Kewpie doll v Prince of Policies

Grahame Morris

The Sydney Morning Herald

Monday 28 February 2011

A long time ago, a young policy guru named Barry O'Farrell sat in Old Parliament House in Canberra in what was an office when it was designed in the 1920s but nowadays would be more of a walk-in wardrobe.

Crammed in with him were people who later became a NSW boss of KPMG, Tony Abbott's health adviser, an ex-Treasury public servant who became a successful dealer in the money market in Manhattan . . . and me.

We were helping John Howard in the days before his ''Lazarus with a triple bypass'' comeback, and O'Farrell was the social policy expert.

Since then he has lived and breathed policy either as a policy adviser to government ministers, as state director of the Liberal Party, as a shadow minister and as the leader of his party. O'Farrell is the Prince of Policy.

Yesterday a very wise and successful former NSW premier I was talking to posed a very reasonable rhetorical question: ''If you're a swinging voter, or a traditional Labor voter or even the Labor Party's campaign director, what reason would you give yourself for voting Labor this time?''

Reasons for voting Labor: their record? Not likely! Their team? Hardly! Their leadership? Joke! So what has Labor decided to do? They wound up the Kewpie doll who now has the word ''Premier'' on her CV, and trained her to say all last week: ''We-have-a-positive-policy-program. Where's-Mr- O'Farrell's-ideas? We-have-a- positive-policy-program. Where's-Mr-O'Farrell's-ideas?''

This week will be the same . . . unless she is reprogrammed.

So, after 16 years of Labor in NSW, the best the geniuses running the Labor Party can come up with is that Barry O'Farrell, the Prince of Policies, should have released 48 new policies instead of 45.

I suppose that's what you're reduced to if you're leading a Labor Party that smells like a compost heap.

I know that two out of the four former Labor premiers Neville Wran, Bob Carr, Morris Iemma and Nathan Rees are not proud of the rabble that calls itself the NSW Labor government nowadays. In fact, they're ashamed.

I haven't had a chance to ask the other two.

Grahame Morris is the federal director of Barton Deakin Government Relations and was chief of staff to the former prime minister John Howard.