''In the NSW Labor Party, there is a willingness to tolerate, even worship, the cult of whatever it takes, the Richo culture. It's admired. But that culture, taken to extremes, ends up in this grotesque corruption.''
- Anne Davies, Sean Nicholls, Linton Besser
Whoever will lead the party after the caucus ballot on January 5, be it environment spokesman Luke Foley, treasury spokesman Michael Daley or police spokesman Steve Whan, will be inherit a cupboard bare of major policies, except for one, opposition to the privatisation of electricity assets. Unions NSW, overlords of the parliamentary party, would be unlikely to allow anything else, leaving the opposition more in tune with the economic and political culture of 50 years ago. Mr Foley, the leadership frontrunner, has already said he would continue Labor’s opposition to the lease of electricity businesses.
Good Policies Needed
Nothing Changes as Much as the Past CounterPunch
“I am nobody’s friend. How much can you pay?”
- Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance
For Labor, it was a case of third time lucky. With a new leader in either Daley or upper house leader Luke Foley, the party has a chance to make itself relevant again, and to present a more equal combatant to the untouchable Baird.
Blessings in Disguise
“You touch on a disheartening truth. People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.”~ James Branch Cabell, The Cream of the Jest
The Sun-Herald also understands Foley has the support of right-wing MPs including Health spokesman Walt Secord. Party Politics
On July 30, 2010, Mr McConnell writes to Mr Sinodinos: “Comrade, I have a letter from BOF to Nick Di Girolamo on my desk. I want to make sure you can use ... (it) is an indirect letter of support for your project so you can go back to Walt (Secord, Kristina Keneally’s chief of staff). KK
'There are two types of people in the Labor Party,'' one senior state MP says. They were '' those who bent the knee and kissed Eddie's ring, and those who kept their distance because they thought him so odious''.
To Labor's shame, only a handful stood up to the high priest of the Right, Eddie Obeid, found by the Independent Commission Against Corruption this week to have engaged in corrupt conduct. Obeid became a regular at Labor fund-raisers, and was introduced to Richardson's great friend Rene Rivkin. It was Rivkin to whom Obeid turned to help finance the purchase of an old printing press from the Packer empire. The name of the company, Offset Alpine, has been in the news ever since.
Obeid painstakingly constructed a web of patronage during his 20 years as a powerbroker in the NSW Parliament.
''Immediately after he retired, was he a person of influence? Absolutely,'' one senior Labor figure says. ''And that extended to the ninth floor [NSW Labor's head office in Sussex Street].''
The clearest evidence of this was the deal Obeid cut with party officials when they were trying to convince him to leave Parliament. Obeid insisted that if he agreed to go, then he should be replaced by Walt Secord - the former chief of staff to Keneally and treasurer Eric Roozendaal.
The exodus of Labor MPs at the 2011 state election means Obeid's influence is significantly reduced in the NSW Parliament. But it remains alive in pockets of local government.
Obeid is said to be particularly close to the Burwood mayor John Faker and also Parramatta councillor Pierre Esber.
The mayor of Canada Bay, Angelo Tsirekas, is also commonly mentioned, but this is largely believed to be due to the Obeids having lived and worked in the local area.
Rise and Fall of the Godfather Obeid
He's a big man but he's highly energetic. I'd be surprised if he didn't find his way into the shadow ministry very early on. Robbo and co. will be listening to what he has to say because there was no one better at dealing with the press gallery than Walt
He was creative, says Hawker. He could always muster up a [positive] story from virtually nothing. You need someone like that in government. He had the energy to trawl through the Government Gazette and find things others had missed. The Trolley of Truth; Patrick Low, the former press secretary to Education Minister John Aquilina, told the commission he was pressured by Mr Carr's press secretary, Walter Secord, to shore up a rumour the 15-year-old had access to a gun because it would make a better story
The lack of political diversity is not a threat to the validity of specific studies in many and perhaps most areas of research in social psychology. The lack of diversity causes problems for the scientific process primarily in areas related to the political concerns of the left—areas such as race, gender, stereotyping, environmentalism, power, and inequality—as well as in areas where conservatives themselves are studied, such as in moral and political psychology. And even in those areas, we are not suggesting that most of the studies are flawed or erroneous. Rather, we argue that the collective efforts of researchers in politically charged areas may fail to converge upon the truth when there are few or no non-liberal researchers to raise questions and frame hypotheses in alternative ways.
The paper is entitled “Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Science.”
“He is a self-styled public-relations counselor—one of the various modern activities that are an insult to the dignity of man.”
~ Rex Stout, The Father Hunt
PS: Interesting observation from the SMH
Follow the leader
The new leader of the ALP in NSW worked in the office of a Labor senator and then for a union, before the ALP anointed him to take a seat in the upper house ("Foley has clear run in race for Labor's top job", December 31). The previous leader of the ALP had the same richly diverse working history. The ALP line of succession is looking more and more like one of those sci-fi stories where a group of intelligent machines are replicating themselves.Joe Weller Lewisham