Bob McMullan has announced that he’s retiring. (The Chiefly Stanhope has written a powerful eulogy for a man who did much for Labor.)
This will come as a surprise to many Canberrans who had assumed he had retired many years ago.
Some of you in the North of the city will know him as the bloke who periodically sent you junk mail to fill out the wad you shove in the recycling daily with some quality paper stock.
He is in fact the Member for Fraser, the northern half of the ACT, in the Commonwealth Parliament. He will remain as such until the election which is taking place sometime this year (October’s what I’m hearing).
Bob says he hasn’t been given the shove by the ALPs young thrusters. My snout in the party also says that, but I’m not sure where my snout’s allegiances lay, nor Bob’s for that matter in the unceasing battle for factional control which passes for a life in those parts.
Bob is off to solve global poverty (which some would think is something the position of Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance would be a good place to start from, but no):
The challenge of global poverty and global economic development is one which I hope to make the focus of the next stage of my life.
We wish him the best of luck and look forward to seeing who will be the bloodied but unbowed winner of the titanic clash to get their bums onto the green leather for one of the safest Labor seats in the country.
