The astute political tactic of offerring the Speaker's office to an Opposition member under threat of losing pre-selection is seen by many as a potentially double-edged sword.

It is equally the case that changes to electoral law can be two-edged, as, I suggest may well be the case with respect to the proposed introduction of Commonwealth-wide automatic enrollment. There would be those who, having read my preceeding post, have taken it as infering that the Labor party, or some faction or other element within it, is being suggested as having operated a clandestine equivalent of automatic enrollment, the days of which may now be numbered. They would be in error.

What I find disturbing is the language used in the [Wiki]leaked US diplomatic cables that referred to Senator Mark Arbib as a 'protected source', and to conversations with Senator Don Farrell revealing Julia Gillard as moving to depose Kevin Rudd from the primeministership as early as June 2009, before Copenhagen, and before any decline in Labor's performance in the polls had occurred. This is a post in which I drew those strands together: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11370#193134 . Bear in mind that the writer being quoted in the leaked cable is a US diplomat, when it says:

"Don Farrell, the right-wing union powerbroker
from South Australia, told us Gillard is
'campaigning for the leadership' and at this
point is the frontrunner to succeed Rudd,
conceding that the Right did not yet have an
alternative,"

The words "CONCEDING that the right did not YET have an alternative" conveys an impression of there having been discussions taking place between US diplomatic officials and ALP insiders such as Farrell over an extended period that had as a pre-determined objective the replacement of Rudd as PM.

Could it not be that a suspected clandestine equivalent of automatic enrollment could have been being operated with a view to influencing Australian electoral outcomes both across the political spectrum and several decades, as an ace up the sleeve, so to speak, of which players like Arbib and Farrell knew nothing directly?