Jan. 11th, 2005 01:56 pm
Where's Mark?
Something that has been bugging me (apart from the massive loss of life) about the Boxing Day Tsunami is - why no statement from Mark Latham? Yes, he's having problems at the moment, but surely a disaster of this magnitude is worthy of comment from our alternative Prime Minister? Instead some non-entity, captioned as Senator Chris Evans on the news, has been saying that Latho is unavailable for comment being bed-ridden with pancreatis. Even if bed-ridden, I would have expected some statement delivered on his behalf by one of the Labor faithful - preferably someone I'd heard of before.
Instead we get reports from both the Sydney Morning Herald and the Terrorgraph, that he was spending his post-Tsunami time at a Terrigal beach resort
WTF?
If true, this is appalling. If he's being set-up prior to a leadership spill, then Australian politics has just set the bar lower without any of the usual help from the government.
I checked the ALP website to see if there was a press release about the tsunami - the earliest was on the 30/12 - four days later. Supposedly the Democrats made a statement earlier, but I couldn't find it on their website. And the Greens wanted me to subscribe before they'd give me access to their press releases.
There's been massive donations from the unions, at least.
So - at great risk of ostracism from my friends list - who's the most compassionate party now? Be assured that the Libs won't forget Labor's failure to respond adequately at the next election.
Please, please prove me wrong.