Canberra's next senator must, first and foremost, be a ferocious defender of and advocate for Australia's only city state.
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This is why the ALP should resist the temptation to reward a loyalist, lifer or apparatchik with the super safe seat Senator Kate Lundy has announced she will be relinquishing at the next federal election.
This city has special needs and interests, which have suffered at the hands of the ALP and the conservatives in recent times and deserves an independently minded representative who is prepared to put their constituency ahead of their party and, if necessary, local people ahead of their own career aspirations.
The background to this is that while Canberra bashing has always been a national sport, it is fair to say it has rarely, if ever, been played so artfully and with such dedication as in the past two to three years.
Politicians on both sides of the political divide have shown a willingness to put the boot into a national capital - almost habitually portrayed across the country as a byword for waste, excess and lazy inefficiency - to win hearts and minds in regional electorates.
Ever since the Joh for PM push of the mid-1980s, swinging voters in the western suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney and in bush electorates have been told "you're a long way from Canberra".
The inevitable consequence, in era when one government cannot deliver a long-promised surplus and its replacement discovers alleged black holes and budget emergencies, is that the ACT is facing cutbacks and job losses to an extent not seen since the March 1996 election, which made Senator Lundy the ALP's then youngest ever federal parliamentarian and brought John Howard to power.
The current round of cuts began under the Gillard/Rudd government and, as was the case in 1996, the incoming conservative regime has been happy to cut even harder and deeper.
Little or no compensation, in the form of funding for special projects such as the convention centre proposal, has been made available. This has left the Canberra community to weather job losses on a Ford, General Motors Holden and Toyota scale, effectively on its own.
Throw in federal indifference to the cost of the Mr Fluffy buyback and the economic outlook for the territory by the next election might be bleak.
By that time Senator Lundy will, in all probability, be looking down the barrel of 20 years in one of the most diverse, challenging and idiosyncratic houses of Parliament in the country and it is understandable she wants to move on.
Wednesday's announcement will likely set her free, with a handsome stipend, while she is on the right side of 50 and well able to make her mark in other fields of endeavour.
It is a win-win for her and her party. By giving the ALP plenty of notice of her intention to step down, Senator Lundy has ensured an orderly succession in what must be Australia's safest upper house seat and cut off the possibility of an ambush similar to that which claimed Gary Humphries at the same time.
The senator has been able to avoid, as much by good management as the bad fortune that has caused her to spend 12 of the past 18 years on the opposition benches, the need to publicly choose between the welfare of her constituency and her obligations to her party.
Given the Gillard/Rudd government had already started cutting the public service in Canberra before last year's election, it could be argued she should have been more strident in her defence of the people who make the top ACT Senate spot such a sure bet for the ALP.
It appears improbable Senator Lundy's successor will enjoy the same luxury. Opposition commentary on the current reduction in force at the national broadcaster has made it apparent Labor has no plans for an immediate and far-reaching windback of Abbott/Hockey reforms and public sector job cuts in the event it wins the next election or the one after.
Canberra's best chance of a "fair shake of the sauce bottle" under either a second-term conservative government or an incoming ALP government led by Bill Shorten will come from having a fire-breathing, combative and parochial - in a good way - senator who puts the territory ahead of party and is prepared to punch above their weight.
The latter has always been a primary requirement for anybody representing the ACT in the senate. This is because of the outmoded and undemocratic system that means Canberra's population of 357,000 gets to elect only two senators, whereas Tasmania's 515,000 people get to elect 12.