A plague of 'whitebreads'

Labor is still smarting from its failed experiment with Mark Latham as an "out-of-left-field" leader.

But is it reasonable to claim that party machine candidates make mediocre MPs because they're out of touch with the larger community? The 18th-century conservative political philosopher Edmund Burke had some firm views on this. He said that "your (parliamentary) representative owes you not only his industry but also his judgment".

Burke meant that we shouldn't tell our MPs what to do or how to vote. Instead, they should be allowed the freedom, once elected by us, to make decisions as they see fit.

The implication is that we must elect in the first place MPs who are truly representative of us.

But, as we know, the most common complaint is that MPs are unrepresentative and increasingly out of touch with the average person.

One view says this is rubbish - because party workers are usually paid modest salaries, they're no different from the rest of us. They too struggle with petrol prices, mortgages and child care. In that sense, any candidate - irrespective of work history - will be "in touch".

But another view warns of trouble where the aspiring MP has lived nothing but the "political" life. Many of today's young candidates invariably studied politics at university (perhaps as an adjunct to law or business), served in paid or unpaid student union positions and upon graduation, worked in a ministerial office.

In this sense, unwittingly or not, they have become products of their party. By spending their entire working lives (and often their social lives, too) inside a close-knit (even incestuous) group - steered by party objectives and governed by party interests - consciously or unconsciously they have had their priorities altered.

The problem then is perhaps not that we have machine men and women in the parliament, but that we just have too many of them.

As any dietitian will tell you, too much white bread is bad for any system.