Terry Barnes empathises with the electorate and ministerial staff who could be out of a job by Sunday morning.
While I don’t think the punters should worry about them too much, I know what he is talking about. When I was a ministerial adviser during the 1998 election I could hardly bear to watch the election night coverage. It felt like I was being slowly sacked on live TV.
In the end the Coalition scraped back with a minority of the votes but a majority of the seats. And so then began the wait to see if my minister would get to keep the portfolio.
As Barnes says, political staffers know the risks. Most political careers end in failure – mine certainly did. While I survived the 1998 election the reform I had hoped to be involved with died in the controversy surrounding the leak of its Cabinet submission.
Andrew Norton 
That’s a depressing story! No wonder hardly anyone wants to get involved.
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Chin up Norty, she’s not dead yet mate, keep fighting!
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Thanks Andrew. Your description of slowly being sacked on TV is spot on. The pain of unpheaval is intensified by the frustration of knowing what was left undone or appropriated by our opponents and claimed as theirs – education reform in your case, health in mine.
Nevertheless I feel there is still room for gallantry in political battle and compassion for beaten foes: thus while I fervently hope that the Coalition gets a chance to take up at least some of what it left off in 2007, it’s hard not to feel for those on the other side who did much of the heavy lifting but will still share a potentially crueller fate than those who most wrought their defeat.
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