It'll be Howard v Beazley in '07

Well, I have on a couple of occasions expressed my desire to see Julia Gillard (or Kevin Rudd) elevated to leader of the federal Labor Party. I still believe that a third shot for the prime ministership by Mr. Beazley is a bit ridiculous. Admittedly though, he probably is one of perhaps only two or three Labor Party members who actually could stand a chance of winning.

It seems pretty clear now that Kim Beazley will lead Labor to the next election, due next year. And I am going to now predict, as many others are, that John Howard will lead the government to the polls to seek another victory. There is no sign of Howard winding down, nor any real sign of Costello begining to step up. And the next election isn't really that far away.

Giving credit where it's due, Beazley is starting to look a little stronger. I don't know what the current public surveys are indicating, but I think Labor is beginning to emerge from the dire straits they've been in over the past months. Talk of possible leadership challenges has died down. Internal disagreements, though they no doubt continue, are not being scrutinised to the same degree by the media (which seems to have a short attention span sometimes). And a stance has finally been taken - on Australian Workplace Agreements. Certainly, it's only one of many issues on which Labor needs to establish a clearer alternative, but AWAs are a particularly important subject for Australians in this time of pretty major industrial relations changes.

We need a change of government in 2007. And I don't want that to sound like an opinion from a merely biased standpoint. At the next election, it will be almost twelve years since the Howard clan came to power. Twelve years! So we can hardly blame them for being an arrogant bunch. Think what you like about the Howard-Costello management of the economy, this government has a lot to answer for as far as the social health of this nation. Not to mention the way in which they handled issues such as the GST, Telstra, civil liberties, children-overboard, the ABC, Iraq, the AWB, and universities (see Sarah's recent post about UQ's Schonell theatre).

Now that it appears that Kim will lead the alternative government to the next election, I should stop ranting on about Jules and Kev, shouldn't I? Yep. Beazley has my support. Let the good times roll.