Politics: The Labor Party's Balls.

The Labor party has spent the last few months analysing and deconstructing their embarrassing defeat. Now, the executive has issued 50 recommendations for the party, supposedly highlighting what they did wrong, and what they need to do right.

One of the key changes the executive recommended – which has been accepted – is that leaders should sign performance contracts. These will be written agreements listing key areas in which a candidate must perform adequately in. If they don’t perform they’ll receive… counselling.

Awesome work Labor! Just in case there wasn’t enough in-fighting and squabbling within the party, they’ve now added yet another in-house bureaucratic hurdle. The executive seems to think it’ll bolster both ministerial and public faith in the candidates. They’re wrong. Such a contract serves only to make the party look like a pack of pathetic, underachieving simpletons who can only perform when they’ve got a contract hanging over their head.

If you want to boost the performance of shadow ministers, you could try formulating policies that the entire party is proud of, and willing to fight for. As it is, the party continues to suffer with ambiguous relationships with unions and ambiguous policies.

And it doesn’t help that Mark Latham’s big head has predictably eased its way towards the chopping block. He’s an arrogant man, and some key Labor ministers and members think he suffers from being so inaccessible. He’s cut from the Keating mode – he’s confident, but is he a little too confident?

No. He’s just right. He may be a welfare-hating economic rationalist with a rampant disdain for the working classes, but he’s also done an impressive job of establishing himself as leader. With only 9 odd months to work with, he managed to caress his way into the minds of Australian punters everywhere, whether they like it or not.

Labor’s terrible problems at the polls wasn’t Latham’s fault. It was the fault of a party that lacked focus and direction.

Evil, sleazy, moustache-sporting Latino villains in films are typically fond of talking about their cajones, and other people’s lack thereof. And that’s what Labor needs – the Australian equivalent of a Latino villain; someone who’s got the cajones to lay policy out on the table and stand by it, and the insatiable desire to point out the testicular inadequacies of their opponents. In short, the Labor party needs balls.

It’s small comfort then that some of the recommendations of the executive address this need. They found that election advertising was ‘far too polite,’ and they’re right. Whilst the Liberal swine went on the attack, embarrassing Latham by noting his sub-standard record as Liverpool mayor and portraying him as a retarded Learner opposition leader, the Labor punks… well, can anybody remember their ads?

They need an advertising contract that will focus on what the Liberal party will do wrong, while only briefly addressing what they have done wrong. The Australian people know that John Howard is a treacherous, lying little weasel and they don’t care. What they do care about is the possibility that they might lose cash. Labor should find weaknesses in the Liberal parties supposedly bulletproof economic policy and exploit them. They should even succumb to lies and deceit if they can get away with it. They need to get vicious. They need the cajones, amigo.

(Originally published in The Brag in the Fear & Loathing column).

(Photo: Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kevin Rudd, who once tried to learn the Charleston but failed).