Journalists hunt in packs, and now there is blood in the water. The Prime Minister is being dismembered, metaphorically, limb by limb, press conference by press conference, one disastrous headline after another.

The entire country is experiencing a severe case of schadenfreude, the pleasure in someone else’s misfortunes. The worst things get for Good Old Albo, the more everyone is delighted.

For the most hated, the most incompetent, the most widely regarded as dishonest Prime Minister in the nation’s history.

Anthony Albanese flew into New York this week to play statesman. What he got instead was a public dressing-down from the United States over a piece of legislation that looks less like child protection and more like a ministerial licence to decide what Australians are allowed to see.

The Digital Duty of Care is Labor’s latest attempt to put government between citizens and the internet. Platforms would face nine-figure fines unless they take “reasonable steps” to prevent “foreseeable harm.” The Communications Minister would get to define that harm. Users would be offered an algorithm opt-out, while companies would be expected to suppress content that offends Canberra’s current list of sensitivities: misogyny, eating disorders, glorification of crime, and whatever else a future minister decides is dangerous.

The Trump administration called it what it is. In a submission to Australia’s consultation, the US Embassy warned that vague government-defined safety criteria would become “a mechanism for viewpoint-based censorship.” Platforms, facing $109 million penalties, would over-moderate rather than risk liability. American companies would be hit hardest. Washington asked Australia to withdraw plans to force algorithmic suppression of speech.

Albanese’s reply was the usual national-interest shrug. “It’s not about giving government control, it’s about giving people back control,” he told reporters in Manhattan, then posted a grinning selfie with Donald Trump as if the disagreement were a footnote. It isn’t. Trump has spent months warning allies against digital taxes, fines and “extortion” aimed at US tech. Albanese chose this moment to double down.

The timing was almost comic. While Albanese spruiked Australia’s “world-leading” teen social media ban and its new duty-of-care draft at UN events, the US embassy in Canberra published its objections. Behind the photo-op smiles, the two leaders remain miles apart on speech, algorithms and who gets to police them.

At home the coverage has been equally blunt. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has labelled the bill an attempt to “censor” the internet. Coalition MPs argue it hands too much power to a minister to anoint harms without proper legislation. Even the government’s own Office of Impact Analysis flagged the obvious: low-risk services would become more risk-averse and tighten content moderation beyond what was intended. That is not a bug. It is the feature.

Commentators have called it Labor’s new war on the internet. The Sydney Morning Herald asked whether the crackdown would backfire. POLITICO noted that despite Albanese’s user-choice rhetoric, the minister would still write binding rules about which harms platforms must avoid. The gap between the slogan and the statute is the entire point.

Once a minister can declare “foreseeable harm,” the list never shrinks. Today it is eating disorders and the manosphere. Tomorrow it is whatever the next controversy demands.

The United States has noticed. So have Australian critics who refuse to pretend that handing a politician the power to define online harm is merely “giving people back control.” Albanese can keep posting selfies. The legislation still reads like censorship with a safety label. And the hostility waiting for him at home is not going away just because he is standing in New York pretending otherwise.