Greg Combet was kind enough to send me an email yesterday to inform me that he had nominated for Labor pre-selection for the seat of Charlton.
After I picked myself up off the floor and recovered from the shock of this highly unexpected announcement, I had two thoughts about this. My first was ambivalence about the announcement that yet another high-profile candidate was putting their hand up for a safe seat. Perhaps, I thought, in the current political climate, a candidate like Combet could help win Labor a new seat.
But despite these original reservations, I am more inclined to think that Combet can do more to help elect a Rudd Labor Government by running for a safe Labor seat. The anti-WorkChoices campaign is, I believe, better served by having Combet in a role where he can continue to raise the issue at the national level. The value he brings to Labor is that the national media listen to him when he speaks about industrial relations. It takes a lot of talent to be a good marginal seat member, and a high national profile does not always mean success in this role. Furthermore, running for a marginal seat is an overwhelming job, one that would take Combet away from the important role that he is currently playing.
Then there is the more important question of what happens if/when Combet enters Parliament. He will bring with him a talent at communicating a message, and a great knowledge of an issue that is fundamental to Labor Party values. Again, this is the sort of thing that we should be looking for in a safe seat member. Were he to win a marginal seat, he would spend most of his time campaigning for the next election, which may well prevent him from contributing to the (hopefully) Rudd Government in other ways; through committees, research, communicating a national message…
There are different skills needed in a marginal seat, and if Combet has these skills we haven’t really seen them yet. It certainly isn’t why people are supporting his pre-selection. It’s about appreciating a wide range of skills, and assigning roles appropriately. Assuming that a person like Combet should just run for a marginal ignores the value he will bring to the Party as a safe seat member, but more importantly, it devalues and ignores the specific skills and talents that great marginal seat members possess.
The main debate, however, will most likely be the predictable “it’s wrong to parachute people into seats”. In my experience, this kind of argument is more often made by people who don’t like the “parachuted” candidate, rather than as a genuine expression of principle. The recent outburst by the Mayor for Fremantle, for example, was largely the result of him believing that he had been in with a chance to be the Labor candidate.
There is no one package that makes a good candidate. Many factors must be considered – and yes, connection to the electorate is one of them. However, in a seat that consistently votes Labor, it is important to recognise that there is probably a reason for this – that there are a large number of people who vote for the party, not just the candidate, and what they are looking for is someone who can contribute to policy, to promoting Labor values, and to strengthening the party at a wider level. Yes, it’s wrong to take advantage of safe seats to repay favours and entrench factional power. But it would also be wrong to throw away the opportunity to fill our Parliament with candidates who have a great deal to offer the nation, but who perhaps don’t have the qualities needed to attract a swinging voter. Some of us aren’t swinging voters, and some of us want more than that.
Lastly, I think that the appalling behaviour exhibited by the current member for Charlton mean that she should be dumped regardless. She has demonstrated an amazing lack of respect for democratic values and the electoral process – more than anyone involved in “parachuting” Combet into the seat. If the best she can offer the loyal Labor voters of Charlton is:
I’ve got a daughter at university and a son on first year apprenticeship wages, and if we lose this income, we lose our house…
…then Kelly Hoare can fuck off back to the dark shadows of useless factional hackery. Safe seats are not opportunities to provide charity to the unemployable. Not only has she demonstrated her lack of respect for the voters of Australia, she has also lost all rights to invoke the rights of the rank and file members after threatening to sue the party for unfair dismissal. The ALP has every right to decide which candidate to support, and if she thinks she should be exempt from these processes, then she should try going it alone as an Independent candidate without the money and support that a large party provides. Her comments also made a mockery of the unfair dismissal issue, and those people who have actually been unfairly dismissed by their employer.
I don’t live in Charlton, and I don’t get a vote in this particular matter. I’ve never met either Kelly Hoare or Greg Combet. I don’t know whether Combet’s the best candidate for the job, and I’m sure that the process could have been handled much better. But what I do know is that he is much more suitable than Ms Hoare, and has demonstrated much greater commitment to Labor values over the last few months.
Mostly, though, what I would like to see is a debate about the merits of the candidates, and a focus on a wider range of qualities and abilities; the diversity needed to make a great government, rather than just one that is acceptable to swing voters. I’d also like to see less reliance on the standard pro- and anti- cliches: talk about “parachuting” is meaningless without a context. There is also a need to separate debates about how the Labor Party should be run from debates about how to get the best members of Parliament. Sometimes they’re linked, sometimes they’re not.
Politics has changed, particularly parliamentary. It ’s all executive now an as such getting strong candidates into a house of reps seat and into Cabinet outweighs rank and file as far as I’m concerned and is most important in fashioning good Govt.
Combet is a winner. Heck I would have been happy to see him parachuted into my electorate where Albanese is the sitting member.
This is good, Anna – don’t agree with all of it, but you make a lot of sense, and I think it’s a debate that needs to had, and regularly. How we get the representation we have is vitally important to our democracy (but often seems to be forgotten, or treated in the cavilier fashion Phil endorses), and these occasions give us a chance to have that debate.
I’ve made a fool of myself here before on this subject, because of the “people who don’t like the “parachutedâ€? candidate” effect you describe! (Can’t abide St Carmen). But here goes again.
Kelly Hoare has certainly come across as a useless dolt and a worthless factional stooge – her performance alone would have to make you question a “rank and file” process that selected her. But there needs to be some involvement from the locals – a purely executive process (as they seem to have now) looks to be fraught with danger to me – there needs to be some sort of balance of power, something to offset the centre.
Funnily enough, I’ve got a lot more sympathy with Combet’s (on the surface tenuous) claims to have a connection with the locals – he’s certainly closer to them than the New York-based human rights lawyer that St Carmen was attempting to annoint for Freo. I think your second-last paragraph hits it right on the head.
To me, the other positive aspect is the small amount of discussion there has been this time around the female quota and related machinations. Greater female representation is a good thing, but not the way Labor is currently handling it. But in this case I think it’s more to do with how obviously low-grader Ms Hoare is, and how badly they want Combet.
Carmen was attempting to annoint [a successor] for Freo
Melissa Parke won the preselection. Nobody else nominated — including those who jumped up and down about the importance of the democratic process. Democracy’s great when you think you can win, I guess. I think Parke’s experience means she will make an important contribution to parliament.
OK, safe seats are not opportunities to provide charity to the unemployable. This begs the question of how and why Ms Hoare became the pre-selected labor candidate in the first place. Presumably she got the seat as the best possible member to represent the interests of ALL the voting consituents of whereever the fuck she represents in the Commonwealth Parliament – Labor and non-Labor. So, having been judged as worthy of getting the pre-selection when she did, she is now deemed unworthy for whatever reason. If you were a hard working local back bencher doing your best for your electorate and suddenly head office felt like they needed to piss you off to get someone with a big name and a big profile into parliament, then I think you are probably entitled to feel more than a little pissed off. And, after all, in this day when politics is treated as a serious profession, ain’t candidates entitled to think – assuming they haven’t been complete fuck-ups (think Milton Orkopolous (?)) that they deserve a little bit of security of tenure.
Given your self-admitted ignorance on these matters, how do you know that Greg Combet has demonstrated anything of the sort. For all you know, Ms Hoare might well have a greater committment to Labor values over the last few months. It is hard to shout loudly about whatever committment you may have to any issue, cause or ideology through the national media, say when you are, after all, a backbencher in a safe seat.
If Greg Combet has so much to offer the Labor movement and the Labor Party and he is so good, then let him take his considerable talents and use them to persuade people who might otherwise have voted for the conservatives. In other words, he should take on a winnable marginal seat.
Cheers…
She inherited it from her dad, the previous member. Her previous occupation prior to entering Parliament was as an electoral officer for her father.
I’m a little suspicious of the phenomenon generally – not for the usual reasons (as a former ALP branch member myself I’ve seen a very good candidate dudded for factional reasons with the campaign against her and in favour of a time serving hack being largely centred on her supposed “carpet bagger” status, even though she actually moved to the area before preselection and was active in the branches) – but more often when the candidate is just some sort of blow in sports star type (or as we’ve recently seen in Adelaide, sports star’s spouse) who hasn’t really demonstrated any long term commitment to party values, or any great capacity to make a contribution as a Parliamentarian. But very clearly Combet has both the intelligence and the loyalty runs on the board.
I couldn’t agree more with Anna on Ms Hoare’s risible public statements. The sense of entitlement to the seat really is pathetic from a democratic point of view.
Like Anna I have often felt that superstar candidates should go for a marginal seat and try to win it over to Labor. However, in Combet’s case it really doesn’t make a huge amount of sense. It would diminish his national profile and prevent him from continuing his fight against the workchoices legislation.
Since the Cheryl Kernot debacle I’m sure that Labor has thought long and hard about when and where the parachute is the right option. In Kernot’s case she should have been handed a safe seat, she was obviously a high-profile candidate but her battle to get elected meant that she was tainted goods. Kernot, like Combet, had a national profile and was used to running national campaigns, it’s important to remember that she was a Senator at the top of the Democrat ticket. Her skills should never have been wasted on excessive local campaigning. It’s good to see that Labor isn’t making the same mistake twice.
Me? Cavalier? Just reality, Of course I was kidding about Albo.
Greg Combet is one of those people with a quiet natural authority that you automatically trust. I agree that his talents are such that he shouldn’t have to do the marginal seat campaigning thing.
I wonder what attracted him to Charlton. This short cv indicates a background in mining. With “tertiary qualifications in engineering, economics and labour relations and the law” he has an outstanding background for the area and said he was interested in problems to do with mining, ports, infrastructure, coal and global warming.
Nevertheless I did cringe when I heard that the sitting member was unceremoniously getting the shove. Will they find her a job in the party?
Anna, your arguments in favour of Combet are scratchy and with a hint that you hardly believe them yourself. But I sympathize. Combet deserves a crack at parliamentary representation and Hoare doesn’t deserve the seat. One wonders what her father’s recent expulsion from the party for writing a published letter protesting the parachute action in a neighbouring safe State Labor seat might have done in hastening her departure.
Recent press coverage of the ’soft’ sort has tried to link a Combet family past to the seat, via the regional, or should that be varietal, French parent and grandparent to wine-making. Greg had a photo of both ancestors and wine connection on the wall at ACTU HQ. But nowhere in the drawn out process did we hear Greg Combet confirm for readers, let alone Charlton voters, that he was keen to represent them in the seat. Quite the opposite.
Voters might remember this but the cynical action of Sussex St and the Iemma Right in the neighbouring State seat will have a longer term effect, particularly where they see other Rudd stars donning parachutes elsewhere.
Certainly branch numbers will remain dismal. Should Rudd lose, one wonders what Combet’s long term interest will be in a seat that for now you would have to say has little affinity with a union boss’s lifestyle in the heat of the fray in Melbourne. I just wish he had backed himself in a southern marginal and been up front about his intentions with numerous supporters.
I listen to radio a lot and I’m pretty sure he did for listeners. But I can’t point to any evidence.
I don’t see why they should, Brian. Michael Hatton’s getting the shove in Blaxland (Keating’s old seat), too. Neither have ever made any substantive contribution in Parliament.
Ummm… running the Your Rights at Work campaign? He’s certainly demonstrated that he has a genuine belief in Labor values. When I said I didn’t know if he was the best, all I meant was that there may be someone else in Charlton that might have been even better – not that he was in any way unqualified. I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear enough.
No she hasn’t. Anyone who compares being challenged in a pre-selection to unfair dismissal clearly has no idea about what Labor values are.
There was this statement:
But I remember a statement which went beyond that, when he said he’d be honoured to get to know the people of the electorate, get out into the shopping centres, knock on some doors etc.
He also said he wanted to continue to visit other marginal seats, as he has been in recent months.
Obviously not…
Cheers…
BTW. Where was the challenge?…
A Friday eve interview on the eve of pre-selection Brian is not my idea of being straight or up front with Charlton voters. In fact Combet has let the issue of a parliamentary move take a distant second place to his union work for many weeks prior to Friday and I believe that was unfair to voters. Already he is being unnecessarily bagged by his lack of knowledge of the electorate, mispronouncing place names etc,. all of it predictable and that would have been excusable in more marginal seat attempt.
The Libs will go all out for a high profile ‘local’ and/or independent which could embarrass and keep Combet from all that other electorate work you mentioned.
Newcastle is volatile Labor territory currently and I fear Combet will cop an unfair share of it through some fairly inept lead up work. A 6 percentage margin might not help.
“I have often felt that superstar candidates should go for a marginal seat and try to win it over to Labor.”
This line of thinking is naive.
You aren’t going to to be able to get high calibre outsiders to devote 6 months of their life 24/7 to working for a political party if all you have to offer them is a 50/50 chance of getting elected. Unless of course they are financially independent.
Combet has the runs on the board as Anna Winter indicates and he deserves a safe seat.
Ms Hoare’s tantrum has been cringeworthy.
Sorry mick, hate to burst your bubble but the seat was a family sinecure. Rotten boroughs and all that. And Combet’s parachute is just more of the same.
“If you were a hard working local back bencher doing your best for your electorate and suddenly head office felt like they needed to piss you off to get someone with a big name and a big profile into parliament, then I think you are probably entitled to feel more than a little pissed off.”
True, but if the system was working properly, those people would get the marginal seats, since “hard working local back bencher” is exactly what they need.
I remember being in Hawke’s electorate of Wills. Dead proud we were, and there was a pub on Sydney Road named after him. ‘Cos those mean streets had the Prime Minister for their local member.
I recall Alan Ramsey reporting a year or so ago that the CFMEU had bailed Kim Beazley up over a form letter that Kelly Hoare – a Hunter MP – had signed and fired off to the Environment Minister attacking coal mining……
I think Kelly Hoare’s rise without trace in Charlton and Michael Hatton’s inheritance in Blaxland are both indicative of a more fundamental problem than national executive parachuting glamour candidates into safe seats. I don’t think that family members or paid electorate staff should be eligible to succeed a retiring member in the electorate in question. Hatton was PJK’s longtime electorate secretary and a lifetime family friend and Kelly Hoare, also an electorate secretary, succeeded her father. In both cases, the strong impression emerges of selection based on pretty subjective criteria. Safe seats aren’t fiefdoms to be bestowed out of love, family ties or as a reward for devoted loyalty. They aren’t gifts to be bestowed on footballers – or footballers wives – either, but that’s another story.
“Kelly Hoare, also an electorate secretary, succeeded her father.”
In this case, the apple fell a long way from the tree. Hoare’s father, Bob Brown, was a good local member, a good junior minister in the Hawke government, and in an earlier life wrote the leading (in its day) high school economics textbook.
Today’s Sunday Telegraph has waded into the debate with a front page story: Rudd MP asked driver for sex
Yep I saw that Shaun and thought that, in the circumstances, it was fairly unnecessary and a pretty low blow. You’d wonder who might have briefed the Sunday Telegraph?
Agreed Geoff. In fact, I’d thought the Tele would be making an issue of Combet’s preselection of Hoare if anything.
The story of Kelly Hoare, is merely an exemplary of the plight that political parties, particularly those who believe or pretend to, that they are the heirs of the democratic movement in politics which was organised to aggregate ‘popular’ opinion and ensure that representatives of the ‘popular’ classes were representated in Parliament, now find themselves in. Ms Hoare took over the seat from her father, the way a daughter or son might take over the family business. She is a 22 carat dope, who is only there because Dad thought she should have a career and was in a position to give her one. The whole proces owed nothing at all to the meritocratic or organising impulses that are supposed to underpin social democratic means of smoothing the unevenness of the power of the market and capital.
That being said, while Combet is an infinitely better candidate in every way possible, it does illustrate in a macabre way, the collapse of the social democratic impulse as a way of organising more democracy for the ‘people’. I have no problem with ‘parachuting’ candidates into seats, when the alternative is a couple of hundred old fogeys whose connections with the electorate go back around 50 years and are locked into mindsets and zeitgeists that are a generation old. A process which parachutes people who have operated from a position which is right up front of the reality of the current dispensation, is preferable to a process which permits the children of a former dispensation to enter Parliament, because a parent happens to wield local loyalties, based on the nostalgia of a previous generation for a past which has been smashed. However the more interesting question is, apart from Combet whose talents and capacities are obvious, where and how are social democratic parties going to collect candidates of capacity and competence when the local branches reflect a past that Hawke/Keating finished for good?
Before Liberal daleks get going here, it as well to understand, that the capacities and grass roots energy of the Liberal Party may be seen in the ability of the NSW Right, to parachute people into Parliament (State) that have as much connection with the electorate as the Socialist Alliance does. So goes governance as a form of technocratic managerialism. Kelly Hoare? I am crying (not).
It can be better for an organisation if they can fire workers and replace them with better ones. So it does appear that Labor does understand how flexibility in the workplace can help!
Anna Winter and Everyone:
We should be very grateful to the Australian? Labor? Party and to the Liberal?? Party for entertaining the whole world with all the demonstrations that Australia does indeed have a Third World political system.
Dodgy Constitution, immune from reform.
“Federation” instead of independence.
Institutionalized branch-stacking.
Parachuted celebrities of barely-adequate competence.
Shonky referenda such as the one on becoming a republic.
An unquestioning choir pretending to be a news media.
Legislation for sale.
Despised rank-and-file party members.
Ripped-off, defrauded voters.
Hand-in-the-till fiscal irresponsibility.
Failure of vision and leadership.
Kleptocracy.
Parliamentarians punished for doing the right thing by their constituents.
Grovelling to foreign rulers ……
Yep, Australia has got it all.
And pompous Australian dignitaries toddle all around the world pontificating to all-and-sundry about democracy, the rule of law, probity in public life ……. what a joke.
Combet may make a great minister but we’ll never know unless Labor win government. His profile could make the difference in a marginal seat.
Ms. Hoare represents the very finest of Labor traditions.
1. Born to Rule mentality. She inherited her old man’s seat (which Labor pollies don’t?)
2. The broad was too thick to compete on her own, so Emily’s List gave her a leg up.
Then the piece de resistance a union boss who has never even visited the electorate gets parachuted in at the eleventh hour witjout so much as by your leave to the poor local sods.
Useless Idiots
who has never even visited the electorate
What? He was raised in the Hunter Valley and began his career there.
Also, EMILY’s List doesn’t give money to candidates running for safe seats.
But who needs facts when you have a tiresome point to make?
They really should update their website, though.
Not sure why John’s point is tiresome, Anna – it fairly succinctly poses the 3 questions Labor should (but won’t) answer in this whole affair:
1. How did Ms Hoare get there in the first place?
2. Does the quota system encourage dud candidates, and help keep them there?
3. Is centralised control just substituting one set of “jobs for mates” with another?
As discussed here, most people believe she undeservedly benefited from her father’s position, and her factional allegiances. Quite a few people are discussing it, actually.
No. Firstly, unless you can demonstrate to me how all the blokes in Parliament are great, and only the women who got there through AA are duds, then find a new theme. Secondly, she’s being dumped, so clearly it isn’t helping to keep them there. Thirdly, and you may not know this by Greenfield certainly does, EMILY’s List doesn’t choose candidates, and doesn’t give money to those running for safe seats. It helps women running for marginal (and sometimes safe Liberal) seats.
Kinda the theme of my post. Try reading it.