Elizabeth Lee's finger and Anthony Albanese's house: The decisions ...

Welcome back to your weekly federal politics update, where political correspondent Brett Worthington gets you up to speed on the happenings from Parliament House.

Canberra Liberals leader Elizabeth Lee isn't the first politician to have had the urge to flip the bird at a journalist.

Heck, who amongst us hasn't wanted to give a middle finger to someone who's been hassling you. 

But when you're days out from an election and the leader of a party that's spent more than two decades in opposition, following through on the desire, and it being captured on camera, is a choice that brings with it a consequence or two. 

Leading up to the regrettable gesture, Lee had been in a tense press conference in which she was quizzed about her party's policies and their costs. 

With the press conference over she started to walk away until she stopped, turned and in a move straight out of high school, stood and delivered her message to the back of the journalist.

Lee would later that day apologise for what she dubbed her "poor behaviour". 

If history is anything to go by, it certainly doesn't make her ineligible for leading the ACT. The incumbent, Andrew Barr, years earlier publicly declared he "hates journalists".  

Lee isn't alone in the camp of "leaders who made decisions that felt good in the moment but have brought with them distracting headaches".

Chief among them was Anthony Albanese and his purchase of a $4.3 million clifftop house on the NSW Central Coast. 

It's the kind of situation that the scriptwriters from Utopia couldn't make up.

A prime minister, leading a government in the middle of a cost-of-living and housing affordability crisis and trailing in the polls, drops millions on a luxury home in a place called Copacabana (yes, Annabel Crabb did have a field day with that) just months out from an election.

It's also the perfect fodder for talkback radio lines, which lit up with callers arguing over whether or not the PM was out of touch or if the whole story was a beat up. 

Publicly, Labor MPs and ministers were defending the PM, arguing the boy who grew up in public housing had worked hard and was entitled to buy a house with his own money. Privately, MPs were telling a different story.

Their primary concern was the optics — was now really the time to be buying such a property? 

Their thoughts went to the Labor MPs already under threat from the Greens, where housing affordability and concessions for investors are among the biggest issues at play. 

They also feared that they could find themselves again on the opposition benches if distractions like this kept popping up. 

Some have gone as far as to call it Albanese's Hawaii moment, comparing the purchase to Scott Morrison's ill-fated trip international beach holiday as Australia burned. 

Such comparison seems to forget crucial elements of the Morrison saga. 

Back then, the prime ministerial office lied about the Hawaii getaway. The scandal compounded when Morrison insisted "I don't hold a hose, mate", a comment that would haunt his approach to accountability in future years. 

In this case, Albanese fronted up and owned the house — literally. His office too didn't deliberately mislead and lie about the purchase. 

Opposition leader Peter Dutton, himself no stranger to multi-million dollar property, was wise not to offer a criticism of Albanese's purchase, but didn't miss the chance to rib the PM.

"There are lots of people who buy places by the beach in retirement — I wish the PM and Jodie well in their retirement," he offered on Thursday.

"I hope they bring it on as quickly as possible."

Peter Dutton had plenty to smile about even before Albanese's whale watching abode came to light. 

With the election creeping ever closer, the Coalition took its first lead over Labor in Newspoll, even if just by the tiniest of margins.  

There were few surprises in that poll for Labor. The party knows all too well about its standing in the public as inflation continues to batter household budgets. 

There's also hope that the prospect of Dutton moving into the prime ministerial office might bring with it greater scrutiny of the Coalition's election commitments.

Besides insisting it's not Labor, the opposition has pledged little besides its uncosted nuclear power plan. 

Like Lee, Dutton will face greater pressure to unveil the costs of that plan as the election looms nearer. 

Like Lee, he might seek to dodge answering those questions. 

He'd be ill-advised to follow suit with a middle finger salute.