Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon going down to the crossroads

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

What is Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon — the so-called “Man at the Crossroads” — up to?

Some eyebrows have been raised over the billing the veteran member for Hunter has been given for an upcoming talk at the Sydney Mining Club.

The $85 plus drinks luncheon address is billed: “Man at the Crossroads”.

It’s the sort self-promotion more often employed by a brash newly elected member, or an American presidential candidate, than a veteran of the opposition benches of Australian federal politics.

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Fitzgibbon is evidently not a man short of confidence. After the disastrous May election — at which the former auto-electrician almost lost the NSW seat he took over from his father Eric Fitzgibbon in 1996 — Fitzgibbon Jr flirted with running to be Labor leader.

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Instead Fitzgibbon, the senior federal caucus member of the battered NSW Labor Right, bowed out for his fellow member of the class of ’96 Anthony Albanese, the senior federal figure from the NSW Labor Left and the clear favourite among the ALP membership.

Six months on, it’s clear the 57-year-old Fitzgibbon — dubbed “Crossroads” because of his shadow resources and agriculture portfolios — intends to do more than just warm the coal and wine country seat, which come December will have been in the family for 35 years.

He’s been one of the loudest voices in Albo’s shadow ministry, speaking out about the party’s drift from its “blue-collar base” and the need to show more interest in “regional Australia”.

As the speech’s blurb hypes: “Fitzgibbon is now in the party’s engine room as it navigates the vexing political nexus between drought, climate change and the extraordinary bounty of high-quality coal that continues to be mined, despite increasing opposition, to meet world demand.”

The gushing blurb — whose author isn’t credited — also quotes from Fitzgibbon’s recent election literature: “He’s one of Us.”

Perhaps he’s just talking a big game to sell tickets for the lunch — but a suspicious mind might wonder if the Rudd (but not Gillard) minister has ambitions for one more big job in Canberra.

As Bill Shorten knows well, the class of ’96 is nothing if not persistent.

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