If the answer is Bill Shorten, how dumb was the question?

If the answer is Bill Shorten, how dumb was the question?
Image: Bill Shorten. Thirty thousand ALP members cast a vote, 18,000 of them for Albo, plus 31 members of parliament, while Shorten gets 12,000 membership votes plus 55 MPs but he wins.

Nobody was sitting outside the Brushtail Cafe in Werrong Lane when I went down for lunch. A hot gusty north-westerly was blowing dead leaves and litter and dust down the lane. A hideous glare bounced off the sunlit walls.

I hurried inside and shut the door behind me. Inside, it was deliciously cool and almost deserted. Joadja was chatting quietly to Old Possum, who was propped up on his usual stool at the bar. They greeted me listlessly and I ordered a sandwich and a cider.

“So Bill Shorten got the Labor leadership”, Joadja said, waving her iPad.

“you’re kidding aren’t you? I thought Albanese was going to win on the basis of the rank-and-file vote”, I responded.

Old Possum cleared his throat with a swig of cider, commandeered the iPad, and snorted derisively. “Ho ho. After all the brave talk about the ALP reforming itself in defeat, the ballot ended in the same-old, same old. Bill Shorten, with just 40 per cent of the party rank-and-file’s vote, wins on the basis of the good ’ol factional vote in caucus, while Albo, who commanded 60 per cent of the membership, got shafted.

“Figure this out: thirty thousand ALP members cast a vote, 18,000 of them for Albo, plus 31 members of parliament, while Shorten gets 12,000 membership votes plus 55 MPs but he wins.

“And here’s Labor’s national president Jenny McAllister saying Shorten won on the basis of ‘the largest, most democratic process ever faced by any candidate for Labor’s leadership’. And, get this, she then says: ‘We gave our members a say in the most important decision made by our political party and they’ve responded with vigour’. Yeah, they responded with vigour and got ignored. Talk about putting the best face on things, the woman must be the greatest spin doctor since Bob Carr”.

“Which puts Labor pretty much back in the position it was in when it was in office”, said Joadja. “Kevin Rudd was always more popular with the party rank-and-file and the public than Julia Gillard, but parliamentary caucus had the last word, and we know where that led.

“In fact, it’s hard to see why one would be a member of the party at all. Head office can always chuck your preferred candidate and parachute somebody else in, and regularly does, eh. Where does that leave you? Passing worthy motions at your branch meeting that get ignored by the hierarchy and handing out how-to-votes at elections, that’s where.

“And then there’s this: Shorten is the ultimate grey careerist functionary, so little known by the public that the media, even now, has had to resort to ‘Bill Shorten. Who is he anyway?’ articles”.

Outside, the wind howled in the trees and the wires. We lapsed into a long companionable silence trying to think of something happy to talk about.

Finally it was Joadja who spoke.

“I see the shutdown goes on in the US.”

“Yeah. World’s biggest failed state I reckon. Held to ransom by a bunch of Tea Party nutjobs. The system of government is so rooted that the government itself is seriously in danger of default and collapse. Except, of course, it’ll go on invading actually functioning states and lobbing missiles into Third World villages, leaving vast swathes of the world in chaos, and all in the name of democracy. The CIA will be the last government institution to close up.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk though”, said Jo. “I mean what’s going to happen, from mid next year, when that idiot Clive Palmer holds the balance of power in the senate? We’re going to enter a situation where a mad mining billionaire holds an equally mad obscurantist prime minister’s balls in a vice-like grip. This actual billionaire will be able to actually force through laws that directly benefit his businesses, and he really can’t see any problem with that. Previously, that sort of self-interest was hidden by the fact that a bunch of capitalists got together and called themselves the Liberal Party and they indirectly hired ambitious people to run for parliament to represent them. Now, Clive’s just financed his way, personally, into the balance of power. It’s probably the most blatant example of conflict of interest in the history of Australia”.

“Except for Infrastructure NSW”, I said.

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