Is Jon Stanhope going to stand down soon?
May 17th, 2008 by Rebecca
There’s an interesting article on the front page of the Canberra Times this morning. I can’t get a link because their website is down, but it suggests that ACT Labor has been conducting polling about the relative popularity of Deputy Chief Minister Katy Gallagher should she ascend to the Chief Ministership in the event of Jon Stanhope standing down.
In a sense, I’m not surprised about this announcement. I’ve really noticed over the last few months that Stanhope has given off the vibe of seeming a bit over the job; especially the night they debated the Civil Partnerships Bill in the chamber. There’s been press reports that his approval rating has been dropping badly, and I’m not all that surprised considering his public performances of late. He’s now the longest-serving of the current batch of state and territory leaders after Peter Beattie and Clare Martin went last year, and it figures that he’d probably be the next to go.
The thing is that it hasn’t seemed, at least to me, as if Labor here had a likely replacement waiting in the wings. Katy Gallagher would, on the surface, be the most obvious one. She’s the Deputy Chief Minister, she’s well known, and she’s very popular. However, she’s also got a very young family, and has been trying to juggle family and political responsibilities with limited success - she’s notorious as being the hardest minister to get to see or to make public appearances, and it wasn’t much of a surprise (albeit disappointing) that she was a no-show for the Civil Partnerships Bill vote or the really important electoral reform bill before it. In the circumstances, I would have thought she’d be likely to turn it down this time around - though she’s still young enough that she’s likely to wind up with the leadership eventually if she doesn’t go into federal politics.
Simon Corbell would be the obvious choice for me - he’s competent, capable, experienced, and reasonably well-liked by the public. However, it’s no secret that he isn’t well-liked in caucus; he lost the Deputy Chief Minister vote to Gallagher a couple of years back, and then narrowly avoided being kicked out of the ministry and/or the party when he went all maverick and started taking it to Stanhope on planning issues a while back. I remember Urban Services Minister John Hargreaves telling the press something to the extent of “he’ll be Chief Minister over my dead body” after that saga. Hargreaves himself is way too irascible and undisciplined to ever be leader, even though he’s very high-profile. I’m reminded of the batshit way he went off at Corbell after the above, or his behaviour on the night they passed the original Civil Unions Act back in 2006, when Liberal MLA Jacqui Burke was making a complete ass of herself and he mooed at her on the floor of parliament (entertaining, but not real professional). He also has some other baggage which ain’t getting repeated here lest I get sued. I think it’s pretty safe to say that he’s not in contention.
That only leaves one member of the current ministry: Andrew Barr. Barr has a lot going for him. He’s young, charismatic, pretty competent, and a decent guy. He’d also be the first openly gay leader of any jurisdiction in Australian history. However, he has two huge problems with taking over at this point: he’s only been in parliament for two years, so he’s the newest member of the current parliament, and he was Education Minister during the government’s 2006 swathe of school closures, something for which a solid portion of the territory still wants his head for - had they faced an election back then, I suspect he’d have lost his seat, though enough time has passed that he’s probably safe from that now.
Considering all of the above, I’d have thought Stanhope might stay on for a while yet, at least until Barr was ready to take over the reins. He’s still clearly in contention: this morning’s story also suggested there was some polling going around about his own popularity - but it seems that Gallagher is emerging as the frontrunner. I do think it’s probably about time Stanhope went, though and I’ll be interested to see how Gallagher goes if she does get the nod.