PETA CREDLIN

PM, “Mr Consensus” Bob Hawke.

Not only does Albanese lack Hawke’s instinct for pro-business reform but his inability to deal with this trouble in his own ranks is a serious failure of leadership.

This terrible tragedy has also exploded the notion that just having more women in parliament, via a quota system, is the guarantee of a nicer, gentler public life – because Wong, Gallagher and Keneally have shown themselves to be anything but.

Ask the former Victorian Labor minister Jane Garrett; the now exLabor Victorian MLC Kaushaliya Vaghela; or the former NSW federal Labor MP Emma Husar how they’ve fared at the hands of their Labor colleagues, female as well as male. We need better people and stronger characters in the parliament, not just more female chromosomes. And Kimberley Kitching is owed justice. Those who want high office should have the guts to own up to what they did.

If Anthony Albanese can’t even stand up to his mean girls, what kind of a PM would he really make?