Inquiring minds want to know…

If you’re a successful Prime Minister of Australia, chances are you can work your party such that you have the talented people and the fundraising at your disposal. This was true of Menzies and Whitlam and Hawke and Keating, and it’s true of Howard. If you can’t work your party to that extent, chances are you’re a poor PM only successful in areas that your party doesn’t really care about (e.g. Gorton), or you’re not PM at all and will never be (Hayden, Crean, Latham, Peacock, Hewson, Downer). Fraser had talented people but had enough to allow the Libs in Victoria and other states to have a go, at a time when parties seemed to get by with less money than they “need” now.

The next Labor PM will be able to draw top staff talent and serious $ away from Macquarie and Spring Streets – look at how Hawke lured away Wran’s top staffers, or how Keating persuaded Swan and Smith to stop pissing about with State-level losers and come to Versailles. Would you leave a job with Iemma or Bracks or Rann to go and work for Beazley? Really?

Howard does not co-ordinate policy with State Liberals. This leaves State Liberals outraged at something or other – whereupon the Labor Premier blithely gets to his feet, waves a letter from Howard promising $xmillion to do the very thing the State Libs are railing against, which prompts two types of response from political journalists: stories about a) what geniuses the Premier and his team are, and b) what dills the Opposition are, supplemented with a helpful but anonymous quote from a government staffer in Canberra who is closer to real actual power than any State MP could ever be.

This helpful but bashful staffer has a choice: a) work their way up to ministerial press sec level followed by a well-paid but undemanding job as a lobbyist, or b) wading into State politics and facing years of frustration. As Gerard Henderson might say in this sort of situation: Hmm. Yes. Really. Well. Not much of a choice there. Hmm.

If Peter Debnam were ten years younger, he’d have become an advisor and would no more enter State Parliament than skinny-dip in Lake Burley Griffin. Debnam entered Parliament by setting factional candidates against one another and coming up through the middle, hence the reason why he underestimates factionalism today: the flickering flame that once warmed his tootsies now has the power to burn his house down to the stumps and kill him stone dead. If he were a stronger leader he would engage in root-and-branch reform of the party organisation. Brogden perceived the danger but did not (have time to) act; Debnam thinks he can get away with ignoring it.

That staffer might once have been the very sort of promising young person a state division of the Liberal Party might have built its future on,. Today, the state division never sees this person because he/she is in Canberra all the time, and for all their savvy they are easy prey for some factional goon with a solid grip on the party constitution and little else to commend them.

Being in a Liberal State Government today would involve spending every day eating shit dished up by Howard and Costello, then putting on a big grin and telling the media it’s chocolate. Life may not have meant to be easy, but fuck me if there’s not more to life than that.

In so many other areas of public life, the Howard Government is denying future generations the means of their own advancement. It would be strange if he were not also doing so to the Liberal Party.

Thanks, Andrew.

Actually, they bat a long way down, by state gocernment standards. Btacks, Brumby, Batchelor, Kosky and Thwaites are all competent minsters. (That doesn’t mean their policies are any good, but they follow their briefs and don’t make howling mistakes. ) Five is a lot for state government. It’s a deeper battong order than any other state government and deeper than the Kennett government, which had Kennett and Stockdale, and no one else.

If Sheridan is right about the career choices of right-wing mediocrities, we then need to ask what happens in a State like Queensland where, for much of the last two decades, Labor has completely eclipsed the Liberals in State politics and has had a mortgage on State political and State government career paths. The answer is that a lot of ambitious right-wing mediocrities would find ways into the Right of the Labor Party. Watching the invertebrate pests which have infested Brisbane student politics in recent years (some of whom have emerged as State and Federal ALP candidates) tends to bear this out.

A lack of a viable opposition is such a negative thing for a democracy. Frankly, the only thing I can recall about Springborg is that he likes to do the ironing in a towel.

I think the idea that blogs are dominated by Labor stooges is actually quite amusing, although I took the piss out of Piers yesterday.

Of course, that ‘advantage’ brings its own set of problems – a large pool of political hacks who are competent, articulate, but slightly cloistered, light on life experience and difficult to relate to.

While I don’t think that’s the entire picture, there’s certainly something to it. When you actually look at the Victorian government frontbench they don’t bat very far down.