There's a saying in the US: if you see a bear, you don't have to run faster than the bear, you just have to run faster than the guy next to you and hope the bear catches him.

The latest comment from The Age suggests that the ALP's dictaphone antics are no different than the grubby games of student politics. They are completely right: its been pointed out for some time that the ALP has serious problems with a generation of leaders who were educated to win at any cost in their student days and the #dictagate scandal is the latest evidence of this ALP flaw.

So what has it got to do with the bear? Well, if the state opposition are acting like a bunch of student politicians, then the state Government need act no better than a borough council. Without serious competition, they are likely to become fat and uncompetitive. Suddenly, that is an issue for the whole state.

Melbourne is a city of 4 million people, hosting the headquarters of several national companies and many who compete internationally. The city and the state deserve better than shabby leadership.

The inbred nature of ALP factionalism

When you hear about a bank employee or medical professional being sacked for criminal activity, you probably don't imagine them walking across the street and getting a job doing the same thing at another bank or hospital.

In politics, however, sacking and resigning is not nearly as painful as it looks.

When officials from the ALP's state office resign over #dictagate this week, they may well get full pay until they find another job. There is a revolving door between the unions and the ALP and in practice, for bovver boys from right-wing hit squads it is more like the Catholic Church moving around paedophile priests from parish to parish. An official leaves the ALP at 5pm one day and starts working in a union office at 9am the next day. Somebody from another right-wing union or a right-wing MP's office is promoted to the vacancy at the ALP HQ. This incestuous system of promoting enables people like Craig Thomson to climb all the way to the lofty heights of our federal parliament.

Just remember to be faceless

Within a year, thanks to this big game of musical chairs, the official(s) who are sacked or resigning could be in a more senior position than they are in now. This is what being a faceless man is all about. There are so many scandals in politics these days that if you keep moving about enough, it is harder for the mud to stick.

The myth of suspension

Another possibility is suspension. That, too, is just pulling the wool over the eyes of the public. In reality, many of these right-wing ALP officials do very little "official" work in their job and they spend about 95 percent of their time running around different unions and party branch meetings stacking the votes. A "suspension" might mean they do not visit the office where they are formally employed, but all their other shenanigans continue unchecked. Just consider how one of the state officials embroiled in the current scandal, Stephen Donnelly, managed to spend a period of time in Queensland helping a friend win an internal union election while he was officially employed in the office of Senator Feeney in Victoria. With factional bosses and faceless men tossing in $500k from a slush fund to achieve each rival union takeover, do you think they are really going to risk any interruption of the antics of their pet bovver boys who are getting results for them? Of course not, they will simply put on a brief show of contrition for the public and then carry on the next day as if nothing happened.