The Labor Party way
We should have realised when Peter Beattie handed over the Premier’s reins in Queensland to Anna Bligh just how crook things had become. It is the established Labor Party way to turn to a woman only when the men have let things get out of control. They gave Joan Kirner the poison chalice in Victoria after the State Government was nearly sent broke under John Cain. In Western Australia Carmen Lawrence inherited the mess discovered by a Royal Commission that sailed into the messy wake of the Brian Burke led corruption. But in normal circumstances the overwhelming majority of men in a Labor Party Caucus tend to choose one of their own. That Clare Martin was given the job as Opposition Leader in the Northern Territory in 1999 was really no different. The men of Labor might not have been trying to rescue a government about to be thrown out, but their attempt to preserve a disastrously small rump in the parliament was just as desperate. The gratitude of Ms Martin’s male colleagues for her am