ALP lost it years ago

The enemy within that killed Curtin

Labor's loss of direction

Rodney Cavalier: The political class has a deadly hold over Labor
[no longer linked]
Simon Crean has survived his preselection challenge, but union control of the ALP is killing the party
March 08, 2006
TRAVELLING the world in Her Majesty's survey ship Beagle in 1835, Charles Darwin found himself in conversation about observing the giant tortoise. These huge reptiles provided powerful supportive evidence of a theory he was developing: all species, including man, evolved according to natural selection. The local governor boasted that he could tell from which island each tortoise came by looking at the shape of its shell.
It was the Eureka moment in a voyage that has gone into history, the spark for a theory that altered our understandings of biology. As species spread around the globe: either they adapted to the natural environment or they did not survive.
During the weekend in five safe Labor seats, the second generation of the political class attempted to tip out the first generation political class. This is not renewal, it is replication. The ALP has narrowed its catchment for parliamentary preferment beyond the point of serious danger. The narrowing of its gene pool is characteristic of a species approaching extinction. The basics of the ALP decline and the situation in Victorian preselections are best understood through the world of natural science.
Since 1996 the federal ALP has suffered a spectacular decline in diversity and work experience. It is now the worst caucus in the history of Federation. It has become weaker at each election. It will become weaker after 2007 whatever the outcome. Only Mark Dreyfuss QC in the Victorian seats adds anything new today. The remainder of the 2007 intake will be the same person, the same genetic brew whose life has been lived inside the ALP culture. They are the political class.
The political class of these successive generations - union officials, ministerial staffers, employees of the ALP offices - has in common a complete adaptation of career, mobility, mating, pack mentality, ideological carapace and camouflage so as to secure their seats in a parliament somewhere. In the 1970s, as blue-collar unions were no longer able to rely on talent emerging from the ranks, their benighted, ageing leadership brought in tertiary-educated young blokes with a stint in the ALP.