Shouts from the desert

The news services continue today getting stuck into Prime Minister, John Howard, for forgetting the name of a Tasmanian Liberal candidate for the House of Representatives in this year's Federal election. Apparently they believe the Prime Minister is supposed to have the names of every coalition candidate and every coalition Senator and Representative so well ingrained into his brain that he can pull the details out without any notice.

There are six Liberal (or combined Liberal/National) Senate candidates in each State, six separate National Senate candidates in some States, and two in each of the territories. Leaving aside retiring Senators we could put this at 45 or more. Then there are Liberal and National candidates in every House of Representative seat. There are 151 seats this year, but there are also some retiring members and there may be some three-cornered contests, so when added to the roughly 45 Senate candidates this will push the number of names the PM is supposed to know off by heart to over 200.

Expecting him to be able to recall all of these names instantly is silly at best. Perhaps Tasmanians have a deep insecurity that makes them feel this is important, which might explain why they keep trying to force Ministers into the position of having to recall a Tasmanian candidate's name, but failing to recall the name of a particular candidate means nothing and does not reflect adversely in any way on the Prime Minister. It does not mean that the Prime Minister is too old, losing his memory or going senile - it merely means he is a busy man who has much more important things to do and significant things to worry about and who really should not be expected to recall matters which, quite frankly, are of no real consequence.