It was not surprising that John Hargreaves should have cited fatigue from ''negative media attention'' as the main reason for his resignation from cabinet on Thursday. He was the subject of more adverse publicity during his five years on the front bench than the rest of his ministerial colleagues combined mostly either self-inflicted or exacerbated by a tendency to dismiss his critics, often with disdain. Mr Hargreaves never shrank from controversy during his ministerial career; indeed, he rather appeared to relish it; cultivating the style of a straight-talking Labor politician of the old school more at home with the common folk than with the movers and shakers from the big end of town. Whether deliberate or not, his political persona appeared to pay electoral dividends. Mr Hargreaves was the most popular of Labor's five candidates in Brindabella at the 2008 elections, though tellingly his personal vote was down 6per cent on the 2004 election result.

Mr Hargreaves was not, as some might have concluded from his modus operandi, a long-serving Labor apparatchik or union operative who earned a seat in Parliament because of his bare-knuckle rather than political skills. Rather, he was a long-time public servant who only joined the Labor Party in 1989. He served some time as a ministerial adviser to Terry Connolly, a minister in the Follett Labor Government, before winning election to the Legislative Assembly in 1998, and winning promotion to the ministry in 2004. Nothing in his public service or Labor Party CV suggested he was foreman material. Probably he might never have become a minister had it not been for the small size of the Assembly and the fact that he became a powerbroker in the factional Right of ACT Labor.

Mr Hargreaves' performance in a number of portfolios was not lacking, but neither was it exemplary. As Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, he oversaw a blow-out in departmental spending which probably cost him this particular portfolio in a ministerial reshuffle after last year's election. It should be said he did not preside over any disasters of particular or lasting consequence, but probably the best indicator of his performance is that he had the lightest duties of all current members of cabinet

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