Keating's on the money

I tend to agree with Former Hawke government minister Barry Cohen that Paul Keating's fault was in the timing of his remarks rather than their substance. But if the guys (particularly David Epstein and Gary Gray) Keating was attacking for their gutlessness had any part in the Latham election campaign in 2004, Keating is spot on with his criticism.

They should all have been fired after (if not during) the 2004 election for gross incompetence. In fact, the night of Latham's 2004 election defeat I wrote an email to the ALP outlining where they went wrong and why it was obvious from the beginning of the campaign that they were going to lose. These fatcats are indeed gutless, no-values bastards for whom there's never been any talk of 'performance-based salaries'.

One of the reasons I started this blog was because I was sick of ranting at Gam about how utterly hopeless these guys were. If I, an unqualified, unpaid pleb (along with all the voters who switched to the Green party in disgust), could so easily point out where the Labor Party went wrong at the last election, why couldn't these guys getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollar a year see the same thing and modify their strategy accordingly? It was like watching a fucking slow motion truck smash. I recall Mark Latham writing in The Latham Diaries about his wife asking him something similar with regard to the ALP's election advertising campaign. It really was that obvious.

Kevin Rudd is the most suitable person to lead the party to the next election, but keeping those guys on board was a big mistake.

Keating also had a lot of good points to make about why WorkChoices Howard's HappyFunFun Workplace laws are bad for productivity, but they've been drowned out by the furore over his criticism of the Labor flunkies.