Federal Government
THE HIDE OF TANNER: Millionaire merchant banker says Labor isn’t Labor enough
It’s unwise in the extreme to criticise a book you haven’t read, based on press reports alone. But if a lack of wisdom hasn’t stopped Lindsay Tanner from writing it, it won’t stop us from offering a view.
When old lefty Lindsay Tanner ventures a sweeping denunciation of the “cynicism” of the Labor party these days, it did strike us as a remarkable chutzpah given the one-time lefty firebrand unionist turned “Hard Left” MP and (in his own mind) leadership contender is now a merchant banker at Lazard, the principally US corporate advisory and asset management firm that took over Carnegie Wylie pre-GFC. His salary is reputedly just slightly less than the Principal at MLC.
The reports quote him saying the ALP will live to regret removing Rudd and claiming that the reports of Rudd’s dysfunction in office to be “exaggerations.”
We have come to agree that ripping into Rudd endlessly is like scratching at a wound, occasionally enticing and compelling, it inevitably only leads to further damage. He’s yesterday’s news and maybe Labor’s biggest mistake since the dark days it solicited funds from Saddam Hussein in Iraq. A Kim Beazley Prime Ministership would have been calmer, nicer and got more done with much less drama. But, just before the wheels fell off the formidable John Howard’s show, some in the caucus blinked and boned him. Hindsight is perfect vision, of course.
LEFTY FINDS HIS HAVEN
Tanner’s choice of career in merchant banking doesn’t disqualify him from having views. Even if it is that Lazard’s global HQ is in Bermuda:
Clarendon House, 2 Church Street
HAMILTON, HM11
Bermuda
Can’t imagine why they’d set up there.
But the sincerity of Tanner’s views ought be subjected to proof. His continued expression of idealism and enthusiasm for lights on hills and ALP policy processes does seem at odds with the reality of his merchant banker existence. He’s even moved away from Melbourne’s mean streets to an impressive rural pile, insiders tell VEXNEWS.
REMEMBER GERRY?
His predecessor in the federal seat of Melbourne, Gerry Hand, spent decades denouncing Indonesia for the unpleasantness perpetrated against East Timor. Shortly after he left ministerial service, he was involved in creating a casino with an Indonesian billionaire with very close ties to Indonesian generals and the Presidential family. Lefty websites claim he was also involved in – shock, horror – coal mining.
It’s enough to make us wonder these Members for Melbourne ever meant anything they said. Their dodginess is only exceeded by the current incumbent, Dr Adam Bandt PhD (Marx) whose embarrassing doctorate he did everything possible to suppress. Bandt – a bad boss who has attempted to re-instate slavery in his own office – will be gone soon enough, if his predecessors are any guide, to the employ of an arms manufacturer with interests in tobacco, pokies and conflict diamonds.
Of course, the reason Tanner departed federal Parliament was that he couldn’t abide serving under former rival/nemesis Julia Gillard. At least that’s what he told plenty of people at the time. He had been a successful Finance Minister. Some wondered how the government would go replacing him. Another supposed hard lefty Penny Wong stepped up and is generally seen as doing a good job at carrying out the dry desires of the Finance department, even planning on bumping off single mums off benefits when their kids turn eight, requiring them, if they’re not working, to go on Newstart.
TANNER BITTER & TWISTED IN THE WIND
Tanner even criticises two big – yet important – federal spending schemes, the National Broadband Network and the National Disability Insurance Scheme which one might have reasonably expected to have warmed the cockles of a good lefty’s heart.
The NBN has been enough to attract as an Australian citizenship applicant Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and will – if the Coalition don’t knock it off – provide ubiquity of world-best internet access to all of Australia, even near Tanner’s magnificent country estate.
It was a 2007 election campaign promise that has been over-delivered and is probably the strongest evidence that Australia is investing some of the proceeds of a massive and temporary boom in commodities prices into something of long-term lasting value that will positively effect national productivity in a massive way. There was – and remains – clear evidence of market failure in the provision of world-best internet in Australia, where even close to the city one’s ADSL internet quality would vary depending on Third World style factors like distance from an exchange. Those in regional areas didn’t even get that lucky. One of the richest countries in the world has one of the poorest internet infrastructures. Allowing that to continue would have been highly irresponsible and dangerous for Australia’s long-term competitiveness.
The NDIS was the result of appointing one of Australian politics’ most talented advocates, Bill Shorten, into an area crying out for government action, disabilities. Tanner slams the involvement of the Productivity Commission and yet, as we recall, a reference to that body was seen as a a vital step to establishing a credible economic case for what will undoubtedly be a big-spending programme. Big-spending because the need is so great.
There are many things to criticise about this government. Some of them would struggle to sell frosty VBs on a hot Boxing Day in Bay 13 at the G. But these two programmes will probably be looked back on with the same sense of accomplishment as Gough Whitlam’s Medibank, which continues to the present day, supported by both sides of Australia politics. Not all government spending, even big spending, is a bad thing. It can be easily characterised as wasteful, and certainly Canberra bureaucrats occasionally help fulfil public fears of this, but when addressing market failure or remedying injustice like the cruel lottery of disability, there’s nothing like a well-led, activist government to put things right, at least to some extent.
That’s what we think anyway. The purpose of politics is to influence what kind of collective decisions we make about the place we live in.
GRATITUDE FACTION CONTINUES TO BE A MICRO-ORGANISATION
Most would have imagined that’s what former Lefty unionist and supposedly hard-left MP Lindsay Tanner might have thought too, while counting the cash from a career well-spent in the labour movement where he started out a pot-smoking student newspaper editor and ended up a multi-millionaire superannuation recipient and merchant banker. You’d think he’d be grateful.
We wonder what the 1980s self-righteous Lindsay Tanner would make of Lindsay Tanner today?
Like Gerry Hand before him, something strange happened along the way.
To thine own self be true is maybe the best advice the old bard, via Polonius, ever gave. Is Lindsay Tanner being true to himself and the party that he used so gamely by writing the same old kind of whiny lefty essay he would have or could have written when he might have had a bit more lefty cred? Is it a bit of nostalgia for a time when he might have been broke but a bit more contented?
A millionaire banker typing up essays on his shiny new Mac laptop from his lovely rural dacha about how Labor has lost its way to the cynical bean-counters, criticising their undoubtedly well-intentioned, nation-building, big-spending programmes as not being properly generated through ALP policy committees or whatever is more than the chutzpah we wrote earlier, it’s a political Hustle of the kind we occasionally watching on the ABC by a grifter whose only redeeming feature is a passion for the team whose heroic captain this week won the Brownlow.
We really do wonder why he bothered.
What was once annoying, when used as a tool for duping his way into inner-city ALP preselections and applause at Writers’ Festivals is now a very tired, sad, irrelevant, preachy old act.
In a manner once reserved for dud stage acts and ALP state conferences, rotten tomatoes ought be thrown his way.
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Truth hurts doesn’t it Labor are totally rooted and likely so for at least a decade or it may even be forever.
Really well written and wholly interesting. Lindsay Tanner said “the decision was based on poll driven panic”. But he admits that the polls, although falling, weren’t that bad. Think it’s a bit over the top to say the polls were behind the decision to dump Kevin Rudd. Lindsay Tanner also says, the decision was made “amid a tough patch for the government which was experiencing some misjudgements and some obvious serious problems”. Who do you think was making those ‘misjudgements’ and who do you think caused those ‘obvious serious problems’. Of course it was Kevin Rudd and that’s why he was replaced.
As for the comment that “Truth hurts doesn’t it. Labor are totally rooted and likely so for at least a decade or it may even be forever”
Can understand why you signed anon with such a ridiculous remark
I knew that all those years of wearing sand shoes with suits would have to give way to something. Albo, tell this meathead to ‘just shut up!”
ADSL is not just hampered by distance from an exchange, but by the fact that whole new suburbs and subdivisions and brownfield high rise apartment developments were ‘shortcutted’ by Telstra, who were only obligated to provide a voice quality service, nothing about data — so instead of running copper to the new estate or subdivision, just prior to ADSL technology coming out, they just rolled out a single line of fibre in a micro-trench or in existing infrastructure, stuck an ADSL-incompatible C-MUX unit at the end to service all the new residences, and said they’d met their SLA to the developer in record time at minimal cost. Only thing is they completely stymied the possibility of people working from home and saving on fuel by disabling the possibility of getting ADSL — and it’s hardly the elderly and retired and uemployed moving into the brand new apartment blocks and subdivisions, it’s young workers. And naturallyt they don’t want to waste more money on ‘infrastructure costs’ by putting in new MUXes that can handle DSL as that would be a waste of shareholders’ money. Well done, 20/20 foresight, Telstra, you clearly richly deserve to be the big kid on the block with your technology smarts.
The NDIS will be necessary for all the cases of encephalitis and ASD brought about by the vaccination frenzy of the medical profession — an ASD epidemic that now sees 1 in 70 boys affected. So big pharma and medical fraternity profits will continue unabated while we set up an insurance scheme for the casualties. How timely. (Of course for the cot deaths that occur at 2 and 4 months within 2 weeks of a DTP jab, nothing needs to be spent.)
Great servant of the worker this one.Left labor high and dry when he spat the dummy. He made sure fellow marxist took his palce in Fedland.
Nice to see Andrea kicked on.
How can politics itself continue without Tanner’s leadership?
We need many more books from this wise profit.
Taking your inexplicible pro-Gillard stand again, Vex? Please tell me: what do you see in that woman? Whatever the reason for this unnatural love, there’s no excuse to trash the motives and reputation of sincere individuals like Lindsay Tanner. Shame on you.
If Tanner was the MHR for Melbourne Ports I would vote for him.
The ALP is now run by the dregs of the middle class. Just look at the outgoing ALP/CAPP councillors on Port Phillip Council and the CAPP/ALP drop kick that have nominated for this council election.
They are only interested in ratepayer funded council housing, push bikes, more street prostitution and ratepayer funded kindergartens for the excessive breeding habits. Vote CAPP last.
he married that psycho andrea anough said. she’s a lunny bin
lindsay is the most ungrateful, emotional immature member I have ever met. capacity for empathy is zero
Tanner was and is smarter than most of the spivs. in the ALP today.
As for the endless bullshit about trying to get money from Saddam Hussein way back decades ago – isn’t it somewhat rather worse letting an Australian government entity steal $300 million from starving Iraqis and GIVE IT TO SADDAM HUSSEIN.
Gee Marilyn that is hardly saying he’s bright, it is just saying he has only a minor intellectual disability.
Does anyone know how I can contact that cute horse?
Tanner – Just what you’d expect. As newly installed union boss, he brutally sacked the low-level union employees to make way for his picks. No worker solidarity there! And he’s not the only opportunist to “turn” from (so-called) “Labor” to corporate capitalist: He joins quite a Rogues Gallery. What do you call an ex-parasite? And the collective noun?
Congratulations to Lindsay Tanner. His honesty is rarely seen from the ALP.
We don’t need Tanner helping us like Newman helps Abbott.
Lindsay Tanner shows great promise as the ALP’s answer to Malcolm Fraser.
And I was really disappointed that Leigh Sales didn’t explode in a ball of angry bile during the 7:30 interview. So close… so close…
Tanner needs his his paying banking gig to pay for wilton’s whore.
What is it that drives grubs like Richardson, Latham and now Tanner to trash the organisation that enabled them to thrive post their departure?
Tanner could have contributed to changing Labor with a positive agenda and promoting real direction. Now, only the anti-Labor media will give him an ear (not that that is a small audience) and be regarded as no more than a rat by the rank and file who do want the party to change for the better. Basically Tanner hates Gillard, always has, and this is payback. You would not see Faulkner being a traitor.
Has Tanner continued the time old Labor tradition of its retired politicians moving to blue ribbon Liberal electorates?
The imbeciles who run the ALP have far more to worry about than Tanner. Very shortly they will be in Opposition in every state government as well as federally.
Tanner plays the same role for Vic ALP as Wilson Tuckey does for WA Liberals – always criticising his party now that he is out of parliament & everybody is not as good as him!
Like a little mindless boy in a schoolyard Tanner’s petulance in bagging the ALP through some boring book only serves to make him look utterly devoid of credibility. The ALP will win the next election because it has serious policies that will make a difference to the people, not the billionaires and that mad right winger Murdoch, who are trying to dominate this country. If you want a dictatorship, vote Liberal federally and you will mirror the sorry state in Queensland. I think they have learnt their lesson. Don’t vote on emotion or hatred, vote on issues! Keep building the Abbott proof fence!!!!
BadAbit if you seriously believe the drivel you wrote, you are deluded and mentally unwell.
‘…to the employ of an arms manufacturer with interests in tobacco, pokies and conflict diamonds”…
…or the lowest of the low, start a trashy, low brow, tabloid blog…creating stawmen of your enemies and spew on them rhetorical insults…
vexnews, all class…
Don’t worry about Tanner, Martin Ferguson is a real grubby immoral stinking putrid steaming turd backdooring the ALP from within.
The ALP is just a club fed job recruiting agency. It is devoid of any real community involvement and engagement. The faction deals rule to protect those in office. The likes of Shorten and Landeryou, who is no longer an ALP member are perfectr examples of the flaws in the party. The ALP does it engage in community debate or consultation. If it loses the next federal election there will be a big bun fight and split within the ranks. Tanner cannot sit on the sidelines and claim innocence, he himself was part of the factional divide. Tanner was sidelined when he left split in Victoria. He has blamed Gillard, Gillard worked tirelessly over the years supporting Tanners campaigns. It was clear that Tanner was never going to be promoted above the position he held. His veiled attack on government is part of his personal revenge. Like Latham Tanner’s legacy will be tarnished as a result. Perhaps he should join the Greens. Tanner would not have won the seat of Melbourne against the Greens. The Greens with the support of the Liberal party would have defeated him. Tanner also had lost community grass roots involvement and support he once held
he does have a book to sell you know; will need the funds for the extensions.
Leftard scum suckers to a man. Yes I said man. Have a go at me you politically correct wankers.
I think Rudd was merely a means to an end for the power hungry mates-club that is the ALP.
They were always going to insert their factional deal facilitator – they only needed an excuse.
Rudd as tolerated for only so long as he was needed, then “out the door, and we’ll destroy your reputation while we’re at it!”
This story may be apocryphal but it has been told to me by a number of people. Way back in late 1997, at the height of the debate about the GST and well before the uncomfortably close 1998 election was called, a group of Federal Liberal staffers who worked for right wing MP’s had an inebriated discussion about who from the ALP side they felt would be good draft picks to replace the lefty MP’s on the Liberal side. Apparently, two names came up most frequently – Lindsay Tanner and Mark Latham. They were both regarded as having solid pro-market credentials and a toughness about them. They were held in the same high regard as Dawkins and Walsh from the Hawke years.
Lindsay Tanner would have made a far more effective, compassionate and competent Prime Minister than Rudd if the move from Beazley was warranted.
Much as I know Vexnews shines a candle for the current Prime Minister, if the ALP caucus wanted to move to another of the gang of four running the Rudd government (Swan, Rudd, Gillard, Tanner) it should have picked Tanner instead of Gillard. Tanner had none of the baggage of the school halls fiasco and was a true member of the ALP left but with a solid core economic rationalist base. He is highly articulate and intelligent.
Despite her nominal membership of the left, it was Gillard’s relative lack of industrial/union involvement that attracted the faceless right wing men to her. It was also Gillard’s support amongst the Victorian ALP right leadership that gave her the edge as they spruiked for her.
Unlike Gillard, Tanner had been a long-time successful warrior against the ALP right wing and its unions and those memories are kept on stone tablets in the annals of the right. He could never be forgiven for wresting control of the Victorian Branch of the FCU. It was his success that was his undoing. Politics is of course the epitome of envy and the ALP is the Australian repository of the most effective haters.
Dobbin you really have made me hard, just wait a second and I’ll be back with a step ladder.
HSU comrade Williamson was charged by police today. According to ABC News Radio there are 20 charges including lying to police. A great day for democracy and the union movement. Heroic Kathy Jackson (no relation) vindicated.
How is Kathy Jackson vindicated Adrian?
The police have stated there are many more charges to come and that Williamson was merely the first person charged. So if you are inferring that Williamson being charged means Kathy Jackson won’t be that’s a bit of a stretch. Lets see how that plays out.
If you are claiming that Kathy Jackson’s “whistleblowing” is what brought him down, that’s a joke too. Not one thing he was charged with was brought up by her “whistleblowing” accusations but have been found by other people.
I realise Kathy is trying to get her people elected in the up-coming elections, but I would step away from this line of self-promotion as it’s likely to end up in tears for you guys.
Tanner did not give a fuck about Australians. He desperately wanted to make Australian cities as crowded as Bangladesh. Did he think the quality of life of his constituents would be improved as a result? No, he just thought that global interests should trump local interests and that Australians did not deserve a better standard of living than those in the third world.
Comparing Kathy to Mike is like comparing the ALP with the Libs. They are just as slimey as each other.
S G Warren – Williamson is charges and Jackson is not. If convicted Williamson could get 7 years gaol.
When Alan still had his prostate I used to love to Hopoate him.
investigations for Kathy, Marco, Diana Asmar. We need a clean skin, a battler
Got junk mail from marco same team of bullshitters and easily fooled
fight club
administrator and Ac-tu sanctioned brawl if one ticket does not win H-SU elections winner takes all, with the one with the most councilors the winner.