Poor old colicky Labor swallows a hefty dose of its own icky PBS medsin, courtesy of a most annoying (for us ritual Howard-bashers, I mean) story on Big Pharma Donocracy in today's Oz.

TWO Labor frontbenchers were the star attractions at a $1000-a-plate political fundraiser organised by a group representing big drug companies - just six weeks before the Opposition labelled the multinational firms a threat to Australia's cheap drugs. Labor health spokeswoman Julia Gillard and her partner, industrial relations spokesman Craig Emerson, attended the function, which benefited ALP candidates, on June 30 at the American Club in Sydney. Six weeks later, Opposition Leader Mark Latham was proposing amendments to the US free trade deal because of fears that giant American drug companies would use a loophole in the agreement to prevent the entry of cheap generic drugs to the market.

Upes. I believe the appropriate ALP 'lection strategist response is: 'Bugger'. Still...NHJ! says: swallow it down, Jules and Craig, there's a good pair of kiddies!

One of the core premises of NHJ! is that the moribund state of Australian democracy has an awful lot to do with the 'mutual sins' of both Big Parties. And there's a keen sense developing around the country that what 'It's (really) Time' for is a strategic purge of the many anti-democratic practices which both Lib and Lab take for granted these days - sidestepping donor disclosure, misusing AEC data for info-targeting purposes, mangling the truth, smearing, hypocrisy on 'values' and 'morality' issues...and especially the political exploitation of government agencies, like the intelligence crowd and the AFP. The end result - and we'll see it on this Big Pharma story in today's news cycle no doubt - is a mutually-assured destruction of decency in public life, with each side (and its media champions) 'justifying' bad anti-democratic behaviour, when all else fails, solely on the bleak grounds that the other side is 'just as bad' anyway, so big bloody deal.

Another very interesting example of this tactic at work can be found in the response from certain quarters to the ALP's recent announcement that, if elected, they will hold a full judicial inquiry into Australia's intelligence agencies, including trying to get to the bottom of who exactly leaked that stolen ONA TOP SECRET CODEWORD report to Andrew Bolt, for Wilkie-smearing purposes, in June last year. (Remember that?). Here's Bomber Beazley on Sunday last weekend (my bold):

KIM BEAZLEY: ...But we also need an inquiry into the public handling and presentation of that weapons of mass destruction issue in relation to Iraq. We need inquiries into the protection of ONA materials once they have it to hand. There are a range - and we need inquiries, too, into - there's already been a couple, but they were not there with finality - into the relationship between intelligence advice and DFAT warnings that occurred prior to the Bali atrocity a couple of years ago. These are areas where there is still a lack of clarity, and an intelligence inquiry would help with that.

LAURIE OAKES: What sort of inquiry, a judicial inquiry?

KIM BEAZLEY: Yeah, with judicial powers. I mean, there have been many sorts of inquiries into intelligence and into other activities, of course, organised by governments. It seems to be the case that most governments, Liberal or Labor, will use that judicial power of inquiry on the odd occasion when it seems necessary. And I think that's what's been missing in the inquiry so far. That gravitas and that capacity to gather evidence that comes with that judicial imprimatur.

Predictably enough the Oz's fervently-beardy Howard-FP shorer-upper Greg Sheridan pooh-poohed this glimmer of rediscovered idealism from the ALP, and on just such Big Pharma 'hypocrite' grounds a few days ago (my bold):

The proposed purposes of this [mooted Labor government] inquiry are transparently, almost laughably, political. They are designed to find something embarrassing in a hoped-for discrepancy between some scrap of intelligence reporting and the travel advisories before the Bali bombings, or something embarrassing about Iraq, or presumably to find that Alexander Downer, or someone close to him, had a hand in leaking an ONA report written by disaffected former ONA officer Andrew Wilkie. It's funny, isn't it, that Labor never proposed an inquiry into all the secret intelligence documents that passed through Laurie Brereton's office when he was Opposition foreign affairs spokesman? Both sides of politics should hang their heads in shame at the way they have politicised the intelligence agencies...

Funny? Funny? Well, maybe in a let's-stop-an-ASIO-agent-getting-slotted-by-terrorists-as-a-direct-result-of-the-next-politicised-Top-Secret-leak kinda' way, Greggy. Yeah...Ha. Ha. Ha, mate.

Still, for once we here at NHJ! can agree with Sheridan on something: his general disgust at the shared Big Party connivance in an increasingly-casual attitude from pollies towards the political (mis)use of intelligence community functions and material (see his acute comments on Kids Overboard, for example). Whether it's the pro-Liberal criminal(s) who compromised the ONA 'Top Secret' report in 2003 or the pro-Labor criminal(s) who compromised the East Timor 'Secret' reports back in 1999/2000, it's clear now that certain smart-arsed Big Party 'players' on both sides regard national security documents as every bit as usefully 'leakable' as pissant Budget papers or pissant travel documents.

This is unbelievably dangerous. And it has to stop. It must be stopped.

Which is why I strongly applaud Sheridan's climactic demand that the time is long overdue, when it comes to the intelligence community, for one side or the other (or both) to lay down the ix-nay-on-the-classified-tomfoolery-eh law. Unlike Greg, however - who thinks we can pull this off by simply 'moving on' quietly - I believe that what this first demands is a full spring-clean of just the kind Labor's proposed inquiry will enable. (The only real way to enforce Official Secrets laws is to make bloody sure that when they are smashed, someone's balls end up in the appropriate legal vice.) Thus, again unlike Greg, I think that Labor must make this a 'core' promise: to bite the judicial bullet if elected, including even 'embracing' to their own past Intel. indiscretions if a genuinely independent judicial slate-wipe should eventually demand it.

So I say to Julia Gillard and Craig Emerson today: cop it sweet and gullet your Big Pharma medsin on this tiddly slice of exposed hypocrisy now, my sickly Big Party pretties, by way of 'getting into practice' on the anti-democratic mea culpa front, eh? The ALP, should it win office, has far bigger fish to fry, after all. To quote Bomber again: 'One, the word of the Prime Minister and all the national security leaders, must shine like a beacon as clear-cut, honest, and straightforward. And secondly, that the national security agencies - the armed services, the police, the intelligence - must be able to give Government clear-cut, honest, straight forward advice, have that listened to, and not have themselves exploited for political purposes.'

Why, I bet even Dangermouse would be inspired by such fine sentiments to 'open up his heart' if required, Kim. Even under oath. As an old True Believer himself, I mean.