BLOODLETTING gripped Labor with three experienced Ministers quitting amid claims by Joel Fitzgibbon Labor has chosen to lose the next election.
Joel Fitzgibbon has told Triple J's Hack program that he believes Labor have chosen to lose the September election.
When asked this afternooon if he thought the party has chosen to lose the next election, Fitzgibbon replied:
"I do".
He then went on to say that if we went to the polls right now, knowing that some Labor MPs have less than 10 per cent of the marginal vote, they would lose their seats.
What is going on?" he said.
He added that: "What makes it so weird...they're sacrificing themselves..in that somehow under the current leadership things will improve".
Fitzgibbon said that many Labor MPs were still operating under 100-year-old architecture in the Labor party, being influenced by others outside of the party including trade unions.
"It lets the party down," he said.
While he did not feel let down, he said the party was being let down.
He said he was "feeling fine" after resigning today, and emphasised his belief that Labor would have a better chance at the September election with Kevin Rudd.
He also refused to comment on Mark Latham's comments about him recently, saying they don't talk anymore.
"Mark Latham and I were great mates, but he just disappeared out of my life, changed his number and I never heard from him again."
The purge from the front bench of Rudd supporting Cabinet Ministers Martin Ferguson and Chris Bowen and junior Minister Kim Carr came after a broadside from ministerial colleagues and Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Mr Ferguson warned the party risked an electoral wipeout on the scale of the 1996 landslide, when half a dozen potential future leaders were wiped out, if it failed to change before September 14 election.
Mr Ferguson took direct aim at Treasurer Wayne Swan's performance, condemning the class warfare the government has engaged in and which began over the mining tax.
He said "it is doing the Labor Party no good" and he urged the government had to reconnect with the spirit of the Hawke and Keating eras.
"If we don't pull it together I only hope we are not back to 96 when we had 49 people," he said.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/bloodletting-grips-labor-party-as-most-experienced-mps-martin-ferguson-kim-carr-chris-bowen-resign/story-fncvk70o-1226603697119
