Strewth: after Daley’s defeat, Labor finds it’s time to zip it

The missive from the NSW Labor Party started simply enough, before ascending the Everest of optimism.

Time to zip it

Yesterday’s missive from the freshly defeated NSW Labor Party started simply enough, its matter-of-fact language giving no hint that within a few sentences it would ascend the Everest of optimism: “The NSW Labor Party Officers have resolved to hold the rank-and-file ballot for Leader of the NSW Parliamentary Party, after the 2019 Federal Election.” (They are very fond of their capital letters, taking an almost German approach to nouns.) “The NSW Labor Party is on official campaign footing and is committed to the task of electing a Shorten Labor Government over the next seven weeks.” It is at this point that you are advised to don an oxygen mask: “The Party has directed the caucus to open nominations after the Federal Election and members of the State Parliamentary Labor Party are directed to refrain from commenting on, or campaigning for the SPLP leadership prior to the Federal Election.” Good luck with that! A journalist took a different approach, asking NSW Labor leader Michael Daley if he was tempted to “pull the pin and sail off into the sunset”? Which sounds like a violently proactive version of a Viking funeral.

Fifty shades of dismay

At a federal level, Labor has found itself obliged to provide quite a spectrum of responses to Daley’s Asian comments. Deputy leader Tanya Plibersek gave us: “I think those comments were unfortunate … it was quite right that Michael Daley apologised for them.” Senator Jenny McAllister declared herself “really disappointed”. Penny Wong said, “I thought he expressed himself poorly and his statement a couple of days ago demonstrated that”, though Wong’s disappointment was amplified by her eyebrows. Anthony Albanese opted for understatement: “Those comments weren’t appropriate.” And Michelle Rowland: “I think it hurt on several levels … There may have been some questioning about if he’s thinking this about one cohort of people, what is he thinking about others? I think it was ill-judged the way that he expressed them.” Tony Burke applied a boot: “I condemn those in the strongest terms. Michael himself now would as well.” And Ed Husic was “profoundly disappointed and angry”, describing the comments as “anathema”. The greatest of all, though, was surely Bill Shorten last week when it was still fresh.

Journo: “Mr Shorten, the PM has condemned comments by Michael Daley in a video that surfaced online. What do you make of the comments, and will you do the same?”

Shorten: “Well, first of all, there’s a state election on Saturday, and Mr Daley has himself dealt with this matter and he’s apologised for the remarks. What I do actually see is an important test for our current PM is this issue of how to treat extreme right-wing parties in Australia.”

Yesterday, and without any prompting, he opted to upgrade to: “His comments, which were videotaped, were wrong. I’ve told them they were wrong. It’s not even that you shouldn’t say them, you shouldn’t think them.”

As for Daley himself, a forlorn figure at his own press conference yesterday, he offered the defence of a pollie keenly aware he is up a creek with neither paddle nor canoe: “The people who know me know I’m not a racist.”

May be gone some time

Among those who had a better election is broadcaster Dugald Saunders. Hewas declared to have been successful as the Nationals candidate in Dubbo yesterday, lending a touching note to his entry on his now former employer’s website: “Dugald Saunders is presently on leave from the ABC.”

Going, going, going

If anyone ever constructs a Mal Meninga Museum of Political Brevity, a small wing ought to be dedicated to Niall Blair, the NSW agriculture minister who just quit roughly three nanoseconds after being re-elected. Swift resignations represent a certain efficiency, but what about the flip side? For a small but perfectly formed encapsulation of a magnificently drawn-out resignation, we turn briefly to The Spectator’s account of British Labour pollie John Stonehouse: “Tired of running from his creditors, hiding his affair from his wife and concealing his past as a Czech spy, this former Labour minister faked his own death in 1974. He disappeared, leaving his clothes and passport on a Miami Beach. The papers speculated that he had been eaten by sharks, but while the Commons held a minute of silence for him, Stonehouse was cheerfully sipping a pina colada in Hawaii, reading his own obituaries. Stonehouse was rediscovered later that year in Australia, having been mistaken for Lord Lucan. He returned to Britain in disgrace and insisted on resuming his seat as an MP. He refused to resign until he was sent to prison for fraud in 1976.”

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