Peter Garrett had better watch his back - Christina Keneally is looking to Federal politics. If she loses the state election, and please God, she will, those powerbrokers are at it again, thinking up ways to get her to Canberra.
And guess where they are looking, yes you guessed it, Peter Garrett's seat of Kingsford Smith. I'll never forget how this man was maligned by the whole country as being cruel and uncaring about the deaths of the young men who died in the insulation bat debacle. We didn't find out until after it was all over that he had repeatedly tried to see Kevin Rudd about safety issues to no avail. Kevin had hung him out to dry. You have to give it to the man, he didn't try to save his reputation by leaking what really happened to the media, he took the distain of the country with stoicism and dignity.
But getting back to the subject of Christina. An unnamed Labor source said yesterday "It would be hard for the NSW heavies to remove Peter. Firstly they would be mad to knock off a cabinet minister - one retained by Julia Gillard in her new government and secondly - Garrett is very popular within the party; thirdly he has strong support in the branches. But some of these blokes have form when it comes to doing mad things - you only have to look at the election campaign."
But another senior Labor Party source (also unnamed) said he thought Keneally had enough rank-and-file support to win preselection for Kingsford-Smith. "There's a neatness, a cleanness to it that makes it sensible, if that's what she wants."
Of course Christina denies any knowledge of such a plan and goes on to tell us why the people of New South Wales - the Premier State, should vote Labor back in - an idea that beggars belief. But Peter Garrett is said to be vulnerable - he is factionally unaligned (big mistake) and had a two party preferred swing against him of more than 8 per cent in the federal election.
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