Dirty business, politics, isn’t it?

The knives sure are out for Kelly Hoare, the Labor MP for Charlton in NSW. She was dumped from party preselection for the safe ALP seat, which she had held since 1998, in favour of ACTU secretary and ALP golden boy Greg Combet.

Clearly timed to shut her up, and stop her protesting over being dumped in favour of Combet, details of some embarassing incidents of misconduct by Ms Hoare have appeared in the media over the weekend. No doubt straight from ALP sources, no doubt with tacit approval of the party hierarchy …ie “shut your mouth, take your medicine, or there’ll be more dirt to follow!”. The campaign against her has been vicious enough to have fellow MPs concerned for her welfare and state of mind.

In Saturday’s press, we learned she had propositioned a Commonwealth car driver for sex in April and had been receiving counselling for this. According to informed sources, Ms Hoare, 43, allegedly asked the driver: “Why don’t you come inside and fuck me.” He declined. This morning, more juicy gossip about an incident where another MP walked in on her and a security guard in her Parliament House office.

My understanding is that Kelly Hoare has not really distinguished herself by her performance as an MP. She inherited the seat from her father who had held it previously for many years. Prior to being an MP, she’d worked in dad’s electoral office (ie yet another Labor MP who’s done nothing but politics and not worked out in the real world). Greg Combet is undoubtedly going to prove more valuable to the ALP than Kelly Hoare ever would be. Apart from being a career politician, and even worse, having her seat gifted to her through family connections, Kelly Hoare really showed her unsuitability to hold such office when she cried poor over her likely dumping by the party, claiming the loss of her $120k MP salary would place her family in financial hardship …notwithstanding that she probably scores a $60k lifetime pension. She also made noise at one time about suing for unfair dismissal. Out of touch with reality?

While I think the ALP’s appointment of stunt candidates like Greg Combet, Bill Shorten, Maxine McKew, and previously, Peter Garrett, is good in terms of improving the parliamentary party’s talent pool, the fact that good candidates are not coming through the party’s branch system seems to me to point to a problem there that needs fixing (ie people are being preselected based on deals done and favours exchanged not who would serve the ALP’s best interests). Of concern also is how the stunt candidates almost invariably fight over the safe seats, rather than putting themselves out in the frontline of the marginal seats which need to be won off the Liberals … politics is a nice career, especially when you don’t have to expose yourself to the risk of losing.