So a Labor man who owes his unspectacular career to the factions is screaming about another who owes his unspectacular career to the factions?

Former Legislative Council president John Gazzola, from Labor’s Left, stood up in Parliament late yesterday to spit the dummy in spectacular style.

In an extraordinary speech which could see him booted from Labor’s Caucus, he described his successor as president, Russell Wortley, from Labor’s Right, as a “parasite” and called on him to resign.

This morning Labor MPs were discussing the possibility of kicking Gazzola out of the parliamentary party room (not the party), given the strength of his attack on a fellow Labor MP.

Such a move would isolate him from his parliamentary colleagues and render him unable to influence debate within the Caucus.

Ironically, it was the Right’s influence on policy that partly spurred Gazzola’s attack – and his speech appeared to be setting him up to fight the Weatherill Government’s moves to reform WorkCover.

READ Gazzola’s full attack on Wortley

Gazzola lost the president’s position – and took a $100,000 haircut – after the election due to a rejig of the factional spoils of victory.

With independent MP Geoff Brock coming into the ministry, the factions had to redraw their deals.

It came down to this: if Gazzola was to keep his job, his extra money, and his chauffeured car, then the Left would have had to give up a spot in the ministry. In this scenario – which was never on the table – impressive Port Adelaide MP Susan Close would have been the one to lose out.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Close has probably achieved more in her brief political career than Gazzola has in his long years as a largely anonymous Labor operative.

This all means that Gazzola has little support for his extraordinary outburst within the party, even within his own faction.

While no-one believes that Wortley is the most qualified, best equipped person to be president of the Legislative Council, the same could easily have been said about Gazzola.

The public, too, is likely to have little sympathy for Gazzola who, unlike thousands of ordinary South Australians, has a guaranteed job for the next four years at a base salary rate north of $150,000, plus an electorate allowance of more than $22,000, and a travel entitlement of $12,000 per annum.

The Parliament will sit for 40-odd days this year. Between sittings, what do non-ministerial Legislative Councillors actually do for their money?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Gazzola might be upset about losing $100,000 a year – who wouldn’t? – but the idea he has been hard done by is, to most ordinary people, laughable.

His massive dummy spit has gone down like a cup of cold sick in Labor’s caucus – along with his claims that the Right is dominating policy and positions.

Premier Jay Weatherill, from Labor’s Left, now rules the party room with as much authority as Mike Rann at the height of his powers and popularity.

His stamp on the party’s policy platform is indelible.

His cross-factional support is solid.

Brock won’t like this outbreak of ill-discipline, but it would take a lot more than this for him to abandon his deal with Weatherill.

Gazzola’s claim of some new era of Right dominance is also curious, particularly in the light of Weatherill’s vanquishing of Right faction leader Don Farrell earlier this year, and the old-fashioned mega-Keynesian economic policies he took to the election.

The mood in Labor’s Caucus has been relatively ebullient, reinforced in the past week by the federal Liberal Government’s post-budget problems.

An airing of factional enmity is the last thing anyone wanted.

Gazzola has guaranteed his own isolation. Will he jump before he’s pushed?