In the previous ACT shadow ministry Trevor Kaine, as well as being leader, was spokesman for the aging and disabled and Tony de Domenico was spokesman for urban services and rural matters.
Each was also spokesman for himself.
Kaine would have been 67 at the next election and 70 at the end of the next term. He was therefore disabled.
On the other hand, de Domenico thought that the urban and rural portfolios, logically, embraced all. If it wasn’t rural it must be urban and if it wasn’t urban it must be rural. And so, therefore, he was spokesman for everything.
And he spoke on everything; about everyone; to anyone; especially about how he would be leader.
This niggled Trevor Kaine, who was irascible at the best of times. And Trevor snapped, publicly _ saying de Domenico should find another job. Trevor was caught like a man who has savagly kicked a yapping dog which had been annoying him for ages. Suddenly the sympathy went out to the “”innocent” mutt, and people demand an explanation from kicker who was left red-faced, charged and found wanting under the RSPCA law.
Until yesterday, Kaine was secure as everyone’s second choice. He was leader by stalemate. De Domenico had always said it was either him or Trevor. De Domenico would support no-one else and the party-room stood at three-three.
De Domenico changed that. After being kicked, he turned. Vengeance was more important than ambition, well almost. He agree to support Kate Carnell, provided he could be deputy.
The existing Deputy, Gary Humphries, gaciously stood aside.
Humphries made it clear some months ago that he did not want to be leader of the ACT’s hereditary Opposition.
He seeks a seat in Federal Parliament and it is only a matter of time before Margaret Reid retires or a third seat is created to launch that career. And thus yesterday he stood back.
The sadness of yesterday’s events, which remind one so much of the Grand Duchy of Fenwick in üThe Mouse that Roared, is that we have no equivalent of the ABC’s breathless 20-year-old who covers NSW state politics or a bush QC like Quentin Dempster to write a screenplay.