HAVE THEY FORGOTTEN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CAPITALISM AND CRONY CAPITALISM?

Alan Anderson and Tim Blair, think its another left-wing conspiracy. The problem is a fair deal of the criticism of AC Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi is eminating from centre-right publications like the Economist, the Daily Telegraph (UK) and a range of other right-wing publications.

It seems the only valid avenue intellectually if you plan to adopt a centre-right editorial slant (belief in free markets, minimal regulation) is a voraciously opposition to all forms of corruption. The fact that many people find it convenient to condone such corrupt behaviour is not only discrediting to them personally, but is severely discrediting to their philosophy.

Surely, to condone this behaviour, or that of Enron, HIH, OneTel etc., with the thousands of lives ruined by such unscrupulous behaviour, is only going to encourage an increased opposition to the liberalising of regulation.


This was the editorial the Economist ran just before the Italian elections in 2001.


Fit to run Italy?
Apr 26th 2001
From The Economist print edition

The known facts about Silvio Berlusconi, never mind the unanswered questions, rule him out for high office, even though his countrymen seem poised to make him prime minister


IN ANY self-respecting democracy it would be unthinkable that the man assumed to be on the verge of being elected prime minister would recently have come under investigation for, among other things, money-laundering, complicity in murder, connections with the Mafia, tax evasion and the bribing of politicians, judges and the tax police. But the country is Italy and the man is Silvio Berlusconi, almost certainly its richest citizen. As our own investigations make plain (see article), Mr Berlusconi is not fit to lead the government of any country, least of all one of the world's richest democracies.

Many of Mr Berlusconi's supporters, who include most of Italy's businessmen, decry such criticism as born of naivety, ignorance and malevolence. They say that it is he, not the Italian people, who is the victim of dishonesty. They say that ever since he entered politics, only seven years ago, he has been persecuted by left-wing magistrates, journalists and politicians, all jealous of his wealth and fearful of his intention to renovate Italy and do away with the old guard. They add, moreover, that even if Mr Berlusconi did pay off tax inspectors (under duress, of course), what of it? That was the way that business in Italy was done when he made his fortune. He was no worse than anyone else, only cleverer, and a bigger target. Why pick on the man who has the vision, flair and courage to offer his services so magnanimously to the nation?

Besides, the excusers' mantra goes on, it has become clear that most Italians, including many on the left, have grown bored with the long-running saga of Mr Berlusconi's legal travails. Many of his countrymen have a not-so-sneaking regard for the way in which he has cocked a snook at the tax laws, and at the authority of the state. If he can do so well for himself, surely he is all the more qualified to help Italians at large.

Plausible but wrong

Alas, nothing in this barrel of casuistry holds water. The questions and concerns about Mr Berlusconi are voiced not just by opponents on the left. The notion that he was himself the main victim of dishonest tax inspectors and malign magistrates is fanciful. Never do those who defend him mention the losses to the state, in other words, the Italian people that would result from the waiving of taxes by the tax inspectors he is said to have bribed. Besides, Mr Berlusconi is under investigation for crimes that are not mere peccadillos committed in the face of red tape and nitpicking taxmen. True, under Italy's tortuous judicial system, in only one case against him has a final verdict been handed down: this case involved illegal political donations and the court did not find him innocent. But our investigation shows that he has a compelling case to answer on a string of grave charges. In addition, his strange and long-standing reluctance to explain the origin of his earliest sources of wealth casts a pall over his entire business reputation.

In any event, in any normal country the voters and probably the law would not have given Mr Berlusconi his chance at the polls without first obliging him to divest himself of many of his wide-reaching assets. The conflict of interest between his own business and affairs of state would be gargantuan. Worth perhaps $14 billion, he is intricately involved in vast areas of Italian finance, commerce and broadcasting with ramifications into almost every aspect of business and public life; his empire includes banks, insurance, property, publishing, advertising, the media and football. Even during his ill-fated earlier stint as prime minister, in 1994, he issued an array of decrees that impinged heavily on his commercial activities. If he wins again on May 13th, he will control a good 90% of all national television broadcasting. He has made not the slightest effort to resolve this clear conflict.

Why so little concern in Italy?

There are historical reasons why so many Italians are unswayed by the case for keeping Mr Berlusconi out of high office. It is a sad truth that for years they had little cause to respect the institutions or rules of the state. Until a decade ago, Italy was run according to a corrupt arrangement under which all the supposedly respectable parties, usually led by the Christian Democrats, ruled in perpetual but oft-changing coalition to keep communists and fascists out of office. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, centrists and refashioned ex-communists filled the gap that opened up on the left, while Mr Berlusconi's movement jumped into the vacuum on the right. The mani pulite (clean hands) campaign against corruption after 1992 was enthusiastically taken up by the people and, all in all, venality is less pervasive than it was. But the same old attitude of disrespect for laws, institutions and the courts lingers. And Mr Berlusconi, peddling amiability and showmanship, has persuaded many Italians that he at least stands for something new. We show that in the central matter of probity that is not so.

Which is far from saying that Mr Berlusconi does not offer some sensible policies, or that Italy has no need of reform. The judicial system might well benefit from an overhaul. Indeed, the entire constitution is ripe for change. The executive is too weak, the legislature too prone to indecision, the voting system too proportional. But these problems are of a different order to the one of suspected criminality at the top.

Mr Berlusconi's strongest claim is that many of the charges against him, whether of conflict of interest or of much greater crimes, have been known for years, and yet most Italians seem untroubled. In other words, though the judiciary may not agree, the court of public opinion finds him innocent. If the judiciary is indeed politically motivated, that is a terrible condemnation of the Italian state. If, on the other hand, the judiciary is independent, the public's acquittal is a terrible condemnation of the electorate. Either way, the election of Mr Berlusconi as prime minister would mark a dark day for Italian democracy and the rule of law.

WISE WORDS FOR JANET ALBRECHTSEN

OSCAR WILDE: The views of the Philistine on art could not be counted: they are incalculably stupid. You cannot ask me what misinterpretation of my work the ignorant, the illiterate, the foolish may put on it. It doesn't concern me. What concerns me in my art is my view and my feeling and why I made it; I don't care twopence what other people think about it.

SOME GALBRAITH QUOTES

Just doing some research, and stumbled over a favourite John Kenneth Galbraith quote, and from this I was impelled to look up a few other favourite chestnuts. It's amazing how many of these have a certain iconoclastic quality. Here are a couple of my favourites. They just seem so timely, particularly the quote from Affluent nation about the value of education, a large driver of the economic success of this nation. Unfortunately, some short-sighted government officials, now see education more as a cost than a resource. Backward steps. Backward steps.


"Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists."

"If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error."

"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought."

"Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything."

"Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory."

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."

"In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong."

"People are the common denominator of progress. So... no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development.... But we are coming to realize... that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first."

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

"The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking."

"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."

MICHAEL COSTELLO ON THE FTA

"Yet even at this late stage, we should think again – and then politely say we have changed our mind. To sign up to this deal would be a long-term strategic error not just for foreign and trade policy reasons, but for its consequences for our economy.

"This is not because the agreement is with the US. Indeed, if we were to make such an agreement, the US would be the most sensible option as a partner. It is because Australia signing up to this deal could well be a fatal blow to the steady progress towards the opening up of trade that has driven the stunning growth of the world economy for the past 50 years.

"At the heart of that freeing up of global trade was the idea that it must be non-discriminatory – that is, when the big powers did a deal among themselves, everyone else, from the biggest country to the smallest, got equal benefit."

"What matters is less the personal warmth between the leaders and more a belief on both sides that their interests coincide. One of those interests is global free trade, and all our efforts should be directed to getting the US back on that track rather than playing the short-term FTA game."

TO ALBRECHT

Janet "of the planet" Albrechtsen continues to delve into the realm of fiction, its just a shame she is placed on the Australian's opinion pages on Wednesday, she'd be much more attuned a humor pages, maybe under the title of 'Village Idiot'. And this week she has put in another bravura performance, jumping into hysterics over French academic (Yes, get those loins worked up) Catherine Millet's work The Sexual Life of Catherine M. Of course this could not spark another cause celebre, something that French art has a particularly adept at manipulating over the years. Maybe this continues the fine form of the hysterical Lyon’s Forum ensuring enough scandal to guarantee the success of Romance, Baise-Moi or the more recent film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s brilliant Lolita.

Now anyone with the vaguest semblance of knowledge of literary tradition will be well aware that this is hardly a groundbreaking novel. The French novel has been depicting sexual acts for well over two centuries from the Marquise de Sade's libertinism to George Bataille's The Story of the Eye , to more recently Michel Houellbecq's Atomised.

Albrechtsen asserts: “Her fawning embrace by our arts community at this week's Sydney Writers Festival confirms the unbearable pretentiousness of the art and academic worlds, the desperation of feminists to find a new hero and the fatuousness of this new, modern God of Tolerance.
Maybe Millet's newest fans among Australian intellectuals are unfamiliar with the porn genre. No plot, no characters. Sex in strange places, sex with strangers, lots of them, usually at once, in clubs, bushes, toilets, car parks, tunnels, on railway platforms, on car bonnets. Oral sex, anal sex, any sex. Millet's 186-page ode to gang-bang sex is porn in a mechanical tone.”

The problem is this fawning embrace from the arts community, is emanating almost solely from the publicity of the Sydney Writer’s Festival, which has a vested interest in a large attendance at Catherine's appearance this week. However, the arts and academic world have hardly been enthusiastic as Albrectsen asserts. Being around the halls of academia, not once have I heard Millet’s work mentioned this despite the fact that her appearance at the Sydney Writer’s Festival is only a matter of days away.

Indeed, going through the broadsheet reviews in Australia, the response has been somewhat negative. Writing in The Age (which I’m sure Janet sees as the hotbead of moral corruption) Catherine Ford review concludes: “There are few things I've seen or read as squalid as Catherine Millet's boastful posing, her diligence in counting herself among the impious.
And while it's possible to appreciate, even be entertained by a narcissism as great as hers, my goodwill dried up at her scandalously cursory mention of an abortion she undergoes. It is the only penetration of Millet's body, in 200-odd pages, to receive scant, perfunctory treatment.”

While Guy Rundle in the Sydney Morning Herald was also skeptical of its achievements, and went on to resite other works of literature, which explored sexual encounters in a far more fascinating manner. Rundle states: “Had the work been published in the 1950s, it would have been a pulp called something like I was a Nymphomaniac with a blonde in a see-through shift on the cover.”

Finally, reading the Village Voice review and interview, it is obvious that Albrecthsen has taken a few quotes out of context by focusing on the playful use of the ‘new literary libertine’. However, if she bothered to read the remainder of the review she would have discovered that the review was nowhere near as celebratory of her work as she asserts. Here are some extracts from the Village Voice review

“Millet reveals the most minuscule particulars of her sexploits, yet next to nothing about her life beyond them. She tells us which positions and orifices her lovers favored, but not what books they read or what they talked about. The passing of time is imperceptible in the memoir except for one lone reference to Millet not liking a particular sexual position because it's unflattering to her middle-aged jowls, and a short passage about becoming more discriminating after settling down with long-term partner Jacques. But the absence of personal detail sparks a litany of questions: Does she have any female friends? Did she trade saliva with artists she was critiquing? Do any of her lovers have children? Don't any of her fuckmates have jobs?

“The most controversial thing about The Sexual Life isn't Millet's voraciousness but her passivity. She doesn't come off as a lusty dominatrix; in fact, she lets the men in her life act as "guides" who hook her up with one salacious situation after another. “

And concluding: “More startling, however, is her claim that she'd never analyzed her behavior until writing this book, and didn't understand the mechanisms of orgasms until late in life. That's a pretty strange admission for an intellectual who must've been aware of American feminist writing on the subject and of French theorists who celebrated female sexuality as a basis for l'écriture feminine. So either Millet is being dishonest, or she enjoys playing hide-and-seek with the reader, refusing to resolve publicly some of the deeper psychosexual issues that rumble through this seemingly self-revelatory book.”

Doing a Google search, with edu.au qualifier, only one mention is made of Millet’s work by an Australian academic, this by a Macquarie Uni sociology professor. Hardly a flurry of academic theory. However, bang in William Faulkner, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and hundreds of results will be forthcoming. But conservatives would assure you that all this ‘postmodernism’ (even though they do not understand the term) would make studying these texts irrelevant.

Of course this allows Albrechtsen to embark on her Hobby Horse about the principle of tolerance, which is even more laughable. If she is so opposed to tolerance she is welcome to move to Saudi Arabia, something right-wing critics have suggested that multiculturalists like Greg Barns and Malcolm Fraser should do for having the audacity to criticise the Australian government.

“Yet their view of morality is as extreme as that of fundamentalists advocating sharia law as a code of conduct. The only difference is the two groups live at opposite ends of the moral spectrum. Adherents of sharia law overdose on judgments. Tolerance junkies are comfortable with only one – one that says making judgments about lifestyles is bad.”

Of course the two views are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Yet Janet is hardly coming from a position of neutrality, Albrechtsen seems very much to share the book-burning camp of the Islamic fundamentalists she so likes to attempt to slur in an effort to pen a new diminutive for Australian liberals. Those darn elitists, who wished for greater transparency during the Tampa crisis and the children overboard incident, who according to Albrechtsen were secretly agitating for the building of an Arab kakistocracy here in Australia. Flaming Strewth.

Another proud moment of Australian hypocrisy. On this example, the critical faculties of the press and academia remain in good shape.

Janet should take a bex, or maybe go get some good sex. She sure sounds like one unhappy camper.

HOLLINGWORTH SHOULD RESIGN WITH WHATEVER DIGNITY HE HAS LEFT

This the Australian editorial

"Dr Hollingworth's resignation is in the national interest and there is nothing to be gained by his trying to hang on and tough it out. It would subject him to continuing community criticism as a serial offender in failing to do everything he could to protect children from pedophiles. Dr Hollingworth does not appear to understand this. His response to yesterday's church report admitted a "serious error" of judgment but the apology is a sterile statement redolent of a desperate hope that he will now be left alone.

This assessment follows on from other examples of spectacularly poor judgment by Dr Hollingworth, notably his inference in a television interview conducted in February last year that an adolescent girl may have initiated a sexual relationship with a clergyman. It was a stunningly stupid thing to say, both for what it demonstrated about Dr Hollingworth's understanding – or lack of it – about how adults can sexually manipulate the young, and for his inability to anticipate the community outrage it generated. In the months that followed, the Governor-General lost the respect of much of the Australian community. Teachers voted to ban him from schools, charities concluded there was no prestige in his vice-regal support. And like a deeply unpopular politician fighting to stay in office, he hired a $250-an-hour spin-doctor to defend his record. That the taxpayer picked up the $13,500 bill did not do Dr Hollingworth's public standing much good either.

"There is no vendetta against him, the accusations come from too many sources and there is no reason to hope that we have heard the last claim that our head of state failed to protect children from pedophiles who sheltered under the authority of the church he led. The prospect of Australia's head of state issuing yet more statements of apology over sexual abuse in his former diocese, sheltering behind the doubtful defence of public relations spin and facing criticism in the media or even the courts makes an overwhelming case for him to go."

And this editorial from the Sydney Morning Herald:

"These findings confirm and reinforce what was plain last year. That is, that when Dr Hollingworth had the authority to respond to sexual abuse complaints against clergy, he was too ready to be understanding and forgiving of offending clergy, too protective of the interests of the church as an institution, and too little concerned about the victims.

That approach reflected attitudes of earlier times, when pedophiles too often benefited from the unwillingness of institutions such as the church to deal openly with cases of abuse. Now it is well recognised that pedophiles seek to place themselves in situations where they can find victims, and their crimes, when they occur, are less likely to be aberrations than parts of longstanding and persistent patterns of behaviour. Stopping them - and deterring others - requires removal, not forgiveness."

The views from monarchists is very much divided, as this interview from The World Today highlights

ELEANOR HALL: Well, despite support from the Convenor of Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy, a Queensland monarchist is this morning calling on Dr Hollingworth to resign.

Dr Glen Sheil, from Queenslanders for a Constitutional Monarchy, was elected representative on the 1998 Constitutional Convention and he's told Peter McCutcheon that the Governor-General does more than perform a ceremonial role.

GLEN SHEIL: The Governor-General is the watchdog for the people and he's only allowed to have the enormous power that he does have and to use it when he's using it on behalf of the people, all of the people. And so he's got to keep an eye on all the legislation and see that it's not disadvantaging anybody.

No matter what their political party, he has to be independent of all that sort of thing and so he has to use his judgement a lot and in this sort of case, he's demonstrated that his judgement is a bit off.

PETER McCUTCHEON: Well at least on one occasion he made an error of judgement. He's admitted to that but…

GLEN SHEIL: Mmm.

PETER McCUTCHEON: … is there anyone on this earth who hasn't made an error of judgement in the past?

GLEN SHEIL: Very few of us. I have myself. I bet you have too. And he has too. But when you're given that job, you can't afford one.

PETER McCUTCHEON: But he hasn't committed any crime and the error of judgement occurred some years ago before he took on the role as Governor-General. Why is it relevant now?

GLEN SHEIL: I'll tell you why, because meetings of his peers nowadays have decided that there never was an opportunity to come to the conclusion he did come to and that he should not have come to that conclusion and so that makes people wonder what other things he was considering, or was there anything in it for him, and that's the important thing. You can't have people whose judgement is subject to outside influences.

PETER McCUTCHEON: Do you think this controversy has undermined support for the monarchy in Australia?

GLEN SHEIL: No. In fact it's, this is the monarchy working at its best. Because the Governor-General is the watchdog for the people, the people are well aware that they want a chap in that job who's fair in his judgements and so this issue is one that's enlivened everybody.

PETER McCUTCHEON: So do you think the Governor-General should resign? Or should the Prime Minister sack him?

GLEN SHEIL: No I think he should resign. I think it's a bit hard on the Prime Minister to ask him to sack him.

However, Kerry Jones disagrees

ELANOR HALL: Why do you think that he should not resign as Governor-General?

KERRY JONES: Well it has absolutely nothing to do with his role as our constitutional Australian Head of State and he is performing in that role extremely well. There's been lots and lots of innuendos and accusations made over things that happened in a previous role that he played, of course, but that has nothing to do with his constitutional role as our Australian Head of State. And I think a lot of people today are mixing up the two very, very different roles.

And what about this smug response

ELEANOR HALL: Kerry Jones, it is an issue about power and it is an issue about character. Do you believe that those things are important for a Governor-General?

KERRY JONES: Look the Governor-General, the most important role and duty he plays is to be above the day-to-day political fray. I mean that's what a constitutional monarchy is all about. It's about having leadership above politics.

The politicians come and go and argue and play out their debates on a daily basis about what is right or wrong, whether we should go to war, whether we should take in or not refugees, etcetera.

But when you get to issues of representing all Australians above politics, that is the position that our Governor-General and our Governors play on a daily basis as well as, of course, the constitutional importance of their role of checking the legislation and the politicians do it in the right way.

KERRY JONES: Of course it is and I mean there were many people who didn't want us to go to war and the opinion polls have completely reversed lately on that issue. Changing the flag, now no-one wants to change our Australian flag. Opinion polls are a day-to-day current affair reflection. They should never decide important things like policy and important things like our constitutional debate.

Now the Governor-General is in I believe the most important role in Australia as our Australian Head of State and keeping a check and balance on the day-to-day political frays and you've got to be left alone to do that job properly.

Warning Kerry, your moving into 'Elitist' territory, with that above politics stuff. It sounds mighty similar to the line that the republican movement should just shut up and go away, because the majority of people voted against it. Ignoring public opinion while accusing republicans of the same sort of 'Elitism', is a mammoth hypocrisy

Darn it, maybe we should demand another Republican ballot, if these polls are so darn unreliable Kerry.

"Left-alone to do that job properly" - is she going to advocate the 'rule of kings' next. Sounds like royalty. Hollingworth was only appointed through the divine decree of He Of the Mighty Eyebrows, of whom some of the press seem to assume of a divinely spectacular birth on par with the beautiful Aphrodite. That sounds a tad Elitist, Kezza. It's not doing Howard or Hollingworth any favours, and considering the symbolic nature of the position, it is not exactly representing Australians overseas in the brightest manner.

ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well it's relevant for two reasons; issue of principle and also a practical issue. On the issue of principle, what child sexual abuse is about, as other forms of sexual abuse, is about is power and Archbishop Hollingworth, while in that position, this report shows that he acted unfairly, unreasonably, didn't show any compassion.

He didn't understand when he also gave the Australian Story interview, which was while he was Governor-General, that a 14-year old girl having a relationship with a minister is an issue of abuse, is a crime, is centred on a power imbalance in that relationship.

ELEANOR HALL: So are you saying that Dr Hollingworth is not fit to be Governor-General?

ANTHONY ALBANESE: I am absolutely saying that and I'm also saying that on a practical level not only does he not get what this issue is and why it's an issue of great significance, and he did that whilst he was Governor-General, he gave that Australian Story interview, there's a practical issue as well, which is that he can't do his job.

He couldn't go to the Melbourne Cup last year and he can't go to public functions. He can't perform the role that we need our Head of State to perform, which is one of a unifying figure who we can all respect, who we can all look up to.

Spot on, Hollingworth should follow a cardinal law and resign immediately.

THE BURGHERS FOIL BORGER
The Labor Party in NSW continues to bypass grassroots members, in yet another tale of the machinations of the famous NSW right, where the views of the local rank-and-file count for about as much as the voice of a lachrymose leper. In the pre-selection for the safe state seat of Parramatta, popular local member David Borger was ousted by the famous N40 rule, which allows a mini-ballot instead of a rank-and-file vote. This gave Michael Costa’s chief of staff Tanya Gadiel the Labor pre-selection for Parramatta.

David Borger, is an impressive young politician, and one with varied experiences and the ability to have a big future in many Labor governments to come. At the age of 30 he was elected Lord Mayor of Parramatta, and has been involved in an array of campaigns in the region. Borger has impressed a lot of people, including premier Bob Carr, and has quite a profile in the area and was already being considered as ministerial material by many in the NSW ALP.

Borger unlike most of his Labor counterparts, can lay claim to coming from a very different background than the usual ‘Chardonnay Socialist’ archetype who follows fashionable causes. Having run away from home Borger spent some time as a ward of the state, and it is to his enormous credit that he has been able to turn around his life and rise so rapidly through the Labor ranks. Having gone back to school and completed his HSC and completed an Economics degree, Borger then succeeded in being voted onto the Parramatta Council. What impresses me about Borger is he has, what few of the go-getters from Labor seem to have, a concern for a range of micro issues that have been neglected by most politicians of all persuasions. In his time on Parramatta he has been involved in the important unfashionable causes like disability services, mental health services and during the Olympics highlighted the plight of over a thousand homeless people forced to re-locate.

Borger has every reason to be disappointed with NSW Labor, and this frustration obviously spilled over when he decided to spill the beans on the Mike Carlton drive-program.

On this interview, Borger announced that he had been offered the seat and a probable ministerial position if he switched to the right faction, this carrot was offered by Eddie Obeid, who sent an array of messages to Borger’s mobile phone. However, Borger declined the offer, which he is entitled to do, confident he would win the seat on local support and would eventually earn a ministerial position on his own merits.

"It also shows how powerful Eddie Obeid is,” said Borger. “I declined his offer because I do not trust him. The rank-and-file preselection process is dead and one of the reasons is because the party is so dependent on funding from corporate sources.

"The ALP no longer rely on local supporters, on people putting things into letterboxes any more. They rely on the big fund-raisers and use those resources to run campaigns.

"There is a disconnection between branch membership; they are owed less now, have less input and, as an extension, now do not have their say in the selection ballot process."

This is another embarrassment for the Labor Party, which has already suffered from ignoring the public’s desire to insure adequate participation in the pre-selection process in the safe seat of Cunningham. Unfortunately, in the Labor Party is starting to become a case of who you know rather than what you know, which has often resulted in Labor fielding candidates with quite limited talent in several marginal seats in both of the last two elections. If we are to compare Borger’s fate with Paul McLeay, who was parachuted into the state seat of Heathcote without any equal opportunity objections that occurred in Parramatta, you have to question Labor’s efforts to recruit the best candidate in every seat.

That Obeid, who is now famous for making 153 errors on his pecuniary interest declarations, could have so much sway in pre-selections is quite disturbing. Hopefully, Borger will be able to overcome this set back, and possibly challenge Rod Cameron for the Federal Seat of Parramatta, he’d certainly be a big improvement on the garrulous member for Parramatta, who continues to shoot his mouth off about everything from marriage-shy males to winging farmers who he suggests relocate to the city.