigenous Australians are the owners. And everyone else – the tradie in Penrith, the nurse in Geelong, the farmer whose family has worked the same land for five generations – is a visitor at the door, asking permission to come in.

Guests, in the only country most of them have ever known.

These comments come after Labor has rewritten its national platform to formally endorse Welcome to Country, just as One Nation promised to end the ceremonies. 

The draft clause, to be considered at the ALP’s 50th National Conference in Adelaide, states the party “recognises the importance of welcome to country and acknowledgement of country ceremonies”. 

This makes Albanese’s defence incoherent. If it’s just a courtesy, why does it need to be put into the party platform?

Nobody drafts a clause committing the ALP to saying please and thank you. Once Welcome to Country is written into the governing party’s official platform, it is policy. And in a democracy, policy gets debated. And the whole idea is that it becomes law.

Which brings us to the double standard. “I’m not focused on culture wars, never have been,” Albanese said.

Really?

When Australians question why they’re welcomed to their own country at the footy, at work conferences, at council meetings, they’re accused of waging a culture war. When Labor enshrines the ceremony in its national platform as a direct response to a political opponent, that’s apparently just manners.

You can’t have it both ways. If it’s political enough to write into the platform, it’s political enough to question.

Australians can make up their own minds about Welcome to Country. But they’re entitled to ask the question the Prime Minister’s own analogy raises: if this is your home too, why is Albanese telling you to knock?