Piers Akerman: Democracy the loser as Labor plays musical chairs

The Labor Party doesn’t represent the people anymore. It represents Labor hacks who owe their loyalty to Labor factions, Piers Akerman writes.

Federal Opposition leader Anthony Albanese’s shadow cabinet reshuffle highlights the reality that the only jobs Labor is interested in are the jobs its MPs and Senators already hold.

Jobs for the boys and girls (and transgenders, if that’s your bent) provided you’re in the Labor club.

Just flicking through the resumés of a handful of those repositioned and the most common factor they share is a lack of meaningful real-world experience.

Richard Marles, was an avid member of the ALP as a student and he joined the Labor law firm Slater + Gordon on graduating before taking positions within the TWU and the ACTU before being elected as the MP for the Victorian seat of Corio in 2007.

Chris Bowen was active in Labor in local politics and was elected Mayor of Fairfield in NSW before he went to Canberra as the MP for Prospect in 2004. When that seat was abolished he won the seat of McMahon in 2010.

Anthony Albanese has chosen his new shadow cabinet. Picture: NCA Newswire/Gary Ramage

The mouthy Mark Butler, who was so over-excited by climate change he had to be removed from his shadow position in this makeover, came up through the trade union stream via the South Australian branch of Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union in 1996, before his election to federal parliament as the MP for Port Adelaide in 2007.

Tanya Plibersek, another whose teenage support for Labor was rewarded has been the MP for Sydney since 1998.

Youthful ambition also rewarded Clare O’Neil, who joined the ALP at 16 and at 23, was elected mayor of the Labor dominated Springvale council in Melbourne’s east.

She briefly worked for the global consultancy McKinsey before taking the Victorian seat of Hotham in 2013.

Ed Husic, the first Muslim to hold a portfolio, was a Labor researcher, an ALP branch organiser in 1997, then an officer in the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union of Australia (CEPU) from 1999 to 2003, with a brief period working for Integral Energy before returning to the union and his election to parliament as the MP for Chifley in 2010.

Julie Collins was the former secretary of the Tasmanian branch of the ALP before taking the seat of Franklin in 2007.

Tanya Plibersek. Picture: Adam Yip

NSW readers probably don’t want reminding that Kristina Keneally was one of the State’s worst premiers before she led NSW Labor into the 2011 state election which resulted in Labor’s worst showing in over a century and one of the worst defeats a sitting state government in Australia has ever suffered.

She only managed to hold onto her own seat with preferences and was quick to take the Senate seat vacated by China’s disgraced hand puppet “Shanghai” Sam Dastyari when he
was forced to quit after receiving donations connected to the Chinese Communist Party.

Labor prides itself on its history yet never learns from it which is why such duds as Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard emerged on top of the ALP dung heap.

Columnist Piers Akerman. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Kim Beazley Sr, the current Western Australia Governor’s father, and a former Labor minister famously rang a funereal warning for the ALP half a century ago when he said in 1970: “When I joined the Labor Party it contained the cream of the working class. As I look about me now all I see are the dregs of the middle class.”

Veteran Labor staffer, former journalist, restaurateur and publican lobbyist Eric Walsh, in a 2010 interview with the late Senator Susan Ryan for the National Archive, paraphrased a speech at Canberra’s Lakeside hotel that Labor legend Gough Whitlam gave in 2002 at the 30th anniversary of his historic victory.

“Well you’re all celebrating a, a colossal victory,” Walsh recalled Whitlam saying.

“That after 23 years we actually made it and we demonstrated that we could form a government and actually perform as a government. But you’re thanking me for doing it. But I wouldn’t get preselection now, let alone be leader,” he said.

“’Cause I’m not a sibling, I’m not a unionist and I’m not a staffer. So they wouldn’t consider me.”

Walsh reminded Ryan that when Whitlam was Prime Minister, Labor MPs listed 29 former occupations among them.

When he gave the interview, 11 years ago, there were but five.

Labor doesn’t represent the people anymore. It represents Labor hacks who owe their loyalty to Labor factions.

Democracy and the Australian people are the losers.