"Bomber Beazley" - Missing in Action

My friend George has posted a response to one of several Blogs I have written recently about Kim Beazley Jnr, the putative leader of the Australian Labor Party. The second blog, a follow up piece, is linked here.

Now George has a pithy turn of phrase, and his views deserve to be more widely seen than being buried amongst the comments on an old blog entry. So I have decided to publish them here. I am also publishing my own "cartoon" of Beazley drowning in the sea of public opinion, in need if being rescued by a sympathetic Norwegian Sea Captain (of the Tampa).

Here is George's comment on Beazley:

*****

"Kim Beazley is a very sad case. He appears to be "with Howard all the way". Kim is never there when there are hot issues to be debated. He is not there for the times when we need the representative of the Australian people to be ripping into the Liberal party policies and applying the 'blowtorch' to Howard and his cronies.
(A favourite old Labor Party term: "applying the blowtorch to the belly" - DJW)

"Where is Beazley when we as society have lost so many of our rights and civil liberties? The Howard Government Industrial legislation took the workers back at least two centuries. Hardly a bleat out of Beazley. Australia is now importing cheap labour from third world countries. Is this so different to the Kanaka labourers of 1800s? Sadly there is no substance to Beazley - only bulk.

"I believe that the Australian Labour party is in an extremely sad state, almost in it's last convulsions.

"We have a government which is not concerned with values of a civilized society, i.e. care of each other, care for the vulnerable among us, preservation of our ecological environment, encouraging the growth of spirituality and appreciation of the intangibles (e.g. art in it's various forms). Instead we are encouraged into gross consumerism and greed.

"I think that Beazley is Howards pawn. A sad individual whose time is over and who should not be the parliamentary leader of what was once a great Australian political party. I shall not be voting for the Labor Party at the next elections. It will be Greens or Democrats (if they still exist!)."

*****

Denis replies: - thanks for the free and frank expression of views - which translates as "Give him heaps, George".

By the way, the continued existence of the Democrats is tied merely to the political careers of four sitting Senators. They have no impact outside of that.

The Greens appear to be attracting former Labor voters who are becoming more and more disillusioned. But whether that is enough for them to become a real force in politics is doubtful, in my mind. They also have four sitting Senators.

A day is along decade ..... in politics

Well, the Prime Minister has put some of us out of some of our misery - maybe, possibly, but I doubt it.

Confused? Well, so am I.

John Howard has announced that he will stay on to fight the next election. This is entirely predictable, because it is the one thing which John Howard really likes doing - beating Kim Beazley.

"Flubber" has completely managed to rub off even the "rusted on" traditional supporters of the Labor Party. First there was the shameful failure to stand on principle, regarding the Tampa refugees. And then, last week there was the double-backflip, when he decided to endorse Uranium mining. And so, he has destroyed the basic constituency of his support. How could Howard resist?

Besides, it is apparent that Howard has little concept of how to stabilise the economy, or the "mood of the nation" regarding Industrial Relations. And as for Foreign Affairs .......with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who knows, Lebanon tomorrow, not to mention East Timor, and other places which I cannot now recall - our Defence and Foreign Policy is a complete basket case. Even the politics of water is now out of control.

However, if Howard now goes into Election Mode, then he can legitimately ignore all those issues, and just concentrate on criticising the Labor Party. How easy is that.

The fact that will create a giant distraction from the real issues of the state of rot of the country, will only be more attractive to Howard than having to do anything about those issues.

God Help us.