Most of the instability that has plagued the ALP in the last year will end now that Mark Latham is the federal leader. But the ALP are far from out of trouble. Kim Beazley is still a threat to stability.
I must confess to being divided on who should lead Labor to the next federal election. When Simon Crean resigned it was clear that atleast 2, maybe even 4, individuals would be contenders to the position of Leader of the Opposition. Unofficially it was between Beazley, Latham, Rudd and perhaps even Julia Gillard. While Rudd needed to pull out the calculator before realising that it was fruitless to nominate in an official sense, Gillard did not. So the choice put before the 92 Federal Labor Parliamentarians was between Kim "Bomber" Beazley and Mark "I WILL BREAK YOUR ARMS YOU ARSELICKER" Latham. For my part I would have been almost as happy with Beazley as I am with Latham as the next Labor Prime Minister. Both have characteristics that I respect, and either would have a good tilt at returning federal government to the ALP.As Crikey's Hillary Bray points out, if Kim Beazley had been given another shot as Opposition Leader he would be forever looking over his shoulder waiting for the wave of "generational change" to hit. Sooner of later it would be realised among his Labor colleages that the path forward lies not with an ageing former minister but rather with someone much younger, exuding more energy then Beazley is capable of. Someone such as Mark Latham, Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard. The leadership question would not have been resolved if Beazley had been elected to the Leadership. Of course the reverse is every bit as true. Perhaps more so. Now that Latham is Oppositon Leader he is still going to be perpetually looking over his shoulder. Not waiting for generational change but rather for Kim Beazley. I think the Big Man from Brand will almost certainly have a third go at returning to the leadership. Beazley has already stated that rather then retiring from politics, he will in 2004 run for re-election in his safe Labor seat of Brand. You can be sure that his decision to stay in Parliament and contest the 2004 federal election is not because he wants to work on his career as a Labor back bencher. He figures that he can only loose so many elections before some day people are going to start voting for him purely out of sympathy for a nice guy. If Latham fails to win the 2004 election, you can definitely expect Beazley to contest the leadership.
By and large the ALP are in the best condition they have been in many years. They are in power in all of the States and Territories and whoever takes the party to the next election will have a really big chance of beating Howard if he takes the Coalition to the next election. Even Crean had a red hot shot at it in my humble opinion.
The big mistake that the Liberal Party has made is to have allowed Howard to break his promise to retire. Howard will very likely hand government back to the ALP in 2004 purely by virtue of the fact that people are starting to get sick of him after 8 years of his special brand of socially conservative neo-liberalism. The "John Howard has been Prime Minister for a long time, therefore he knows best how to protect us from the evil of Terrorism" attitude that was prevalent in 2001, will not play in the electorate anywhere near to the extent it did in 2001 when it played the Australian people like a well tuned fiddle. Voters know that Mark Latham is about as different from the Prime Minister as any man can be. After 8 years of a John Howard government the electorate will be looking, not so much to replace the conservative government with a more progressive one but rather to replace the current Prime Minister with a new one. The Coalition could have nullified that huge advantage to the ALP by replacing the Prime Minister long before polling day in late 2004. Costello would have had a better chance of holding on to Coalition government in 2004 then Howard does.
But by now bringing in "generational change" in the form of Mark Latham, the ALP have avoided making the same mistake as the Government. Only time will tell whether Australians go on to see Mark Latham as honest-talking straight-shooting Prime Minister material, or a rude loud-mouthed brat that should never be allowed to take hold of the top job.
The following is a cartoon I drew in July of 2002....
