Just Another Politician
Friday, 2nd March, 2007
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It was a very quiet Kevin Rudd in question time yesterday as one of the truths about him was revealed for all to see. Behind the choir boy look with the holier than thou expression there is nothing more than another grubby politician.
Rudd was clearly embarrassed at his overtures to former WA Premier Brian Burke becoming public and so he should be. By the time he was meeting Burke in Perth it was well known within the Labor Party that the former Premier, who turned lobbyist after a spell in prison, was bad news. But so warped was the judgment of a person seeking political leadership that he supped with a devil in the pursuit of a vote.
Ministers of the Coalition Government had great fun drawing attention to this courtship of Burke. Liberals and Nationals know that part of the attraction of the new Leader of the Opposition is the perpetual hope of voters that they will discover a leader who is different – a principled and visionary person standing well clear of the normal name calling and political maneuvering. Those initial opinion poll findings putting Rudd on a pedestal and Labor on a handy lead reflect that hope more than any reality. The government’s task between now and election-day is to expose the alternative Prime Minister as being from the same mould as every political leader.
The dalliance with Burke gave them a wonderful starting point and the Opposition Leader, perhaps wisely, decided he was on a hiding to nothing if he opened his mouth so he stayed silent on the subject in the Parliament. Rudd left it to his colleague, the Labor Leader of the House Anthony Albanese, to try and deflect the attention by throwing some muck of his own.
Anthony Albanese does not have the choir boy needed to disguise a blatantly political intent when he rises to ask parliamentary questions. If anything his face on a television screen can be down right disconcerting. If he is to continue in the role of Labor’s attack dog he should follow the example of the man he set out to sully. John Howard realized that people with bad teeth should not appear on television and had all his front ones capped two decades ago. Viewers reflecting on why some one looks a little strange do not take in the words being uttered so Albanese trying to suggest that Liberals associating with former WA Liberal Senator Noel Crichton Browne was somehow as bad as Rudd dealing with Burke would have influenced nobody. Prime Minister Howard, in any case, had the perfect riposte by recalling the successful efforts he made to have Burke’s minor lobbyist associate lose his preselection.
In a further attempt to disguise Rudd’s embarrassment Albanese also raised the support that the Liberal Party has received in the past from the Exclusive Brethren. That was another lame effort at disguising an embarrassment but it was probably not wise of Rudd to try and rescue himself by holding a press conference where he admitted that with 20:20 hindsight he wished he had not associated with Brian Burke. That might have given the television news some vision to use other than the crooked Albanese smile but it helped turn the question time proceedings in to an even more interesting political spectacle. Copping it sweet and saying nothing would have served him better. As Burke would no doubt tell him if he called again, politicians should never explain, never complain and never resign.
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