Friday, 10th February, 2006

That Labor Leader Kim Beazley has no stomach for tackling his party's factional bosses could not have been made clearer than in his answer last week to a question about the efforts to take away former leader Simon Crean's pre-selection. "I have this firm view," said Mr Beazley, "and it's not a view you can pursue in a completely unchecked or unqualified fashion, but I think that in a democratic political party, people have got to be entitled to a vote. I am for protection of ministers when you happen to be in government, but me, all the rest of us in Opposition, or if we are not ministers, we ought to be open in a democratic political party to a vote - and vulnewrable every time a preselection comes around."

All very fine, you might think, but for the truth that there is very little that is democratic about the way the Labor Party is run. Who gets what job is not decided by a representative group of honest to goodness Labor people but by a cabal of trade union leaders and factional chieftains. Where there has to be a vote these hard men and women, mostly men, compete against each other to stack branches with make believe party members so that the real rank and file are disenfranchised.

Simon Crean was himself a product of this peculiar patronage system as he worked his way up from being an MP's son to trade union official to trade union boss and then MP, government minister and Leader of the Opposition. But when he reached that leadership pinnacle a strange thing happened to Simon. He saw that the choices being made by Labor's feudal lords were not the ones that would give him the best chance of winning an election. He took the daring step of following in the steps of Gough Whitlam and set about reforming the party structure. But whereas Gough Whitlam crashed through and smashed the power of "the faceless men", Simon Crean just crashed. The party lords persuaded Kim Beazley to come out of his self-imposed retirement from leadership and challenge Crean not once but twice.

That the resurrection of their man only followed the amazing interregnum of Mark Latham and another election defeat is now of little consequence. Power in the Labor kingdom has been restored to its rightful place with a titular head who knows his place and that interfering with things like preselections is not it. As for Simon Crean, well he must be punished for daring to have once broken ranks.

So now we have the sad situation of a former Leader of the Labor Party being deserted by a man who proceeded and succeeded him and it is left to colleagues with more ticker than Beazley to come to Simon Crean's aid. One such colleague is Labor's health spokeswoman Julia Gillard who did not duck the question when asked at the National Press Club this week whether she subscribed to the Beazley view on preselections. She said:

"I'm a subscriber to the Julia Gillard school of thought on preselections; with respect to Simon Crean, this means that given his history in the party, he deserves the respect of the party overall. He has been a government minister, a loyal deputy leader, an effective shadow treasurer who prosecuted an anti-GST campaign that took us as close to victory as we've been since the 1996 defeat. And of course there is his role as a former leader of the party. He is entitled to the party's respect from that record of service. And that respect should be shown in the preselection process by having Simon re-preselected and returned.

Simon is now one of the important custodians of our collective and corporate memory. We would miss him dreadfully if he was not here to help advise about the long-term issues for Labor. He is one of the few people - indeed Kim Beazley is the only other - in the current shadow ministry who can bring that breadth of knowledge and experience.

Spoken like a true leader. Julia Gillard is certainly not one to kow tow to the factional bosses which is why she will probably never get there.

No support from
Kim Beazley

Julia Gillard

Spoke like a real leader