It’s a tough choice, who is best to lead the Labor Party now. Now it’s down to two a choice must be made. As I write, Kim Beazley has the numbers and the game looks over. I’ve just seen Simon Crean in the chair for the last time in question time. His remarks before question time, on the team belief in our Davis Cup team and the wonderful role Hazel Hawke plays in Australian life in “turning adversity to advantage” was elegantly pointed. It was the best question time I’ve ever witnessed, on both sides, and the most united and focused I’ve seen Labor since it lost office. Crean and Latham left together, heads close.

The choice is incredibly important. Bob Carr put it best when he said late last week that even Liberal voters wanted Labor to get its act together, because a democracy needs a strong opposition.

I decided who I would support if I was in caucus on Sunday, after reading this email from artist Robert Bosler, a regular Webdiary contributor, and reading Latham’s policy priorities if he became leader – tackling child poverty, early childhood education, protecting our culture and our prescription drugs by not giving away our sovereignty over these matters in the proposed free trade agreement with the United State, and re-starting the Republic debate. In contrast, Beazley said nothing about policy, just like he said nothing about policy in his challenge against Crean.

Robert has an exhibition of his work in the IBM building at Darling Harbour, where Fairfax is housed in Sydney.

I left a copy of Robert’s email at Mark Latham’s office after question time:

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Hi Mark. I thought you might be interested in this email from a Webdiary reader, artist Robert Bosler. Well said, I thought. Good luck tomorrow,

Regards

Margo

Robert Bosler, Sydney, artist

Dear Margo,

May I give a rugby analogy for the current situation Labor is in? Nowadays I live for art, and strive for beauty ( I have an exhibition currently in your building there: just colourful, happy little pieces where I tried to give energy to something simple), but years ago rugby was my passion and in many ways I’m glad of it:

Many times in a game over the years we were way down on points, with not much time to go. At times like that, it was obvious we were going to lose. As a team, we were faced with several options. We had several options because we also had several desirable outcomes. In truth, winning the game wasn’t the only desirable outcome available. Captains playing the game the world over are well aware of this situation. The crowd does play a part in your thinking. You are representing their interests, as well, and the honest admission is you do have some part of your mind concerned for how you may appear to them. You have future games to consider; and there are as well behind the scenes political issues that bear upon the current predicament. The signature style of a captain is portrayed brightly by the captain’s response to all these conditions in that situation.

We had a club ethos built on success. We were fortunate in that we understood winning, and winningness melded our psyche. Other clubs were not so fortunate and we could smell it deep within them.

Because we were a winning club, during those back-against-the-wall situations we chose the one option that would deliver us the only chance of a win. It didn’t always work, and often enough it sent us further backwards on the scoreline. But in that situation, of having very little time to go, and you are way behind on points, there is only one option to take if you are to win: and that is to do something radical.

You had to take a chance.

I get goosebumps now thinking about it.

Let me share the other alternative: which was to play percentage football and minimise the loss. You accept that you are beaten – even though there is time on the clock, and you have the players – the option of no-mistake football to see the time through and live to fight another day, another time, is seductive. What is devastatingly seductive about this choice is that you, personally, while on the field, don’t have to stick your head up and have a go – you can make yourself invisible along with the rest of your like-minded teammates. Under this alternative, the other team won’t score any more points against you, but you will not win the game.

That wasn’t our ethos. We played to win. We loved our history. We stood for the winningness of rugby.

A radical decision, under pressure, with limited time, means only one thing: courage. Sorry, two things: courage and belief. Or does one of those come from the other?

It meant that you had to make the decision, in the deep recesses of yourself, that you would be the person to stick your head up and have a go. You, personally, were going to take the risk. The utter joy, and the goosebumps I still have, come from feeling the power and the knowingness that every other person in your team had made exactly the same decision.

What you stood to lose was more than the game if you chose the radical option. You stood to look like a proper dill. Each person knew that. You also stood to lose by far more than the current loss you were facing. Each person knew that, too.

But you did it. You took the radical option.

You didn’t always win. But you did always grow.

The other team would sense that you had all made that radical “do or die” decision, and already your chances for winning had grown, right there and then. And the crowd sensed it too; and even though the risk remained, you had their intense interest and their energy if not their support.

And amazing things would happen: people in your team would all of a sudden accomplish things you never thought they had the capability of doing. The game would light up. Known achievers in the other team would begin making mistakes – mistakes you never thought they could ever make. You saw everything in a new light: the tired and the meek in your team became torch-holding warriors, their faces shining with newness and the passion for the future, held freshly possible in their hearts and their hands. If you did get the chance to go yourself, and go you did, and there beside you would be the person you needed: the right person. And only in that split-second snapshot would you realise that person was always going to be the right person to be there for you, and you would see the delight of destiny on their face as they knew it too. If you didn’t get the chance to go yourself, you did not feel like you were yourself, you were, for those moments that mattered, your teammate, as that very teammate went fearlessly into the fold driven by some untold carriage of spirit – and you were that person, every fibre of your being felt the pain and the power of your teammate’s effort. That it was you or them never mattered.

But what did you win, on the occasions of taking the “do or die” option?

You won more than the game. You won, again, the right to represent the game, and you won once again the reason for the game to be played amongst humanity.

You won the future, also, for those of all ages who aspire.

Labor, the call is yours.

Robert Bosler

PS: Margo, not that it matters except I guess as small point of credibility, but in relation to my last email: our club was the record holder of the most successive premiership wins in Australian history.