KEY POINTS:
This has not been a good week in the Della Bosca household.
Teachers yesterday stormed the office of John Della Bosca, a senior minister in the New South Wales Government, who was already smarting over allegations of drunk and abusive behaviour, and who has been ordered off the road for traffic offences.
In another office, his wife, federal MP Belinda Neal, received a sharp and uncompromising phone call from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd warning her that her career in politics was hanging by a very thin thread.
Neal denies she swore at, abused and threatened restaurant staff last Friday night, that she put the boot into another player when the woman fell after a tackle during a football match, and that she had warned a pregnant Liberal MP evil thoughts could lead to her baby being born a demon.
Rudd was unimpressed that the owners of the restaurant where the Della Boscas allegedly spat the dummy had withdrawn the statutory declarations sworn by their staff.
Likewise friends had vowed that Neal never used bad language and her soccer coach denied any booting of opponents took place - even after Neal had been suspended for two games. The Prime Minister was not mollified.
Interrupted yesterday during a highly sensitive mission to Japan that included an audience yesterday with Emperor Akihito, Rudd was in no mood for his famous diplomacy.
Neal, he said, had promised to undergo counselling.
"There seems to be a pattern of unacceptable behaviour here," Rudd said.
"I have reminded Ms Neal that none of us are guaranteed a future in politics."
In Sydney, NSW Premier Morris Iemma has referred the restaurant incident to police despite accepting Education Minister Della Bosca's version of events and ordering him not to drive again, as he apparently had last week following the alleged barny.
Last month Della Bosca's licence was revoked for six months following a series of speeding offences, after which he reportedly swore at a newspaper photographer for taking pictures of him riding a bicycle.
Yesterday, he refused to speak to irate teachers who invaded his office to vent their fury at the Government's decision to change the rules under which school principals hire staff.
All of which has delighted federal and state Opposition Leaders, who have gleefully attacked Della Bosca and Neal for bullying and demanded their heads.
Neal is the most vulnerable. A former union official, solicitor, Gosford city councillor and Senator who held the shadow portfolios of consumer affairs and local government before Rudd's victory last year, her future is at risk.
Rudd cannot expel her from Parliament, but he could remove Labor endorsement, condemning her to the political wastelands.
Della Bosca is a far more formidable proposition.
At one stage considered a potential successor to Iemma, he is a long-time Labor powerbroker and a former state party general secretary who later held a series of senior ministries and who is now Government Leader in the NSW Legislative Council, the state's upper house.
