that Labor, having deposed Mr Rudd, felt driven to trash its own record as justification. Interviewed on the ABC , he fleshed out his thesis, his case that the Labor party has lost its intellectual and policy creativity: I worry that Labor, like other social democratic parties in other parts of the world, has become increasingly a reactive party, that is being hollowed out ... Labor governments are still doing good things, still doing big things, but increasingly in response to external pressures, so the Labor party itself has ceased to become a proactive political force. That I think is a very big worry, but it's reflecting a wider global trend. No doubt to those in and around the Labor party, this is a discussion worth having. Again and again. That said, it is criticism easily answered from inside the tent by the likes of Bob Carr. If I were in retirement, if I hadn't taken on this job, it would have been a pushover to have polished off another book - number 20 - on what's wrong with the Labor Party. It's too easy. I'm sure there's terrific analysis in Lindsay Tanner's book because Lindsay is very brainy. But it's got a bit too easy to write another book spelling out what's wrong with the battered old Australian Labor Party. And certainly Tanner opens himself to one obvious charge: if he is so deeply concerned by the party's future, why did he leave its parliamentary wing at a time