This requires using the authority bestowed by the franchise to represent organised labour and reduce inequality between the rich and poor or the powerful and the powerless.

In the past, many egalitarian parliamentarians used to apologise for this abject failure but now they boast about it.

The constitution of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) claims it is a democratic socialist organisation but during the 2007 election campaign its irascible show pony embraced free market fundamentalism and renounced socialism as an arcane 19th century ideology.

The great financial crisis soon tested his leadership credentials, which included development and implementation of the Pink Batts home insulation program in a catastrophic attempt to attenuate construction industry redundancies.

This let the market rip scheme was developed on the back of a napkin in an airport departure lounge. It abandoned a sensible, cautious and practicable regional brokerage model over a prudent five-year schedule in favour of an expeditious direct delivery prototype.

Extremely ambitious targets were established, which involved a fifteen-fold increase in insulation activities and required cramming the equivalent of a year’s work into each month and sustaining the hectic workload over two and a half years.

It was a disaster waiting to happen and it did, with hundreds of house fires and four fatalities involving the electrocution of three installers and another death from heat exhaustion.

Some years later, the Milky Bar Kid was bestowed with life membership of the ALP although rustication would have been a much more condign option for the petulant chameleon.

Indeed, the only parole for the bereaved families of the home insulation program victims is death or dementia.

Meanwhile, the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd carousel degenerated into a relentless cacophony of internecine bickering. This was exacerbated by extensive cabinet leaks and retribution, which reinforced that old political chestnut…………Disunity is death.

Next - The Fissilingual Fecund Mad Monk