With reports all but confirming walk-away Victorian upper house MP Evan Thornley is about to snag a $700,000 gig as the local CEO of US car battery swapping firm Better Place, a firm he dealt with while in office, attention is shifting away from electricity to Thornley’s other extra-curricular activities.

In 2005, prior to succumbing to Steve Bracks’ advances and launching his now-abandoned ALP career, Thornley was a founding director of internet activist organisation GetUp. GetUp has scored some major wins, most memorably the turnaround in public opinion over the David Hicks affair.

GetUp maintains its political ‘independence’, despite lone Liberal John Hewson jumping ship just months after its 2005 launch. When Thornley snaffled his ALP seat in the Victorian upper house in November 2006, he also resigned from GetUp, citing a conflict of interest. Bill Shorten, who had been preselected for Maribyrnong, followed suit. Interestingly, GetUp is still yet to fill either Thornley or Shorten’s board spots despite its website claiming replacements are imminent, more than two years on.

But Thornley is yet to fully abandon his informal role as GetUp’s Godfather. After executive director Brett Solomon quit last October, Thornley was present on the interview panel to pick a replacement — both he and GetUp apparently didn’t see any conflict in having a sitting ALP politician form part of the decision-making team.

When contacted by Crikey, Thornley’s choice, 22-year-old National Director Simon Sheikh, refused to comment on the interview process. But by tapping a youngster like Sheikh, sources say Thornley may have been trying to remove the ALP taint for good. If so, it was questionable strategy. Since this article was published, Crikey has learned that Sheikh had previously enjoyed a short-lived stint a departmental liaison officer in Michael Costa’s office.

A picture is now emerging of a restless Thornley unable or unwilling to detach himself from his intellectual idealism and fully embrace the internecine squabbling that constitutes the innards of the ALP. In addition to GetUp, Thornley has continued to cultivate links with PerCapita, the Fabian Society, Pluto Press and the Chifley Research Centre, all worthwhile (if flailing) institutions that have benefited from his either his influence or multi-million dollar fortune.

Yesterday in The Financial Review a gnarled Mark Latham let fly in predictable style, rubbishing Thornley’s ideas but painting him as another victim of the sclerotic influence-peddling that ultimately drove both men from office. Latham has his own conflict here — Michael Cooney, the now-departed policy director of the Thornley-funded PerCapita, used to work in Latham’s office and the two had an unexplained falling out after Cooney stuck around to work alongside Kim Beazley — but his broader point seems valid.

In today’s Fin Nick Lenaghan quotes a “Labor insider” who claims the Latham theory fails to hold water given Thornley’s “rapid elevation through the parliamentary ranks”. But it should be remembered that Thornley was specifically using Victorian politics as a gateway to the Federal stage — something that would have taken years of wrangling to achieve. Crikey can only recall one other Labor politician — Bob Carr — who specifically tried, and failed, to beat a path to Canberra via the back door. Laurie Brereton owed his transition to circumstance and Latham ended up in Werriwa after being initially knocked back in Liverpool after a vicious preselection brawl with Paul Lynch.

The reality Thornley encountered in Victoria may have been, for him, a grim one. The halls of government are often more tied into delivering meaningless reviews than irreversible social change. The frustration is heard time and time again from disillusioned VPS graduates who decide, like Thornley, to “do good” in government rather than enter the corporate world, but find, once there, an immutable edifice disinterested in true policy development.

But is the alternative — GetUp’s style of “independent” professional activism — too far removed from the grassroots networks from where real social change actually sprouts? While GetUp’s capacity to raise funds and screen prime-time commercials is impressive, it is yet to morph into a genuine social movement like the labour movement — the collapse of which the ALP, the Left, and Thornley himself are yet to fully come to grips with.