Thursday, September 29, 2005
Embittered loud-mouths and stupid old duffers
Larger than life ex-political leaders are renowned for making life difficult for their contemporaries, still hammering away at the coalface. Think of how Thatcher haunted the UK Tories for years after her downfall, by routinely making proclamations while in step with her supporters, were so far removed from the broader public Zeitgeist, as to be embarrassing.

The current leadership would simply smile wryly and bluster a reply back to some hack, as they try to brush her comments aside as the ramblings of a dotty old bat, whilst remaining privately in awe of their great leader’s timeless fascist fantasies.

New Labour (UK) may well suffer the same indignity when (if?) Blair goes. But then again, maybe he is too bright for all that and he will ride confidently off into the sunset – or Brussels - and not come back to haunt Gordon, or Charles or Dr John.

In the last couple of weeks, two ex-leaders of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) have done their level best to make the front bench an uncomfortable place to be. And it’s working: in the process they are making the ALP look like a second string High school debating team and more of an electoral liability than ever before.

It would be amusing, but sadly they are making it ever more likely that John Howard will remain Prime Minister forever.

First up, the embittered Mark Latham – the defeated ALP leader from the 2004 federal election - published the “Mark Latham Diaries” – a vindictive insight into how he remembered his brief period as Labor leader. In his book – and on any talk-show that is willing to have him – he has poured scorn on the factional infighting and the political intrigue, verging on personal defamation, which has dogged the ALP. He labels the current leader, Kim Beazley, a ‘sit on the fence, stand for nothing’.

Now this maybe true – but probably much of it isn’t – but the damage he is inflicting on the only viable electoral alternative to the Coalition could be terminal, so cutting are his remarks and so willing is the right wing media willing to hang the ALP’s dirty washing out to dry.

The next former ALP leader to say something stupid was populist old duffer, Bob Hawke, ex-PM. Maybe he is going senile, maybe he meant it, but his idea that Australia should accept the world’s nuclear waste is quite possibly the most preposterous idea ever floated (including the idea floated earlier this year that England had a chance of regaining the Ashes).

His argument that Australia is geological stable is correct. His argument this plan would solve the current account deficit crisis is just plain stupid. Our deficit is being fuelled by our most voracious consumption binge in history, which is sucking in consumer imports like there’s no tomorrow. (Quite literally, as most of it is debt financed.) Hawke is proposing we continue to finance this spending spree by accepting other nation’s high-grade nuclear waste, despite not having secured a storage solution for our own low level waste from the scientific and medical community. (Australia has no nuclear power stations.)

And of course, encouraging ships laden with spent nuclear fuel to sail the oceans sounds like the worst idea since the British cavalry charge at Balaclava.

Hawke is referring to Australia’s comparative advantage in the long-term storage of nuclear waste. The nation is big, empty and geologically benign. An additional advantage is that the indigenous communities who occupy the unwanted land, which would be used to store the waste, can be easily cowed into accepting any deal. I can imagine how the residents of Sydney’s eastern suburbs would react to such a proposal in their backyard. But surely if it is safe enough to bury nuclear waste under an Aboriginal community in Western Australia, it is safe enough to bury under Bondi or Campbeltown.

Coalition Health Minister Tony Abbot, who, like his colleague at the Foreign Office rarely has anything useful to say, has called Hawke’s proposals ‘visionary’ and then used them to taunt the ALP leadership over party division.

Old and/or bold ex-leaders should just fade into the background and keep their snide comments or stupid ideas to themselves. If they want to get ‘political’ all over again, they should stand for election, not abuse their privileged position from the sidelines. Latham and Hawke should bite their tongues.

Ironically, the one political leader who would know when to shut-up is John Howard. So wily a political campaigner is he and so dedicated to the conservative cause, that you cannot imagine him doing anything to damage his party’s electoral chances.

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