Labor's lust for power revealed

PUT down your binoculars, political pundits! It's already the view of many Federal Opposition members that Glorious Leader Kevin Rudd has won the yet-to-be-declared election.

So certain of this are some of the more ambitious that they are already soliciting suggestions from friends in the Press Gallery about which offices they should seek when Australia's votes are actually subjected to the quaint convention of a count. Questions about the quality of carpets, styles of ministerial furniture and decorative works of art are being vigorously argued, such is their faith in the victory. But as one somewhat older and wiser Labor numbers man sagely observed (after unnecessarily and somewhat apologetically seeking a reassurance that this writer would not breach the time-honoured convention of not disclosing sources of information gleaned during off-the-record conversations) the Labor leadership has promised more people ministries than there are ministries to fill. More bums than available frontbench seats. The Federal ALP currently lists 30 shadow ministers on its website. While there are more than a fair number of glaring duds among them, most live in hope that their shadow responsibilities will be converted into the real thing should Labor's opinion poll lead translate into the real thing at the only poll that counts. The reality is, of course, that even the most fabled alchemists of old failed to turn lead into gold and many on the Opposition frontbench will doubtless find their futures turning to dross even if their party wins. Awaiting the election results just as anxiously however are at least 15, probably more, current MPs, senators and parliamentary aspirants who believe they are also on a promise of greatness should the ALP's shuddering ship come in. A quick look at the queue forming in the two major states - NSW and Victoria - illustrates the dimension of the problem Labor could face if those who think they belong on the ministerial benches try to join those already holding shadow portfolios. In Victoria, the prominent Melbourne barrister and Queens Counsel Mark Dreyfus is Labor's candidate for Isaacs. He is not the sort who would throw in a career, in which he has taken several important cases to the High Court, to while away the hours on the backbench writing letters to constituents on their birthdays. The sitting MP for Wills, Kelvin Thomson, who notoriously wrote references for some of the nation's major criminals while holding the shadow attorney-general portfolio, probably feels he has now seen the error of his ways during these past four months in backbench exile and is worthy of rehabilitation. His membership of former Victorian premier Joan Kirner's failed government may count against him, but optimism reigns supreme. AWU national secretary Bill Shorten, who is campaigning hard to win Maribyrnong must also be a frontbench contender. After all, Shorten has been mentioned as a future national leader of the ALP and, as president of the Victorian Branch of the ALP and a member of the ALP's national executive and the ACTU executive, he packs more punch than Rudd has ever carried in his entire career. The former Victorian ALP state secretary David Feeney, who is running in the third spot on Labor's Victorian Senate ticket sees himself as going straight to the pointy end of the federal party and former senator Jacinta Collins, who is seeking a comeback, is also a contender. Then there's Brendan O'Connor, the current Member for Gorton, who as Chair of the Federal Labor Parliamentary Industrial Relations Taskforce which reported on the ALP's assessment of the impact of Work Choices on Australian workers feels he's earned his stripes, as does the Member for Chisholm Anna Burke, formerly of the Finance Sector Union, who harbours similar ambitions. In NSW, the long-serving Senator John Faulkner, current ALP national president, the former husband of NSW's controversial former tourism minister Sandra Nori, and a serial haranguer of public servants during Senate Estimates hearings, is also ready for a stint in the ministry. In the Blue Mountains seat of Macquarie, candidate Bob Debus, the former NSW attorney-general, is hardly the sort of fellow who would commute to Canberra for the delights of the backbench and, modesty aside, is ready to strut his stuff in an arena with more gravitas than the grubby state Bear Pit. The former ABC journalist Maxine McKew, whose past political wisdom saw her enthusiastically back Labor's lousiest leader in recent memory Mark Latham, was billed as a star Labor candidate when she threw her hat into the Bennelong circus. There is an expectation there that, should she win, she would be feted with a favoured camera-friendly seat close to the Parliament's cameras. Greg Combet, the star of the ABC's fantasy about the waterfront reforms, even though he was on the losing side and all of the Maritime Union of Australia's predictions about the impossibility of increasing waterfront productivity have been proved wrong, didn't quit his ACTU powerbase to fetch drinks. Rudd owes the unions big time and they will want their tonne of flesh, while Combet wants to restructure the workforce into the sort of union-dominated monolith that crippled the UK for much of the last half century. It will also be cheque-cashing time for the former general-secretary of the NSW ALP Mark Arbib, who is running for a seat in the Senate. A key figure in the coup that delivered Rudd the ALP leadership, Arbib has his eyes firmly on the brass ring. Other possibilities include NSW Senator Ursula Stephens and Labor's candidate for Eden-Monaro Mike Kelly, a former colonel in the army legal department. Which means some pips will squeak when they find they aren't required by the Dear Leader. The list of the losers apparently begins with Hunter MP Joel Fitzgibbon, but let's have the election before passing the tissues.