Grand or compact

Australians who believe in the union movement believe that if you're worried about losing your job, or working harder for lesser pay and conditions, then you should join your union. If you have to join the union which Paul Howes is operating under the Ludwig franchise, then all he wants is a bit of shoosh from the likes of you and to enjoy the kind of all-care-no-responsibility status union leaders had a generation ago.

This speech makes little sense unless you see it as a precursor for the royal commission into trade union governance and corruption. It signifies little thought on the part of the individual from whose mouth it comes, little sense that he understands the nation into whose politics he thrusts himself, and little sense that he has sought to bring others with him - odd for an avowed unionist.

After a week-and-a-half of front page allegations of corruption in some unions there are things that need to be said - and said in the strongest possible terms.

Any union official proven to be engaged in corrupt or criminal behaviour is a traitor.

The fact that he started his speech with this is puzzling. He opened by talking about vision, and rather than making such a vision rooted in his movement's long history he instead switched to headlines from the preceding two weeks. Union corruption has been going on for more than a week-and-a-half, and the fact that it has hit the media is the least of it. The CFMEU, target of recent allegations, are factional opponents of Howes'. How he expected to rise above the muck with a few factional jabs is unclear.

Howes could have referred to the Health Services Union, whose complicated affairs are playing out in an interesting way. Howes himself referred later to corruption and clean-ups in the AWU, matters which were dealt with by others before he became involved. Making Howes out to be Abbott's patsy doesn't make you a conspiracy theorist: it means you understand how politics works, and how people like Howes operate.

Factional goading, then invoking his own irrelevance: a peculiar model of leadership.

In doing this we should be under no illusion – those who act dishonestly from within the union movement are worse than any crook boss.

I would have been impressed with Paul Howes had he gone to Maules Creek and said to John Maitland, Ian Macdonald and/or Eddie Obeid that, even though their proposals would have employed plenty of AWU members, it was all done dishonestly and he and his union weren't going to be part of it. That didn't happen.

I would have been impressed with Paul Howes had he leant across the luncheon table to Michael Williamson and said: this bullshit has to stop. It has to stop today, and if you dare cry "what do you mean?", I'm going to smack you. That didn't happen, so the idea of Howes as white knight, the guy with the answers has to be seen in that light.

There is no place for you in any corner of our movement.

Clearly though, there has been and there is. Howes, a senior official in both the ALP and ACTU, did very little - too little - to set and enforce standards within the union movement. Why such a person might be considered a great leader in such a movement is unclear. Why he would cheer on a wide-ranging inquiry from a hostile government, and do so a matter of days before a crucial by-election, is unclear - especially if you regard Howes highly as a savvy political operative.

The truth is, today we are facing a real jobs crisis.

This country has shed 130,000 jobs in manufacturing alone since the GFC. Tens of thousands more lie just around the corner.

Indeed, 3000 more lie down the road in Shepparton.

Over my seven years as National Secretary I've travelled to many good factories in deep strife.

People trying to work out a solution at SPC Ardmona would have to look at those words and say: thanks for nothing, Howes. Tooling around the country, casting an eye over closing factories, Howes looks at their labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.

Some will tell you that our industrial relations system is dragging us down.

And I won't be popular amongst my friends in the labour movement for saying this - but I agree.

When so few employees are members of unions, this is absurd.

Productivity decisions are matters for management. Holden, Ford and Toyota built cars that too few wanted to buy at the price. Healthy little human beans got their sustenance from sources other than SPC. Department stores don't engage their staff, staff don't engage customers, customers shun the stores, while Paul Howes hovers above, understanding little of what he sees. Labour market decisions, and big old-school negotiations of the type Howes identifies as his desired model, are irrelevant to the dopey decisions that have seen productivity stagnate and decline.

Labour market policy is a core pillar of the national economy. It's as critical as monetary policy and trade policy ...

Yet can you imagine what would happen if other key pillars of economic policy were being knocked down and rebuilt so often?

Imagine re-regulating the interest rates regime on a three-year election cycle. Can you picture what that would do to business and household confidence?

It would create disastrous instability. We'd all be crying for it to end.

Wait until Howes finds out that the Reserve Bank board actually reviews interest rates every month. Wait until he finds out that the exchange rate for the Australian dollar against other countries goes up and down several times a second. The idea that he should be puzzled at workplace relations being subject to political debate is the sign of someone who doesn't understand politics, or is trying to misrepresent it.

Business senses an opportunity whenever the Coalition takes office to shift all the rules in its favour.

Unions do the same when Labor gets in. And ultimately no one gets anywhere.

No one? Anywhere? This country has enjoyed almost 23 years of continuous economic growth, during which the federal government has changed four times. Unemployment is less than six percent. Most tellingly for Howes and his warmed-over Resolution of Conflict, industrial disputes are fewer and shorter than they have been since the Accord.

It's become very fashionable of late to praise the Accord of thirty years ago.

Even those who railed against it at the time, now acknowledge it as the critical turning point in the nation's economic history.

What was right for a previous time is not necessarily right for today. Crucially, Howes never makes the case, invoking nothing beyond the kind of hippie-style can't-we-all-get-along sentiment that he decries in the Greens.

Given that he wants a system that transcends what's "fashionable", does he think that description commends the Accord to serious consideration?

A Grand Compact in which business, unions and government all work out a deal that we all agree to live with for the long haul.

Which businesses? Why unions, given their failure to appeal to workers (not to mention their governance issues)? Which government?

On top of this, the government's criticisms of workplace relations practices at the car manufacturers and SPC Ardmona - which Howes is reinforcing - fails for two reasons:

• No matter what arrangement employers and workers (union-represented or not) hammer out, some smart-alec from Canberra is going to pick out some detail and make all concerned look like they don't know what they're doing. No agreement, no compact, can survive wise-after-the-event posturings from those who weren't involved and who have no real stake in the success or failure of that workplace.
• This government has a trust issue over the question of jobs. It says it wants high-paying, secure jobs for Australian workers. In practice it seems unconcerned and disinterested when such jobs are abolished. Its members complain that existing jobs pay "too much" when they often fail to sustain their occupants at a level commensurate with this country's social norms and expectations. Howes is stupid to buy into that dilemma while talking about solutions.

Howes is part of the problem.

A Grand Compact that generates certainty and thus confidence.

This would breed the very kind of anti-competitive environment that the Accord existed to resolve, the mutual complacency that mired Australia in the 1970s at the end of another long boom.

That establishes investing in a workforce as a virtue and not a cost.

Where productivity is a shared responsibility not someone else's job.

Where on the job training and development and career planning are the norm.

Now this is a fine sentiment, well articulated but not at all well considered. This is where Howes needed to engage with ideas about the future of work, the very value of human labour in the twenty-first century. Instead, someone like Kate Carruthers can genuinely be said to have thought more carefully and intelligently about such issues than someone who is supposedly a national leader for Australia's working people. It's no surprise that Howes got more publicity than Carruthers, but journalists - people who have faced the very questions of human work and its value that Carruthers raises - have no excuse for giving Howes a free pass for his banalities.

Howes is right to say that these are big and important issues; he is wrong to advance non-ideas that mention but fail to address them. He is wrong to be lauded by journalists as though he had succeeded in grappling with big and important issues, when he has so clearly failed.

We naively believed that everyone being a little bit unhappy with the outcome, delivered the compromise that was sought.

It turns out we were wrong.

So how could things be different with a Grand Compact? Well, obviously, we have a different climate now.

Yes, and the political 'climate' changes all the time, which means that any kind of compact is going to be a product of 'climate' and will inevitably change when the climate changes again. The government has the desire to keep itself in office but does not have what it takes to maintain policy stability. Business does not have what it takes to maintain its market position in a globally competitive market, let alone grow it. Unions represent few workers, and fewer still well or convincingly. All we have is the climate, and the ability to deal with it as best we can.

The idea of a "Grand Compact" is now revealed as a hollow fraud, a gobbet of windbaggery, an admission that it does not and cannot work in any reality beyond the walls of the National Press Club. Did the wait staff and cleaners share a laugh at these contradictory and vapid ideas? Did the journalists not ask them, or fail to consider what such a Grand Compact might mean to what remains of their own industry?

The absence of social capital in our industrial relations system is something of an Australian anomaly – because strong social capital is actually what drives our success in most other areas.

Precisely because unrepresentative swill like Howes seek to abrogate the rights of the system to themselves, I would suggest. A clubby, behind-closed-doors approach of the type Howes would like would diminish social capital rather than raise it.

We need to talk more about 'why Labor', rather than 'how Labor'

This implies that Labor needs to justify its own existence rather than assume a place at the table as of right. It goes against and undermines the rest of the guff about the Grand Compact.

Labor's sole purpose is not to claw back the Lodge in the most expedient way and then jealously guard it for as long as possible.

It wasn't right for the last six years – and it is not right now for an Opposition to death ride the Government of Australia.

Wait, but you said it was. What changed? Are you a weathervane too, like Tony Abbott?

They should understand a lurch back to WorkChoices-style conditions – is nothing but a get-rich-quick scheme.

But a Grand Compact is a golden long-term investment.

Workchoices failed because nobody was making any money from it. As to Howes' proposal for "a golden long-term investment", it is far from clear who (beyond the few participants) would reap the dividends.

But the point is we can't force people into this - we need to take them with us. A Grand Compact can only be driven through the art of persuasion.

Given the inability of Howes and other members of the political class to take people with them, and build political capital, this key phrase is why this proposal is dead in the water. It's why Jonathan Green is wrong to insist on hope that such pie-in-the-sky might afford any kind of sustenance to anyone other than Howes; he may as well ask Tony Abbott to wait at Cheviot Beach until Harold Holt finally emerges from the surf. Green might criticise the form of the criticism against Howes, but the idea that Howes is pulling a stunt in his own interests with indifference to those of others is sound - more soundly based than Green's insistence on good manners to foster what is at best an ill-considered and impracticable proposal, at worst a feeble and much-hyped con.

Howes' political base does not consist of the AWU's membership. It consists of Bill Ludwig and the journalists who report on politics. For instance, Howes well and truly pulled the wool over the eyes of these monkeys:

Union boss Paul Howes has dramatically undermined Bill Shorten's depiction of the Abbott government as anti-worker, proposing unions enter into a new partnership with the Coalition and business to rein in high wages and lift productivity.

Has there ever been an instance where Shorten and Howes disagreed, and Howes prevailed? No. Therefore this lightweight cannot be said to have undermined anyone or anything. When Shorten says:

Mr Shorten on Thursday again declined to directly criticise Mr Howes, but suggested that it was entertaining a "fantasy" if he thought a Bob Hawke-style Accord could be struct between unions and the Abbott government.

"I am not going to engage in some fantasy that Tony Abbott is going to change his spots," Mr Shorten told ABC radio.

Mr Shorten said that he supported consensus on workplace relations.

"It's what I've done for 25 years," the former union leader said. "Do you seriously believe that Tony Abbott is interested in working with trade unions?"

No, but Howes does:

I don't believe for a second that the Abbott Government is un-turnable on industrial relations.

Despite the more cartoonish portrayals, the Prime Minister is far more a politician than he is an ideologue.

I don't believe that the All Blacks are unbeatable in rugby, but I concede that I'm not the guy to beat them. Howes' stated beliefs are one thing, but his confidence in his ability to turn this government is absolutely misplaced. Shorten knows Abbott better than Howes does. Shorten knows workplace relations better than Howes does. Hell, Shorten knows Howes' job and his union better than Howes does. Memo to Kenny and Massola: whenever Shorten disagrees with Howes, Howes is wrong.

It's a standard trick from the US Republicans to attack your opponent on their strongest suit. The Liberals in Australia tend to attack Labor where they feel most insecure. When Pyne accuses Shorten of dancing to the unions' tune, we see that Shorten is a more substantial figure in the union movement than Pyne or Abbott are with business.

Those who keep faith with Howes will be further dismayed once they realise that his statements are not positions of principle, but contrarian look-at-me poses. Howes' speech is Labor's version of Cory Bernardi's book. If Howes is so powerful, why can't he bring other leading unionists with him? Where is the Labor politician who agrees with Howes' promise to the extent that Howes does, who can cultivate the loyalty that Michael O'Brien showed to Don Farrell? At least Bernardi knows how to win a Senate seat.

To talk Howes up is to fail to understand politics, and if you don't understand politics then what are you doing in the press gallery?

To his credit, Mark Skulley isn't a press gallery journalist but here he demonstrates some of the weaknesses of that debased form of journalism. First, the straw man of McTernan was a weak hook for that article. Second, if you're going to talk about "conspiracy theorists", let's look at this:

Howes wrote an inside account of the 2010 election, Confessions of a Faceless Man, which gives an insight into his preparedness to shake things up, even on his own side. As prime minister, Rudd was asked by the Liberal, Christopher Pyne, to comment on criticism of Labor’s asylum seeker policies by Howes.

The book recounts how Howes was affronted that Rudd told parliament that he had not read the comments: “It was a humiliating blow. I hadn’t been expecting him to agree with me, but to dismiss my views out of hand because they didn’t suit his own thinking was typical of Rudd’s attitude to those around him in the wider labour movement.”

Pyne was shadow minister for education. It's entirely possible that Howes put Pyne up to that question - and before you start, see Kerry-Anne Walsh's The Stalking of Julia Gillard for an example of the Opposition asking Rudd, as Foreign Minister, to bag Prime Minister Gillard under the guise of a cross-party Dorothy Dixer. Howes' profession at being shocked, shocked at Rudd's disloyalty ought not be taken at face value.

Saying Howes is the sort of person who'd set up a Liberal to make a Labor PM look bad, and that said PM could see through it and give Howes a taste of his own treatment, doesn't make you a conspiracy theorist; it shows you understand how politics works. If you understand how politics works you are better able to comment on it than someone who gets starry-eyed about a set-piece confection at the National Press Club.

But the boss of Australia’s biggest union, Joe de Bruyn, has rejected Howes’s idea of a grand compact as “fanciful and naïve”.

Such an assessment must surely colour Howes' speech, Howes' judgment, and Howes himself.

But Hawke built consensus, while Howes strikes out on his own in often dramatic ways.

It's a basic political skill to bring others along with you. Any fool can strike out on his own in often dramatic ways. Building consensus and bringing people with you is essential to the realisation of a 'Grand Compact'; striking out on your own less so.

But some of the points Howes made in the speech this week were praised by commentators as varied as Alan Kohler, Jonathan Green and former Liberal strongman Peter Reith, who reckoned he was setting himself up as a potential Labor leader “with backbone”.

None of those people will help Howes win a seat or raise a cent to help any campaign he might run. When he was as old as Howes is now, Bob Hawke was an endorsed Labor candidate for Parliament. Howes is no closer to realising any dreams he might have in that direction, no closer to learning the lessons that Hawke learned at that unsuccessful tilt, and it is unlikely that the Liberals would fear Howes anything like as much as their forebears did Hawke.

[Howes] still evidently enjoys the occasional speech – and has really stirred the possum this time.

He has done nothing of any lasting value. Howes' speech can be dismissed in three words: wanker's gonna wank. A really significant speech would have seen union, business and government leaders consulted beforehand and offer real support, evidence of real heft on Howes' part that is clearly lacking. Plenty of big news (e.g. the Toyota shutdown, the failure of the dire budget predictions last year, this government's palpable fear of regional electorates) went begging because journos got sucked into this bullshit by someone with a big mouth but little actual clout.

Is Australia's future grand or compact? It can't be both because Howes, like his brother-from-another-mother Tony Abbott, hasn't thought through the issues. He can't help us with the policies and the social capital necessary to realise a bright and prosperous future. He can't have a bright and prosperous future at our expense, like Tony Abbott has. When journalist foist a media tart upon the rest of us they foster resentment of not only the tart, but the media. Get your hand off it Howes, wake up to yourselves journalists, tell us what politics is really about and enough with the half-baked sideshows.

Accentuate the positive

This blog takes good journalism for granted and bags poor journalism hard. The former can't continue but the latter must.

Peter Hartcher's piece on Morrison and Abbott was superb. Well-written without being hifaultin, Hartcher called bullshit on Morrison and Abbott with interest rates and now with race-baiting. It was elegantly written, it was widely sourced, and drew on Hartcher's deep knowledge of international economics as well as a revulsion for cheap populism of this sort.

Then there was Laurie Oakes' piece, quite good as straight reporting. Morrison seems to believe he can tack to port or starboard like a boat, but unlike a boat the water doesn't just close up behind you.

At the very moment when the Liberals were making themselves the story, up steps Paul Howes for a bit of limelight-hogging. At a time when miners are being paid better than footballers, Howes is painting them as underprivileged. Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chavez are the last politicians in the western world to go on about the class war, why was I the only one laughing at Howes for flogging this dead horse? If you're going to get stuck into Rio Tinto, if you read the papers and know that Fortescue is at the crossroads with its management structure, now is not the time to suck oxygen away from the government.

Bob Hawke was no fan of Whitlam but he would never have carried on in the look-at-moiye manner that Howes is now. Rather than have the journosphere lap up everything he says, ignore him until he has something sensible to say. Fuck off back to the Blue Mountains on your skateboard until Bill Shorten can tell you how to not only get public attention, but use it to benefit someone other than yourself.

There's nowhere to go to the right of Abbott. That's what the normally excellent Shaun Carney missed with this:

Here's the truth: there is a substantial body of opinion in Australian society that is anti-Muslim, anti-asylum seeker, anti-immigration and anti-foreign aid. Millions of people hold these views, quite sincerely and quite vehemently ...

These views could be heard any day of the week on commercial talkback radio last year: cut all aid to Indonesia and probably the rest of the world, too; anybody on a people smuggler's boat deserves whatever they get if the boat starts to sink. There are more extreme but still widespread versions of this view, such as that people whose boats wash up on Australian territory should either be turned back to sea without exception or those on the boats should be taught some sort of harsh physical lesson to deter future unauthorised arrivals.

The voters who think this way are not obsessed with the detail; they are simply heartened and encouraged when they hear sympathetic noises from politicians, which is what they heard from Abbott and Morrison.

Pretty much all those people voted for the Liberal Party last time. The challenge for Abbott, Morrison and people like them is to encourage others and dissuade any doubts they may have. Truckling to people like that with no regard for facts (or, in the case of the funerals, basic human decency) is poor politics and it is going to make for sloppy government. Stop taking people promising sloppy government at face value!

It isn't "detail" to talk about those who died at Christmas Island and their families. Any gutless, anonymous fool can ring a radio station and be tougher-than-thou on "illegals" - but really, are you going to strafe people who are fighting for their lives in rough surf, or impede people trying to help those being dashed against rocks? Just because talkback radio or some poll says "there's a lot of anger out there", doesn't mean that any attempt to go into the complexities is doomed or that you have to take that "anger" as the true voice of the people.

It is interesting to note that there was no event from outside the Liberal Party that prompted this latest outburst of Islamophobia: no arse-witted imam, no risible blogger, no other Muslim fool did or said anything that might have prompted a response from the alternative government. This was an unforced error on the Liberals' part. Never mind that it's mean to pick on Muslims and people mourning the loss of loved ones, let's hit people like Morrison where they live: this is poor political judgment, self-indulgence at its worst.

There is a real possibility that Muslim Australians may be subject to violence emboldened by clowns like Morrison and Bernardi, proving what is currently a bogus thesis that Muslims and other Australians can't get along. To that end, they do nothing to make life safer and easier for Australians: and there's only one thing to do with politicians who do that, get rid of them. You have nothing to gain from indulging drongoes in the public sphere who excrete things like this:

I, for one, don't want to eat meat butchered in the name of an ideology that is mired in sixth century brutality and is an anathema to my own values.

People who eat halal meat do so in full compliance with modern health and food safety practices. In Australia, you can choose to eat halal meat or not eat it at all: liberals know this, and it's one reason why why liberals are better than conservatives.

Halal meat is a major export for Australia, and the last thing our exporters need is halfwit politicians making ignorant comments that imperil our export markets. Press gallery veterans and Liberal MPs may see some mileage in "letting Cory be Cory", but SA Liberals should get rid of this fatuous prick before he causes some real trouble (and in your heart, you know he'll never do any good).

No: let us acknowledge good journalism where it can be found. Let us not, however, give a leave pass to the whole profession under the Crabb Doctrine ("never ever criticise a journalist"), because the issues are too big and too important - and where journalism can't handle the issues, it's always the journalism that's inadequate.

The Famous Five go to Canberra

Here is the latest PvO where Canberra hype is utterly disconnected from any grounding in actual votes cast or other manifestations of political reality.

The NSW Labor Right was formed to assert the idea that the ALP need not be beholden to communists. It also formed a nexus of anti-Lang activity, so long as that was a problem, and provided a more consensual back-room relationship with the Catholic Church than was apparently possible in other states. The structural basis for the Labor Right has pretty much gone today.

What has taken its place? Nothing. There was a bit of a sugar-rush of money and bullshit over the past decade under Eric Roozendaal, but that's pretty much gone now. None of the guys (and the fact that they're all guys is worth investigating) PvO is following around like some besotted puppy can raise any serious money, or do much else for Labor in 2013:

• Tony Burke lives or dies on the success or failure of a comprehensive plan for the Murray-Darling basin. It might be too soon to write him off but it is definitely too soon to wreath him with garlands for doing a mighty job.


• Chris Bowen has two options as Immigration Minister: micro (improve facilities at detention centres and generally make the system work more efficiently) or macro (change the debate so that Labor doesn't get caned, no matter what it does, for being "too soft"). He's done neither.


• Mark Arbib advised Rudd to do nothing on the big issues, then dumped Rudd because he was a do-nothing on the big issues. No other individual is more responsible for the predicament in NSW than he (with the possible exception of Roozendaal). As Sports Minister, he's made Kate Ellis look good - Ellis started as a ditz (didn't understand the difference between rugby league and rugby union!) and ended up holding her own, while Arbib was employment minister who didn't know the unemployment rate. Everything Arbib has touched - FIFA World Cup for one - has turned to dross. That guy is going to raise no money, and can call in no favours. Stick a fork in him, he's done.


• Jason Clare has to get some wins in Defence procurement, especially with a Budget under pressure from Brisbane and a commitment to a 2012-13 surplus. Again, too soon to write him off, too soon for the hype.


• Karl Bitar: dead man walking.

After the inevitable happens in March these guys are going to have to show their faces in Sydney and ask, with a straight face, for money to donate to Labor. Raising money and deploying it is how you get and maintain power. Right now, and after March, the people with power are the people who will tell these guys where to go and suffer what consequences as these guys can conjure up.

It just won't happen. Any money from Sydney for federal Labor in 2013 will have to be sought by someone from outside Sydney.

PvO invokes the Carr-Keating-Richardson-McLeay-Brereton thing, a phenomenon which began to fall apart as soon as it was identified (Carr's rise saw the other four out of office. Richardson and Keating fell out, McLeay was a modest talent at best, and Brereton made a career of biting off more than he could chew). Mind you, it may be a parallel, but not one that flatters the younger generation.

While the professionalism of the Labor machine in NSW successfully sandbagged seats at the federal election, residual anger at state maladministration was everywhere.

Any successes can be attributed entirely to Liberal screw-ups, like Banks and Robertson, rather than any genius on the part of Labor generally or these jokers in particular. Arbib and Bitar made the NSW state government what it is, and are threatening to do the same to the federal government unless Gillard gets up on her hind legs and gets rid of them. After March, she will be able to do this without penalty, provided she promotes Labor Right figures from states other than NSW.

The question now is: are they assets or liabilities?

The stench of NSW Labor is potent, and the opposition will use this year to remind voters that it continues to waft through the federal party.

This is weak analysis. NSW Labor Right government has been shown to be poor government, and so the PvO Five are obliged to show how they are completely different from those who have proven failures. For Arbib and Bitar, they are the same Arbib and Bitar who contributed so much to the debacle, and they will have to prove that they are now born-again in terms of political effectiveness.

Then, there's this rather bizarre sequence:

But during that time voters increasingly began to question whether the NSW government was better at spin in order to stay in power, rather than policy achievements that earn a right to re-election.

And that is the question being asked about Gillard's government now (although frankly it needs to work on the quality of its spin as well as the quality of its policy development).

Aside from the perception difficulties Gillard will need to overcome in the short term because of having such senior former members of NSW Labor in her ranks, at a personal level the capacity for each of them individually to achieve their own ambitions in the years ahead with the state histories they are saddled with is also an issue.

Having raised the issue of policy substance parenthetically, he then returns to "perception difficulties", like a dog to his vomit. All of those guys except Bitar have huge policy responsibilities that will make or break them (Bitar and Arbib, I'd argue, are broken already). PvO owed us in-depth examinations of their tribulations and whether each really has it in them to overcome the policy challenges they face today. Gillard is under no obligation to give these suckers an even break.

They will be going up against the likes of Bill Shorten from Victoria when the time for a leadership transition happens.

But Shorten doesn't have anywhere near the baggage of the other three because of their state political backgrounds.

While Shorten did suffer in the perception stakes for his role in ousting Rudd last year, he emerged much less damaged than someone such as Arbib did. Rather than having a CV that includes a track record in a state government loathed by the public, Shorten was a senior union official urging Labor not to support Mark Latham into the leadership because he didn't believe the now disgraced former leader was up to the job.

People in Sydney will line up to give money - and with it, power - to Shorten ahead of the five clowns to whom PvO has set his cap. Shorten took an obscure portfolio (Disability Services) and reinvented it. He took Bowen's old portfolio and explained complex issues in superannuation in a simple way, achieving in months what Mr Fuel Watch failed to do over the entire last term of parliament.

Shorten's successor at the AWU also publicly participated in the downfall of a Labor leader, but hasn't learned that it is sometimes better to keep your head down and learn some lessons rather than strut about like some slow-moving target and acting all hurt when people don't clamour for you to lead them.

Labor can claw back ten seats before it even touches NSW, and in doing so it need not feel beholden to the PvO Five in any way. The Left are the key to winning seats like Bennelong and retaining Sydney, Grayndler and Banks. Any other successes for Labor will depend on Tony Abbott tripping over himself, which he will.

If federal Labor is to be successful it needs strong players out of the NSW Right to take a lead role.

Rubbish. None of the PvO Five can be regarded as indispensable, and as explained earlier the Cold War - and with it, the central role for the NSW Labor Right - is over.

It is nonsense to talk about "ideological muscle" - what ideology will fix the Murray-Darling basin, the gap between sport at the community level and the elite, or take the heat out of immigration? Richardson and McLeay didn't get where they got on ideology; sheer simple spite sufficed. There nearest thing any of the PvO Five have shown to ideological commitment is Burke's campaign against euthanasia before entering parliament.

PvO assumes that "political realities" start within Canberra and are then projected onto the country, when it is the other way around. The NSW Labor Right is facing annihilation and cannot survive anywhere - Macquarie Street, Canberra, wherever - once its ideological, voter and financial support collapses. The Democrats collapsed in the community, then their votes collapsed and all that activity by Lyn Allison and whoever else came to nothing; so it is with the NSW Labor Right. I don't care whose feet these clowns have sat at, the question is who can reinvent the principles of a bygone era to the challenges of today and tomorrow? None of them have or can, and because this includes PvO then may we soon see his "analysis" fail so completely that he is simply never heard from again.

Right away

It's now or never for the Labor Right. They have to take over the Federal Government this side of Christmas, or they'll die a slow death as a political force in this country. They've had two good goes, but unless they move now it's all over.

The NSW Right saw off communism in that state during the third quarter of last century while other states wrestled with it as a legitimate part of the labour movement. It used that clarity of purpose and resilience to reclaim state government in NSW less than six months after Whitlam was annihilated at the polls. The NSW model was adopted by Labor in other states, however grudgingly, and was increasingly adopted in federal government throughout the 1980s and '90s, under Hawke and then NSW's own Paul Keating.

After Keating lost there was a second round of Labor right dominance. Labor was back in power in NSW but led by Bob Carr, a man geared around short-term announcements (he had the Olympics foisted upon him). Staffers who had done the hard yards through opposition and had seen off the Greiner-Fahey government, and who had either declined or not been offered jobs with HawkerBritton, were swamped by refugees from the Keating government. These grizzled veterans from Canberra were jaded with reform (Greiner and Fahey had done most of the heavy lifting anyway), and fearful of accusations of financial recklessness (like Victoria and SA) that they were fearful of the very kind of long-term, expensive projects NSW desperately needed then - and even more so now.

It was Carr's chief of staff, Bruce Hawker, who developed the most recent model of promise 'em anything and recant within the first six months of office, so that the public end up grateful to Labor for anything they get. This model relies upon a hopeless Liberal Party, a given until recently. Blending this model of low expectations and small-scale deliveries was people like Tripodi and Roozendaal, delivering behind closed doors for property developers, the one group of capitalists who can't decamp to a more favourable jurisdiction. Again, this model was exported around the country: people like Rann and Beattie became better examples of the new Sussex Street model than, say, Maxine McKew. This round continued when Labor's Right united in December 2006 to remove one honorary New South Welshman, Kim Beazley, and replace him with another, Kevin Rudd.

This model started to wear out thanks to the various scandals that have seen 13 NSW ministers dumped but still in Parliament, fearful of byelections even in the heartland, and equivalent examples in other jurisdictions of eyes-off-the-ball. Its last hurrah came in mid-2010 when the Right united across the country to dump Rudd for Julia Gillard. It's over, but the Labor Right - and far too many outside it - fail to realise that.

Mark Latham wrote in today's Australian Financial Review that the Right will push on against Gillard, and replace her with Chris Bowen - but he would say nasty things about Gillard, wouldn't he. Bowen denied that he was plotting against Gillard - but he would, wouldn't he.

The question is: with what? With pig-headed self-belief powered by nostalgia? While Latham may be excused for not getting it and seeking attention for its own sake (but he isn't even a blogger!), nobody in the journosphere who is sucked into this story by a total lack of sense, judgment, any understanding of recent history, or of basic political reality half-witted news editors panicked by the declining relevance of organisations that have lumbered them with miscalculated bonus targets "the 24 hour news cycle" has any excuse for believing the Labor Right can deliver on anything.

The best example of centrist Labor government anywhere in the country, the Bracks-Brumby government in Victoria, was voted out last Saturday. This occurred despite unanimous agreement from the journosphere that Ted Baillieu was allowed a few seats in a bit of a protest but nothing like the 13 he needed to win government. You can bellyache all you want about ungrateful Vics, as many Labor activists no doubt do: but if you've got a choice between recognising political reality or listening to self-serving twaddle from Graham Richardson, what are you going to choose? Watch how Tim Holding can't get the numbers and is reduced to Costello-style impotence: if Holding gets monstered by a plodder like Andrews, what is Labor Right good for?

The worst example of centrist Labor government anywhere in the country, the Princess Wonkyhair government of NSW, has played every card from the Labor Right deck only to see the heartland of Labor Right to its biggest defeat since 1904. A few days ago the papers all published pictures of her scowling uncomprehendingly at the camera, as if to say: are you really prepared to give up on this? (To which the answer is, oh yes, as soon as possible). The main gripe against this government is that it has failed to face up to the big issues in governing this state, and the exodus of sitting MPs only reinforces that. The Labor candidates replacing them are the sort of nice-but-dim people who usually get trampled when they get in the way of the big beasts: the very sort of unimpressive people who occupied the Liberal benches during the 1940s, '50s and again into the late 1970s.

Other examples of Labor Right at work, Anna Bligh, Mike Rann and the Northern Territory Shire Council, are in the departure lounge - perhaps without the sniggering contempt due to Keneally (even her own State President, a Labor Right scion, won't vote for her!), but there nonetheless.

In the Federal government, however, let's look at the Labor Right:

• Bowen has his work cut out in immigration. Paul Howes used to have "a bee in his bonnet" about immigration when a Labor Left minister held that portfolio, but the bee seems to have gone to sleep now that his factional mate is on the job, despite little actual change to policy outcomes. Bowen's only initiative so far is to engage in a Sydney obsession - to go looking for real estate (I hear the Adelaide Hills are nice this time of year!).


• Tony Burke has it all ahead of him in the Murray-Darling, way too busy to be hitting the phones and causing trouble.


• Stephen Conroy has taken the nearest thing this government has to a concrete achievement, the NBN, and ruined it with his my-way-or-the-highway approach.


• Lacking anything substantial to stuff up, David Feeney has grizzled about not getting a big white car. Someone write that self-pitying fool a letter and tell him how life could be worse: sic 'im, Desperate Houso!


• Rod Kemp and Andrew Thomson would have come through with the FIFA World Cup, so would John Brown and Les Johnson - Mark Arbib's was set to work on an organisation that, like the Labor Right itself, is just a network of stitch-ups; his attempts to reflect some credit on himself for this whole episode can only ring hollow;


• Arbib and Joe de Bruyn have checkmated one another over gay marriage, but when it comes to getting around the Labor Right, gay and lesbian Australians will - like love itself - find a way.


• Billy Shorten is being very, very quiet. Too quiet, perhaps, but befitting a man whose way of operating has been publicly found wanting - and who understands that knowing when to shut up is an essential part of playing the long game. For all I know, BShort could well be doing the difficult job of explaining to Tim Holding why it's a good thing that nobody will vote for him right now.

Australia's most fearsome political machine? Makers and breakers? Pfffft.

The Labor Right is finished as an election-winning political force in this country, a statement against which no evidence exists. The idea that they are powerful enough to knock off another Prime Minister is the fantasy of men whose time has passed - including Latham, but especially including others whose careers might otherwise seem very much alive.

Deriding Paul Howes

Paul Howes has shown in this piece that he can call for a debate, but he can't add a lot of value once it's on.

There are three parts to this. First, there's the Tripodi boo-hoo-life's-so-unfair bit, and secondly there's the question of "anonymous bloggers". In both cases, Howes' basic premise is that no criticism of him or any of his friends at any time is ever legitimate, even when their actions involve questions of public policy and democracy. Third, there's Howes' disdain for the public beyond the politico-media complex, and wider considerations of democracy from someone who clearly aspires to political office.

The slings and arrows

SO, it’s vale Joe Tripodi from NSW politics. And it seems that not many people are going to miss him. Joe is a friend of mine, and he’s a good man.

He really is. This will be almost impossible for some to believe, since he has been painted almost as the Antichrist by some sections of the media.

But Joe Tripodi is a nice and fiercely intelligent man, in real life. He loves his family and he loves public policy. He’s been described by another paper as ‘the smartest man’ in NSW politics.

But he had to go. And, to do the right thing by the party, as he’s always tried to do, Joe went.

What do you like about him, Paul? Did you advise him not to stack his mates onto the public payroll, or are you okay with that? If he's such a great guy, why does he have to go?

It isn't enough to shriek that he's your friend. You have to look at his record and understand if there are any legitimate grounds to criticise Tripodi's performance in public life. Indeed, look no further than your own union: Andy Gillespie was uncannily prescient when he said:

Mr Gillespie said Mr Tripodi and other Labor Party right-faction figures like former Wollongong City [Councillor] ... Joe Scimone had damaged the party's standing in the region.

"Labor politicians aren't held in the same regard by people in the region as they used to be," Mr Gillespie said.

"Comments like that from Tripodi show how ignorant he is. I'm surprised he knows where the Illawarra is.

"He should pull his head in and look after his own job and a government which could be on the line at the next election."

Strangely, Gillespie's future as a defender of AWU member's rights were curtailed. No doubt, he had to go. The AWU very kindly hired Richard Tripodi, Joe's brother, as an 'organiser' and Howes is unclear about what quid-pro-quo was forthcoming for that. That sort of thing is why there's no much cynicism toward Tripodi, Paul, and if you could bear to face up to it you'd explain that incidents like that - and so, so many others - was why Tripodi should have gone from public life long, long ago.

If you start to challenge Paul Howes on stuff like that, he'll start to realise that public life in Australia involves being accountable. He may or may not decide to push his political career further than it has gone already. Hopefully he'll be traumatised by watching his dear friend Tripodi go down, and will be so permanently scarred by being roused at by Kevin Rudd (grr!) that he'll realise that politics is far too difficult for someone with his modest powers of observation, and abilities to link concepts or assess competing ideas.

Anonymous bloggers

I'm not an anonymous blogger. My real name is Andrew Elder, I use that name on Twitter and elsewhere.

I make a point of following blogs and tweets put up by real people - like, for example, ABC journalist Leigh Sales:

Good column by @howespaul about gutless, nasty trolls on sites like twitter who don't use their real names. http://bit.ly/cFKPZE

Howes was referring to News Ltd sites where people made hurtful comments about his dear friend Joe, and it isn't clear why Sales couldn't go after News Ltd's slack comment-vetting policy as former News Ltd blogger Tim Dunlop did. Dunlop, Drag0nista and others point out that News Ltd publish anonymous trolls for the same reason that talkback radio broadcasts anonymous callers ("Bob from Greystaines" is just as anonymous as, say, beNzo3568). Howes should use his insider status to go after slack moderation at News Ltd: he could even parachute one of Joe Tripodi's soon-to-be-unemployed relatives in there. Howes didn't get where he is by challenging the status quo at big organisations, though, and no journalist will call him on it either. When Howes was going after Rudd on Lateline in his final night as Prime Minister (Rudd's, that is), I wanted Tony Jones to say: who the fuck are you anyway, and why does someone like you get to weigh in on significant issues like this? Isn't the presence of Paul Howes proof positive that Labor is run by, and for, pissants?

Sales was clearly motivated by some level of emotion beyond concern for the easily-wounded little petal that we call Paul Howes when she lashed out at "gutless, nasty trolls ... who don't use their real names". The journosphere interpretation of 'anonymous' here is: "I'm sorry, have we met? I haven't seen you standing outside in the cold hoping for a statement from a junior minister, or even a colourful backbencher. If you haven't been to an Andrew Olle dinner you can't possibly know anything about journalism, so bugger off and read my essay reprinted from something in The Guardian last week, or maybe a bit of speculation that everyone is running but which has no basis in fact or importance whatsoever!!!".

If that's what it means to be anonymous - someone who will never appear on Q and A as a panellist or audience member, nor even as a viewer of an entire episode - well then, I'm anonymous and glad to be so.

In my recent book ... I dish out plenty of criticisms against lots of people. But I put my name to it.

But you don't make any sense when you do. Since when was sweetness and light a prerequisite for leadership of the ALP? If you wanted that, why didn't you stick with Kim Beazley?

The big issues: jobs, jobs and jobs

It isn't just Howes and Gillespie, though. The AWU has taken on one of the major debates of our time, the Murray-Darling, and come off second-best:

“Do we want to see Mildura turned from an oasis to a desert? Do we want to import more and more food every year? The answer to both those questions is ‘no’.

Nice bit of straw-man work there, boys: pity that such a historically significant organisation is making such a pissant contribution. The poor suffering members of the AWU are supporting two hundred (!) staff, including Howes and the Tripodi boy and the clown who wrote that. You'd hope that a journalist would ask Howes who's minding the AWU while he's off flogging his booky-wook, but not so far.

Elect a new people

Howes: you wanted a robust debate, and when you get one you shriek that people are so mean. Get over yourself, get some new and better friends, and start engaging in debates that carry people with you on the issues that matter. As Tim Dunlop says:

... don't use the existence of trolls as evidence of some particular failure with "new media" or, as Paul Howes goes dangerously close to suggesting, with the general public.

Howes is demonstrating his disdain for those of us outside the politico-media complex: those who can't be smarmed or heavied by Bill Ludwig and others responsible for putting Howes into his sinecure.

It’s clear we don’t have much respect for politicians whatsoever - or for public service, come to that.

The highest-rated professions in Australia are public servants: teachers, nurses, ambulance paramedics. There is a very high respect for altruism in public service, including NGOs. There is no respect for union officials who want to sell books or knock off Prime Ministers whom we have elected, however hard they might want to insinuate their activities with "public service".

Simply put, we don’t much like people who think they’re better than us, and we don’t much like politicians, because we think they think they’re better than us.

They think they can tell us what to do. They think they can swan around with big pensions and big salaries, and we think most of them wouldn’t know hard work if they fell over it.

They're not better than us. The ones who earn popular contempt are those who use taxes and other resources given for the common weal to do things that are irrelevant our counter to our best interests. Does that sound like you, Pauly boy?

It’s not true, of course. Most parliamentarians, on both sides, work hard, gruelling hours. They do things that normal people wouldn’t dream of doing like flying to Perth, landing at 6am, going to a full day of meetings, then flying straight home again.

Yeah, they work hard, but at what? What 'meetings', with whom, for what purpose? How much of this is busywork? Why is it that so much activity can take place to set something in motion (a piece of legislation, a grant, whatever action by government may be involved) only to have someone like Paul Howes waddle in at 3am and spike it, or trade it off for something else? That's contemptible, that's antidemocratic - and Paul Howes wouldn't have it any other way.

Since I became National Secretary of the AWU, the most seemingly vicious insult that anyone can fling at me is that I’m simply out trying to win myself preselection for a seat in the federal parliament. As though my current job, which I love, is a mere stepping-stone to a political career.

For your predecessor, the Hon. Bill Shorten MP, it was exactly that - and you aren't exactly playing Cliffie Dolan to his Hawke, are you? So too was your brother-from-another-mother, Senator the Hon. Joe Ludwig. It's not unreasonable, which may explain why you're seeking to inject some emotion to deflect the logic.

Speculation may or may not be accurate, but what makes it "vicious"? Why an "insult"? Why the emotive language in what should be a matter-of-fact discussion?

Ask yourself this: would you want your wife to read in the paper that you are “trash”, “an absolute disgrace”, and “utterly incompetent”? Would you want your children to read that? Would you want your elderly mother to read 200+ comments highlighting what a worthless waste of space you really are?

I'd hate it, but I would recognise that it was part of public life. Jeanette Howard faced that almost every day of her adult life, from people like Tripodi and yourself. So did Hazel Hawke and Annita Keating, whose marriages each broke under that strain. Margie Abbott and Tim Mathieson are also copping it, but they've clearly decided it's part of the deal.

Suck it up, and stop playing us for mugs.

I'd want to have some way of completing this sentence - "I'm not a worthless waste of space because ...". As Andrew Elder, I'm able to do that; were I Paul Howes, I would find it a struggle. As Paul Howes, I'd find it hard to tie the book tour back to Australian Workers and their interests (including cogent contributions to major national debates like who should be Prime Minister and the fate of the Murray-Darling river system).

... we’ll eventually end up with pollie-bots who have no real personality of their own, or absolute dimwits who never rock the boat.

We're already there. Start with these losers who let Kevin Rudd choreograph ALP conferences. Did you miss that whole debate about "zombies"? If Bill Ludwig or Joe Tripodi are faced with a choice between a candidate they already own, and someone who's a bit of a livewire, what makes you think they're going to pick the livewire? The ALP Caucus are such dummies that they need someone like you to go on Lateline to tell them how to vote, and now that there's fewer of them you're going to tell them again.

And that, more than anything, will guarantee us a parliament full of “gutless muppets”. And because of that, we’ll be the muppets, in the end.

Another alternative is that muppeteers like yourself and your mates Tripodi and Bitar are pushed aside in favour of candidates - from outside the ALP, as appears necessary - who have better choice of friends and don't make logical leaps that serves their own interests or those of their silly friends.

There's no issue with the idea that we need good people to represent us, Paul Howes. The question is whether you, your friends in the Labor movement, and your defenders in the media, are capable of recognising (let alone providing) effective representation. I've read what you've written and heard what you've said; you're unpersuasive in public debates yet mysteriously persuasive when it comes to key debates within the ALP. Let us either have your absence from those internal debates - be they in Perth or anywhere else hidden from scrutiny - or else, let us be governed by people better than you, your mates, and the current ALP.

Eyes without a face

I always thought it was funny that a guy who's never worked a day in his life got to be head of the Australian Workers' Union, but not only is this so but he got to be a published author too.

Just like Chopper Read.

But at least Chopper Read can string together a grammatical sentence. And apply a metaphor so that it makes sense. Because if you can't write a blurb, and if the blurb you do write casts a pall over your book, what the hell are you doing to AWU members and how can we work together so that your political career goes no further than it has.

THE implosion of the Rudd government has been something of an elephant in the room

An implosion is not an elephant. It is nothing of an elephant whatsoever.

The rivalry between John Howard and Peter Costello for the leadership of the Liberal Party was much talked about but little came of it in terms of policy outcomes. The rivalry between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard is much the same really.

But as the Gillard government settles into power, and gets on with the business of governing - passing legislation, working with the independents and providing stable leadership ...

Is that all there is to governing? Really? No policy issues to for Labor people to die in a ditch over, no pressing issues crying out for a response greater than the transactional politics described above?

... it's time to start looking at what went wrong during the period of the last government.

Why? Many in the journosphere are still hunting out their elusive Walkleys by looking for signs of awkwardness in the Rudd-Gillard relationship. What on earth can be gained, in policy terms, from Howes piling on? So he's got a book to sell, who hasn't? John Howard has a book to sell and he has some opinions on the Rudd government too.

And no one's going to forget 2010 in a hurry.

Great: no need to rake over it, is there? We were and are all there, not much left to say really.

If the saying, "A week is a long time in politics" is true, you can safely say this year seemed like an eternity.

If it's just a cliche for adrenaline junkies who can't handle big, enduring and substantive issues, then there's not much left to say and no reason to buy your book.

It's a year in politics that will be dissected, studied and written about for decades to come.

It will probably become a seminal turning point in the history of Australian Labor and domestic politics, alongside 1975 and 1955.

More like 1991, the last time the Labor Party rolled a PM who looked set to lead them to defeat. There were big issues in play in 1975 and 1955, the problems of 2010 were that the big issues kept getting shunted off the table by clowns like Arbib and your own self, Paul Howes.

And for those of us who identify with Labor ideas and values, the result of the 2010 election has been a gigantic wake-up call.

So the entire labour movement had governed the nation, and you had scribbled your diary, while being asleep?

Tomorrow, my first book will be launched ... it's my personal diary of the recent election campaign.

As opposed to someone else's personal diary, or a dollop of self-serving bullshit on par with John Hyde Page?

I wrote it because I wanted to document what I thought had gone right and gone wrong with Labor's campaign during the election ...

But you were asleep, Paul. Everyone was asleep, apparently. Someone who's awake enough to keep a diary does not need a wake-up call. Someone who's keeping a diary hasn't got time for quotidian representation of the interests of Australian Workers.

... I believe it's important for the Labor Party and the wider labour movement to be more open to different ideas and opinions.

You didn't get where you are by being Mr Different Ideas And Opinions. If Bill Ludwig found out you had Ideas, you'd be sweeping out shearing sheds out the back of Bob Katter's electorate faster than you could say boo, not lounging on a divan dictating your memoirs. Unvarnished and honest? Yeah, right. Brutal? Possibly, but not for the reasons you'd think.

The essential dilemma of Australian Labor was exposed by Doug Cameron a few weeks ago, for free. Cameron rejoiced that the Labor caucus was full of union officials, similar to himself and Paul Howes. Cameron then went on to say that the Labor caucus was full of zombies who wouldn't challenge Rudd, and Paul Howes says much the same thing (another reason not to buy his book). These two descriptions are linked. Union officials these days are as careerist as the most soulless corporate drone. They are not the tough, independently-minded and self-educated tinsmiths, French polishers and train drivers who built the ALP. They - you - are punished if they deviate from the Set Line, however stupid, and rewarded to the extent that the line is toed. Labor is not for the toey.

Ministers were not encouraged to debate ideas and Cabinet became a rubber-stamping committee. Those who did try to talk to the prime minister about the problems facing the government were so brutalised by their experiences that many never tried it again.

Awww, diddums. These people were happy to toe the line all the way up through the labour movement: Bill Ludwig, Kim Carr, Graham Richardson, Joe de Bruyn, all demanded loyalty and got it. Somehow, these battle-hardened professionals went up against Kevin from Nambour, Beijing and Brissy, and they collapsed in a heap. I sure wouldn't trust these delicate flowers with, say, the interests of Australian Workers.

I want real loyalty. I want someone who will kiss my ass in Macy's window, and say it smells like roses.

- Lyndon B. Johnson

If you think that a week is a long time in politics and that 2010 is some sort of epoch, then I should point out that Johnson was President of the United States during the 1960s and that Macy's refers to a department store in New York.

Rudd demanded power and got it. What he did with it is another question, and because your book is all about you then I doubt you'll be big enough to go into those issues. Never mind being smart after he event, did you agree with Rudd's decision to drop/defer the ETS? Did you, at the time, Paul Howes? No, I won't buy the book and chances are someone will serialise it anyway; hopefully you'll be big enough to outline your own position and what you did to make yourself heard, or confirm when someone else does it for you.

Some Cabinet ministers couldn't get a meeting with Rudd at all.

And this affected Australian Workers how?

As readers of this column know, I have something of a bee in my bonnet on the issue of refugees' rights.

It's not a popular stance, and I know this.

But back in 2009, when I spoke out, yet again, on the refugee issue, Rudd slapped me down in a very public way.

During Question Time, no less.

His message was very clear - he would not tolerate dissent in any way.

I was embarrassed.

Actually, I was mortified.

If it's nothing more than a bee in your bonnet, or more correctly a pose, no wonder Rudd slapped you down. If you're going to go public on an issue of public policy, isn't it going to be a public issue? Would you prefer to be plied with port and cigars in a quiet room, and then ignored? Would it be better if the nominal head of the Australian Workers' Union could waft in and waft out unseen, and leave no trace other than having his bonnet-bees enacted to the letter? If so, say so. You're no better than Rudd then, but at least it will be true.

And it became clear to me why others were not similarly taking Rudd on: nobody would dare.

That is not how democracy works.

The party became increasingly closed, and those within the wider labour movement who spoke out or disagreed on policy issues were marginalised and shut up.

Do you think the wider labour movement wanted deregulations, privatisations, tariff reductions etc.? No, it bloody didn't, and there wasn't time to consult them and win them all over. There was, however, time to cut the number of unions, restrict the staff thereon to clowns like yourself, and have them do what it took to put the policies in train. That culture has reinforced itself to the point where, regardless of the issue at hand (and it is regardless) no serious observer gives a monkey's what the wider labour movement thinks. Therefore, we are now at a point where there is no labour movement wider than Paul Howes and people not significantly or sufficiently different to him. And that, for all his protestations, is how Paul Howes likes it, and needs it to be.

That culture needed to end.

That's not a paragraph. Neither is this, really. The writing is. Appalling. Like a man who thinks that writing a book is like an extended press release. With ungrammatical sentences. That fail to add drama or gravitas where none were present. Brutal on the language. Annoying to the reader.

Besides, the culture you describe got rid of John Howard and got job upgrades for many labour movement zombies, including yourself Paul Howes.

I believe that, as Prime Minister, Gillard is keen to ensure that Labor returns to being a party of ideas and debate.

And I'm pleased to see that already many Labor ministers, MPs and supporters outside Parliament are working to ensure that debate is had and ideas are generated.

Give me one example, Paul. One example where Gillard is leading a public debate, and allowing the sorts of random inputs that drive press secs (people more similar to Paul Howes than your standard AWU member) crazy.

I'll give you two:

• the Minister for Sport supports gay marriage, the Prime Minister doesn't. For the government, it's end-of-story unless the Minister for Sport wants to make something of it, which he probably doesn't. To regard this as an issue at all, you have to widen the debate to consider those affected by such a decision; people like Paul Howes get where they are by narrowing debates, not widening them.
• Since Gillard became PM Howes has not uttered a word on refugees. Presumably the bee in his bonnet has been pacified in some other way, because the issues affecting the people themselves is pretty much the same, and while they won't forget 2010 either they could be forgiven for not knowing who you are. What could be more mortifying than that?

Do Australian Workers have opinions on gay marriage, refugees, or the rights of unions to prosecute employers - if so, what are they? Don't tell me that they don't care: the SDA reckon that their members are all up-in-arms about abortion and euthanasia, one would assume the AWU is similarly engaged on the issues with Mr Democracy at the helm.

But it does mean that supporters of the party should be able to make their voices heard without the fear of appearing disloyal.

After all, that's democracy.

Another example: recently, the Premier of New South Wales attempted to change an agreement so that people like Paul Howes would benefit. The Prime Minister insisted that the original agreement was good enough for people like Paul Howes. The Prime Minister criticised the Premier in public, during Question Time and elsewhere, the full Paul Howes nightmare. The silence of people like Paul Howes was deafening: they didn't support the Premier or the Prime Minister.

When it comes to loyal criticism of a federal Labor government, if a Labor Premier of New South Wales can't etc., etc., and oh what's the use.

And many people felt very angry that the Labor Party had treated a prime minister (seemingly) so badly.

They are the very sorts of people who used to feel part of the Labor Party until people like Paul Howes took over. Paul Howes got to where he is by ignoring such people.

It seems to me that because the election had to be held so soon after the change of leadership, there was no opportunity to properly explain to the Australian people what exactly had gone wrong with the Rudd government.

At the previous election, you were quite happy to say what was wrong with the Howard government, so why not? Election campaigns are all about communication, and as the campaign was run by people like Paul Howes they didn't want to explain ("never complain, never explain, never resign" - right Paul?). We're all moving forward.

Kevin Rudd is an able man, and will be a competent Foreign Minister.

How would you know? You couldn't get a meeting with him. On what basis to you judge a Foreign Minister anyway? How collegiate do you think H V Evatt or Gareth Evans were? How collegiate was the last Queenslander to be Foreign Minister, Bill Hayden?

The challenge for the government is not to go over old ground or even sell some books. The challenge is to get some debates happening and decisions made. In 1992, Paul Keating was not going on about how Bob Hawke was so totally crushing his dreams - he was introducing the sorts of policy ideas that Hawke wasn't introducing, vindicating by default those who'd backed him and forcing those who didn't to either change their minds or leave. This is precisely what Gillard isn't doing, or not doing enough, and what she should be doing.

The challenge facing Gillard is not the challenge facing Paul Howes, and long may this continue to be so.