The revelations emerging from the ICAC hearings in Sydney suggest Australia’s oldest political party has been coarsened by a group of spivs, time servers and mendacious mediocrities.
To understand the dimensions of the Australian Labor Party’s post-election slump, there would have been no better place to be an observer than at a quiet family gathering held in Brisbane last month.
Far from ICAC revelations of Tammany Hall-style corruption at the NSW ALP, the gathering was held to mourn the passing of Graham Freudenberg, speech writer to ALP figures like former Labor prime ministers Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke, former federal ALP leader Arthur Calwell, and former NSW Labor premiers Neville Wran and Bob Carr.
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Andrew Clark was a senior writer at The Australian Financial Review.
