gillard's misuse of power harms her party

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/the-pms-misuse-of-power-harms-her-party/story-e6frfhqf-1226562467636

AND so we begin 2013 back where we were at the end of 2011, with Julia Gillard giving us another demonstration of her political judgment and annoying a large swathe of the Labor Party.

Back then it was her petty, vindictive and undeserved shafting of Kim Carr from the industry portfolio that had many Labor folk shaking their heads.

Last week,it was the petty, vindictive shafting of Northern Territory Senator Trish Crossin.

If I were a Labor member, the choice between Crossin and the Prime Minister's "Captain's pick" of Nova Peris, would be difficult.

Crossin has been in the Senate since 1998, with the peak of her career being a spell as Deputy Opposition Whip between 2001 and 2004.

The best that her colleagues seemed to be able to say of her is that she has been a tireless campaigner for the NT.

"Tireless campaigner for their electorate" is a politician's way of saying "seat-warming hack".

Peris, on the other hand, is there because she was once a champion athlete, which, the Prime Minster seems to believe, is enough to qualify you as a legislator in this sports-mad nation.

Peris's post-running career as listed in Who's Who includes "Contestant Celebrity Overhaul 2006" alongside more exacting positions such as patron of National Sorry Day, International Indigenous Rights Ambassador at the Manchester Museum and board member of Beyond Blue.

Strangely, although the PM singled out Peris's passion for education as a reason why she should replace Crossin, Who's Who is silent on the subject of her own education.

As I said, the choice between an undistinguished hack who's had a good run and a retired celebrity sports star is a hard one. Too hard to be left in the hands of ALP members apparently.

For as we know, Labor members will not be given a say in who gets to run for the Senate in the NT because Julia Gillard has decided it should be decided by the party's national executive - a body on which the Top End is not represented.

It would be a mistake to think that the anger and despair being vented over Gillard's high-handedness is confined to disenfranchised NT Labor members, or people concerned about the fate of Crossin.

Or even the fear the PM's action strikes into the hearts of MPs who wonder if they might be next.

It's deeper than that and goes to the heart of what has gone wrong with the Labor Party in the past few years.

Labor's national executive has always had the power to intervene in the affairs of state branches but, like all extraordinary powers, it was only used rarely. When Gough Whitlam removed the moribund leadership of the Victorian branch in 1970, federal intervention was only achieved after a close vote after years of argument.

Likewise, federal intervention in Queensland in 1980 was years in the making. The idea that the national executive would just take over a local pre-selection out of the blue was inconceivable.

But as with so many things in the Labor Party, the rot set in under Kevin Rudd.

In 2010 he used the national executive to overturn the Senate pre-selection of a trade unionist called Kevin Harkins in Tasmania. (It later turned out Rudd may have mistaken him for a trade unionist from Western Australia called Kevin Reynolds. Seriously.)

It was a capricious use of power that set an ugly precedent. But as ugly as it was, that's nothing to Gillard's performance last week - ringing up a senator without warning and telling her she was announcing her successor at a press conference the next day.

Doubtless there were ways that Crossin could have been eased out of her slot, if the consensus was that she had served the Territory for long enough, that didn't involve such an ugly use of power.

But it's not her high-handedness that is so objectionable about the PM's actions this week. The real reason to object to it is that it will make a power that only ought to be used in emergencies more commonplace.