Life’s just one big blur for John “Robbo” Robertson, the man most likely to be NSW’s next Opposition leader. But as NSW Labor hurtles towards oblivion, at least he is the one member of cabinet smiling all the way to the car crash.
Robbo, currently the NSW Transport Minister, is the party’s unofficially anointed successor to Kristina Keneally when Labor burns out at next March’s state election. And the worse Labor does at the election, the more likely Robbo is to take over as Labor’s next NSW parliamentary leader.
He still has to win the seat of Blacktown, to which he was preselected by the party last weekend, but it is one of Labor’s safest NSW seats, held by a margin of 22.4%, and would seem impervious to any but the most massive of routs.
Although Robbo’s task will be to oversee the party’s necessary restoration and renewal, don’t expect him to dwell on defeat for much longer than a minute. In the true NSW Labor style he has a no-holds-barred mission to get re-elected to government within one term.
Robertson’s rise to party leader will be something of a record — 29 months from his entering parliament, even outstripping Neville Wran’s ascension in the 1970s. His plan to be NSW premier by March 2015 will put him just shy of Wran’s achievement of six years and 11 days between Wran’s election to the NSW Upper House and becoming state leader.
If that seems fast, it’s all part of the stratospheric career of the one-time Woolworths checkout operator and electrician.
After replacing Michael Costa as the secretary of Unions NSW (the former NSW Labor Council) in 2001, he took over Costa’s balance of term in the Legislative Council in October 2008. Since January 2009 he has held seven ministerial portfolios, including corrective services, energy, industrial relations and commerce.
Whether he has been a very effective minister is questionable, although it is hard to separate his performance from that of the dead-in-the-water NSW government. But Robbo, at least, has been very active in the machinations of state and federal Labor.
In 2007, he campaigned against Howard’s WorkChoices laws and was instrumental in Kevin Rudd’s election as prime minister. He was the prime mover in overthrowing (then premier) Morris Iemma’s privatisation plan of the state’s electricity industry, and was behind his removal from office and the succession of Nathan Rees.
When Kristina Keneally took power, Robbo was, supposedly, punished by being stripped his two biggest portfolios, environment and corrective services. In truth, Keneally did Robbo a favour. Corrective Services was under siege by the Prison Officers Vocational Board, a division of the powerful Public Sector Union, which was warring against the planned privatisation of two NSW prisons, a scheme devised by Robertson’s ministerial predecessor, Attorney-General John Hatzistergos.
As the state’s former union leader, John Robertson found himself in the awkward position of being pro-privatisation. In his 10 months as Corrective Services Minister, he gave the scheme little more than lip service.
In keeping with Labor’s chaotic administration — 217 ministerial appointments in just the past five years — Robbo has held none of his ministries for as long as a year and one of them, climate change and environment, for just two months and 21 days.
With everything moving so quickly, perhaps it’s excusable that Robbo can’t remember all of it. At a transport launch at Sydney’s Town Hall in September, Robbo was prompted about what he had been doing between December 2009, when he was removed from the corrective services portfolio and May 2010, when he was appointed as Transport Minister.
“We’ve done a couple of other things,” he said, momentarily perplexed as to what they were, and turning to his media adviser, Lucy Muirhead. “Yes,” Lucy said, “industrial relations, commerce, public sector reform …”
“Ah, yes,” the minister said, nodding.
Robbo is about to embark on a three-month “meet the constituents” tour, tramping around the 31.49 square kilometres of NSW’s Blacktown electorate. It’s a lot of ground to cover in a short time, with about 46,000 voters to make friends with. It might end up a bit of a blur, but Robbo is on the up and up.
*Candace Sutton worked for the past six years as a NSW government media adviser, and for the past three months in the office of lord mayor Clover Moore
So for a party that has been destroyed from the inside by factional leaders, faceless men and union heavies………….their leader in waiting is a factional leader, faceless man and former union heavy? Makes sense.
Can only hope that Robbo gets the rewards he deserves when confronting his ‘constituents’ when he goes trasping around NSW. For us to believe he is the best person to lead Labour after the present glamour queen leaves is ludicrous……Here is the guys who, when playing union man, stand sup and says Labour Gov can’t sell off assets of the people because they are owned by the people….and then changes his mind when he gets into office as a Minister and votes to sell even when the Board of the companies state publicly it is a bad decision for the people of NSW show what sort of a person this guy is. I object to my taxes paying such a person any wage whatsoever! How can I stop that?
Labor has a lot of rebuilding to do after the next State Election and if anyone can lead the party through the necessary pain, and I hope there is some because it is needed, it is Robbo. Yes he is a union man and there is nothing wrong with that. The unions founded the Labor Party as they realised they needed political power in government to make the changes that they wanted, just as the employer organisations support and fund the Liberal Party, so stop blathering on about the role of the unions in the party. The Liberal Party, and all other parties for that matter, have their career paths, or are you suggesting that we vote for people who have never been tested in public life, and the administration of public assets? That sounds dangerous to me! I bet if you asked Robbo, and it appears he was asked about his course in parliament, and the twists and turns it has taken, he would be as bemused as anyone in the community.
Hey Jenny – nothing lik erose coloured glasses – if anyone (with any brains) thinks the union movement have any association with the forebearers who (had to) start the movement they are deluding themselves. With about 3 or 4% of the labour force members the union is on its last gasp and people such as Robbo who climb from being in office in a union to then become a Minister wouldn’t know a days work if it hit them on the head. Nearly every decent worker now believes that every Government has lost the meaning of what they are elected to do – serve the people. They simply all wish to stay in office long enough for the fruit to ripen so they can retire in comfort. I say we should increase the wages by tenfold for politicians and make them jump throuh many more hoops prior to gaining office. That way we may get some people who have some knowledge of economics.
WRE – it is hard to argue with someone on a blog who does not have a name or indicate their political background but it is obvious that you have it in for unions. Your figures on union membership are wrong. Membership of unions – from the ACTU Website:-
“The latest data from the Australian Bureau of statistics shows that union membership is increasing.In August 2009, the proportion of employees, who were trade union members in their main job, increased from 19% in 2008 to 20%. This was an increase of 82,200 from the previous year.
The data shows there are 1.9 million Australians that are members of a union and that union members earn, on average, $145 a week more than non- members
Data collected about trade union members in their main job for August 2009 also showed:
* 22% of full-time employees, and 15% of part-time employees were trade union members in their main job;
* 46% of public sector employees compared to 14% of private sector employees were trade union members in their main job; ( ACTU Website)
Union Achievements – The union scorecard
The right of workers to form a union which elects its own independent representatives;
Award to ensure that employers observe minimum wages and working conditions;
Equal pay;
Long service leave;
Pay loading for evenings, nights and weekends;
Paid public holidays;
Periodic wage increases;
Maternity/adoption/parental leave;
Annual leave and leave loading;
Protective clothing and equipment provided by the employer;
Occupational health and safety laws;
Compensation for injury;
Occupational superannuation;
The right to be given notice and to be consulted about changes at work (eg new technology, planned retrenchments, new working arrangements);
Personal carers leave
These achievements were won by hard working trade union members, officials and Trades Hall Officials over the last 150 years. Robbo as Secretary of Unions NSW ran the successful campaign against workchoices not by sitting on his backside in Trades Hall but by getting on a bus and visiting just about every country town in NSW, speaking to community meetings and standing on street corners on Saturday mornings. And he energised activists into local and regional Your Rights at Work Campaigns who did the same thing. It is fashionable these days to run down the role of unions and the great contribution they have made to our society and many myths are perpetrated in that campaign to destroy unions, but when you look at the facts, they stand the test of time. That is not to say that everything is hunky dory in the trade union movement and I would be the first to raise some criticisms of the way the movement now operates. But the history and the current role is there and it cannot be ignored.