From Raw Deal to Done Deal

NSW is about to undergo an election, and many and varied are the unknown quantities who vie with sitting members for their place in the state's upper and lower houses of parliament.

For instance:

"Elly Howse, Labor's candidate for Balmain at the NSW election, has conceded the controversial WestConnex motorway is a done deal, accusing sitting Greens MP Jamie Parker of being 'disingenuous' in promising to halt its progress." (Motorway to decide how inner west is won, Jessica Cortis, The Australian, 6/3/19)

Except that Elly's not really an unknown quantity to long-time readers of MERC with a retentive memory.

Now this is going to sound somewhat off-topic for a bit, but please bear with me. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but those words "done deal" surely speak volumes about our political class, especially the Labor left component. For too many of them there seems to be a point in their political trajectory where they shrug off raw deals (such as the NSW Liberal government's WestConnex project) as done deals.

To take Elly Howse for example, there was once a time, around 10 years ago, when this 30-year old political aspirant was on fire with a desire for justice in the face of a manifest raw deal. Now here she is, no longer on fire, shrugging off such raw deals as done deals. So what happened? When did that youthful fire first begin to flicker and then die?

If we examine what we know of her career trajectory, I'd say it was in 2010. You'll see what I mean if you click on 'Young Labor' below and read my 1/10/13 post A Transformative Experience.