I have a rule when it comes to recently fallen politicians. Don’t stick the slipper in after they’ve left the arena. It’s unseemly and a touch callous.
I figure once they’ve moved, often ignominiously, out of the line of fire, they become non-combatants.
Truth be told, it’s more of a guideline. Happily, readers, in the case of the existentially forgetful and terminally hapless David Feeney, I am prepared to make an exception.
David Feeney resigned as the member for Batman yesterday. Sadly, he misplaced his letter of resignation. He did show the media a bus ticket he has had in his wallet since 1993. He’s going home now. Wherever that is.
Some of Feeney’s colleagues offered trite condolences and tepid expressions of support yesterday but it was impossible not to notice the gritted teeth. In Adelaide yesterday, deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, said Feeney had made a “fine contribution” to the party but when asked if he was resigning, replied, “I’ll let David speak for himself.”
Praise any fainter than that would be in an induced coma.
In 1983 Batman was the safest Labor seat in the country, safer even than Bob Hawke’s seat of Wills just across St George’s Road. Batman has been in Labor hands since 1934, save a brief period when former Labor member for Batman, Sam Benson, was expelled from the party over his continued support for the Vietnam War. Benson won the seat as an independent in 1966 only to lose it narrowly to the colourful former Collingwood mayor, Horrie Garrick in 1969. Horrie, dragged the seat back to the safest end of the Labor pendulum until he got rolled in a preselection barney and was replaced by Brian Howe in 1977.
Now it will go to the Greens in a by-election which could be held as early as March 10. The only thing that got Feeney over the line in 2016 was Liberal preferences. The Libs will almost certainly run dead in the by-election and that will be that for Labor’s long and occasionally illustrious history in Batman.
As we’ve seen in the seat of Melbourne, when Labor loses to the Greens in an inner-city electorate, those seats don’t come back.
Brian Howe was the last genuine local to represent Labor in Batman.
He was a thoroughly decent man who became deputy Prime Minister in the Hawke-Keating governments. While he was Minister for Housing, he spent three months living in public housing to see for himself what the problems were and how they could be fixed. I’d say imagine that from a politician today but we all know it is unimaginable.
Say what you like about Howe’s successor, Martin Ferguson and he has many critics within the Labor Party, indeed to the point where the WA state branch moved to expel him four years ago. In my experience, the vowelless Mar’n was always accessible. When he was a shadow minister I would call him for a quote and a yarn and if you rang early enough, Mar’n would pick up the phone himself. No protective press secretaries or chiefs of staff acting as political bollards.
But the fact remains he was parachuted into the seat in a factional deal that rolled the locals. He wasn’t even a Melbourne bloke. These things matter. A political party can’t keep doing this without losing support from the grassroots and the punters.
When Feeney was elbowed in, in another slippery multi-factional deal that saw him go from the Senate to the Reps — from the vegetables to the animals — the local branches had been treated as door mats again. It was the beginning of the end.
I’ll call it now. Labor is gone in Batman. Ged Kearney might have stood a chance a decade ago but not now. The seat, once the jewel in the Labor crown, is never coming back.
Feeney has been the butt of many jokes and God knows, I’ve written plenty myself. In another time and under different circumstances he would have been a Labor hero. A campaign director with three state election wins under his belt — two in South Australia and one in Victoria where the Bracks government won by a record margin. A big parliamentary career beckoned.
Instead he leaves politics as a laughing stock with the once safest seat in the country about to slip through Labor’s hands.
Feeney is fated to walk the Earth, knocking on doors offering a polite if by now unnecessary political spiel to the punters, “Bill Shorten and the Labor team have some great policies. I’d like a moment of your time to talk about them. Also, is this my house?”
This article was first published in The Australian on 2 February, 2018.
Go Spurs!!!
Go the Eagles!! Drove to Brissy this morning to watch the Superbowl on the I-Max at Garden City.
And they did. Eagles 41 Patriots 33. Great final and a well deserved win. Patriot’s QB Tom Brady looked every minute of his 40 years. Pats squandered their final chance to to take the game into extra time when Gronkowski couldn’t grab a TD pass from Brady in the final second of play and the siren sounded. Eagles were biggest underdogs in NFL history, and paid a handsome $2.90 on Sportsbet.
Crikey! That’s just how it happened. You must have been paying attention.
Gone Chelsea
Be interesting to read what our Preston Pundit thinks of it all.
Bell Street runs through the middle of Batman and has attracted some new names of late, the Great Wall of Quinoa, The Tofu Curtain and the Hipster Proof Fence being the most amusing.
goo.gl/J3mWkJcontent_copyCopy short URL
This is partly about demographic change and it’s political consequences, and it’s been going on for quite a while. When Brian Howe knocked off Horrie Garrick for pre-selection he was a local in the sense that he had made his home in the electorate, but he was a departure from the usual Labor representatives, who were nearly always working blokes who had made good.
Howe was an eastern suburbs boy, a university graduate who studied in the US. He was typical of that first wave of professional folks who colonised North Fitzroy and Clifton Hill and along with the influx of Greeks and Italians and student renters diluted the old Labor cohort and changed the Labor Party in the process.
I was camped across the creek in Brunswick for a good deal of this time and we had a similar experience.
I know Howe was not exactly born and bred in Northcote but at least he laid claims to being local. Mar’n and Feeney didn’t even bother to pretend.
I agree with your point about parachuting in outsiders, and Howe wasn’t an outsider in that sense, but he was part of a wave of university graduate professional people and student renters who colonised the inner suburbs and to a large extent pushed out the old tribal Labor folks.
I was part of that wave myself, the Labor Party in all the inner suburbs was going through rapid change, that today we would call demographic.
i suspect that something similar is happening today with the rise of the Greens, it was hard to believe they were able to put electoral pressure on such a great candidate, member and Minister as Lindsay Tanner.
The majors have to do it from time to time but Batman became a seat Labor was using to resolve factional conflicts and hand out prizes to the worthy. Shitting in one’s own nest if I may be crude, mate.
i get what you are saying and agree with it, but what has happened in Batman is not just due to the parachuting in, it happened and is happening even where that didn’t occur.
Antony Green seems to agree.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-05/labors-battles-with-the-greens-in-inner-melbourne/9395876,
it is, in my view, a process that has been going on since the 1970s.
Yes, all true, mate but my point is that seat and perhaps a few others would be easier to defend with good local members in place. In any event it poses a challenge to Labor and it is one Shorten is facing now. Does the party angle for the inner city votes in a sort of Green-lite way or does it represent working Australians in the burbs and the regions? It can’t do both. The attempt to paint itself as a Green lite party is a fool’s errand IMO.
It may come back to bite him in N Qld, Jack?
That’s just it. He can’t be all things to all people. If he tries he’s going to look like a goose.
I’m pretty sure Feeney will find his feet in the world of commerce, Jack. His new job(s) will not be disclosed before the by-election, but when it’s revealed he won’t be doing anything like community service, the skids will be under the next inner-city Labor seat.
Maybe PR – like Sam?
Or Andrew Robb, or any number of politicians who’ve used their political position to work as lobbyists for businesses related to their political portfolios.
It’s unfortunately how things work.
The Member for Sydney has been known to speak with forked tongue. When she said that Feeney had made a “fine contribution” to the Labor party, perhaps she meant “thin, narrow and feathery” rather than “first-rate, great and admirable”.
Re Brian Howe (DPM), I agree he was a very good minister during the Hawke-Keating years. Its worth noting that his decision to experience living temporarily in “down market” accommodation, for a Minister of the Crown, was matched in later years by Tony Abbott (PM) who occupied spartan accommodation at the AFP college.
Goodness me Carl your Tony really “roughed” it didn’t he poor chap. Say what do you think of Turnbull now only 4 Negative Newspolls away from Abbotts shocker 30? Cheers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIrE2aBTevs
Matched by Tony Abbott? Abbott was in the dog house wasn’t he?
I have to say the first time I heard of David Feeney was when he was selected for Batman. I had never heard of him when he was in the Senate. I did however have a bit to do with Brian Howe when I lived in Darwin and my organization was involved in trying to get housing for young people who had been neglected by the system. I thought he was personable and also across the relevant issues. As an ex-Victorian I was always quite impressed with the Victorian Labor Party, but not the way the Party was run in the other States. I wonder though why on earth they decided to totally ignore the wishes of the rank and file members when it came to pre-selection in the last few years. David Feeney is a result of this.
Having said that I was a little surprised when I was last in Melbourne to hear my died-in-the-wool Liberal voting friends express their loathing for Matthew Guy and the State Liberal Party. Whilst I’m not sure this will translate Federally the shift to to the Greens in inner city Melbourne could affect the LNP as well.
I think it’s time to stop playing personality politics and start looking at the policies from the two Parties. Bill Shorten’s backtrack with regard to Adani is a reflection of what Labor (and no doubt some LNP) voters want, surely that’s a sign of good policy.
Lastly how good does SA look at the moment…..
I have always been less than impressed with the Victorian ALP. Any organisation which can produce Stephen Conroy, Kim Carr and Bill Shorten in reasonably quick succession has serious issues.
Point taken Razor, but if we are going to play personality politics look no further than the NSW Liberal Party who produced Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison. I think they’re all bloody duds from both parties. Name me an impressive politician in this country (no not Dutton, because he’s your friend) and I’ll take note.
Andrew Leigh. I reckon he’s got a few neocons worried because the Oz had Judith Sloane do a put down piece on him a few weeks ago. Get the campaign rolling early…
Just googled him TV, impressive indeed. As a Professor of Economics,may I say he may make the likes of Scott Morrison look even stupide….nah not possible
TV has just did it for me Penny. I rate Andrew Leigh. I also rate Christian Porter and Julie Bishop. Ken Wyatt is another along with Warren Entsch.
South Australia looks great Penny & good on their leader for
showing outstanding foresight & a fair whack of courage to take it up to the fossil-fuel loving Feds stuck in yesterday’s world. 🌏
Feeney always was a hopeless embarrassment and should never have been given that seat but more than ever this reflects on Shorten who is even more hopeless and as I have been saying for years, should also have never been put there. He is controlled by the factions in the same way Turnbull is controlled by his factions and the UnNationals…the most effective and dominating faction that has ever existed. Labor need not cry when they lose this seat because just as Pauline Hanson votes and the other right wing independents vote 90% of the time with the Liberals the Greens do the same with Labor.
Turnbull controlled by the Nationals? I don’t think so BASSY. Its the Liberal Party who giveth the PMship and its the Liberal Party who taketh it away.
And who giveth the Deputy PM?
Turnbull is TOTALLY CONTROLLED by the Un Nationals…he even had to sign a secret pact with them….where have you been hibernating?
fair enough to have commentary on all different sports but what about the kookaburra’s beating the Netherlands 6-1 last night to finish one apiece and 2 draws. good signs for a developing young squad heading into the commonwealth games. the first time I will attend a commonwealth game will be this year at the hockey. looking forward to it. oi oi oi!
David Feeney, Mr Insider, I cringe when I hear the name. A Barry Crocker. It’s amazing how buffoons like this chap ever get into Parliament. He’s an embarrassment to the Labor Party and an insult to the voters who put him into his seat, as you say once a safe Labor one. We do wonder though are there any more “David Feeny’s” in Shortens happy camp. All going well Shorten should be headed for the Lodge next election however with the likes of Feeney on board he could just snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, it’s been done before by many. Ged Kearney not out of the race for sure but her job so much harder now after the stupidity of Feeney tarnishing Labor who will need a flawless campaign to win imho. Perish the thought though of the Greens winning it, a Party formed some 26 years ago and not even close to forming Government, must be a message for them there somewhere from the Voters.
He’s not a buffoon, really. he was an excellent campaign director in SA and Vic but sloppiness on his part have made him look a laughing stock.
I can’t see the point in voting green, as a donkey vote would serve just as well as a protest vote and they are not mature or responsible enough to hold the balance of power. I hope a good independent has a run.
I can’t recall that Howe lived in public housing but vaguely recall someone pollie trying to live on the dole or similar (not easy and little joy without the goon or a bong) but for a way shorter period. And yup, neither Malcolm or any of the others would try that caper. The butlers and maids get under your feet in public housing.
Voting green is like buying a Prius. It does nothing for the environment, but it allows you to tell your neighbors of your moral superiority.
That’s funny, Dwight! But true.
Not true B. I’m surprised but don’t know why.
Just cause Dwight is right in a funny way, Bella. It is a bit of a status symbol. Although not so much any more now that other models are out.
A pretty ignorant comment, Dwight.
Air pollution, to which motor vehicles are a major contributor, causes around 3,000 excess deaths each year in Australia.
A Prius is, overall, better for air quality than a standard petrol or diesel vehicle. It’s worse for greenhouse emissions.
If your comment was directed at me you can shove it where the sun doesn’t shine Dwight.
The Greens have a well-known backlog of environmental credentials & are actively against Adani but what impresses me more is the way they dignify their public position without the daily psychotic histrionics we are subjected to by the ignorant jerks you call leaders.
We are a nation of sheep…
I say Milton, I’ve often wondered whether “donkey” voters are heavy drinkers. Any thoughts?
Whoa! think I pulled the wrong rein.
Maybe you can’t see the point in voting Greens but the people who do are sick to death of the two majors not listening to the voters so they’ve dumped them both for an alternate party whose policies align with their own progressive views.
“not mature or responsible enough”? Are you serious Milton?
So all the scamming liars in the LNP & Labor have those qualities?
No, they don’t.
True, Bella. but I think a lot may be throwing their votes in the opposite direction too – depending on the electorate.
I doubt that’s going to be the case in Batman though & certainly not with Adani still on the table. It’s a huge game-changer for Labor to win.
Inner-Melbourne voters also seem to be less influenced by mainstream media bias against the Greens, so if Feeney was such a failure (no worse than perk-cheater Susan Ley) then once Labor voters will likely throw their support behind the Greens like many did at the last election. With Adam Bandt in the neighbouring seat the Greens have a good chance for another.
Thee greens will win Batman