BY ALISON DELLIT
On May 2, I was startled to read an article in the Melbourne Age quoting "opposition leader Kim Beazley" talking about federal housing. After a brief check, I confirmed that there had been no sudden change in the federal Labor Party's leadership.
Was it just a typo or was it a case of wishful thinking? The Age has been one of many corporate newspapers campaigning to replace Simon Crean with former opposition leader Beazley. The big media push began after two polls in mid-April compared Beazley's approval rating to Crean's abysmal slide in popularity.
It is, of course, not difficult to make anyone's approval rating look good by comparing it to Crean's, and Beazley is still the next most familiar Labor leader. However, the results were seized upon to "prove" that there was a push from within the ALP to replace Crean with Beazley.
The media "speculation" — never attributed to named party members — reached fever pitch after Beazley was interviewed by ABC journalist Maxine McKew for Kerry Packer's Bulletin magazine, published on April 23, in which he discussed his strategies for the next election. The magazine titled the interview: "If I were PM."
In an April 23 article, entitled "The dogs begin to circle as time runs out", the Sydney Morning Herald's Geoff Kitney declared: "The final chapter in Simon Crean's sorry leadership of the Labor Party is about to be written."
Other highlights of the media frenzy — around 150 articles were published in Australian newspapers on the ALP leadership "crisis" over the following seven days — included the Murdoch press' extensive re-printing of an April 26 article by Australian journalist Matt Price, titled "Crean is as dead as a python's parrot", and an April 23 Melbourne Herald Sun prediction that Crean "had three weeks left".
Crean has been described as "boring", while Beazley was the sort of bloke "you'd shout a beer too".
In a typically silly piece of tabloid journalism, Sydney's Daily Telegraph on May 1 faxed all federal Labor MPs asking them if they would support Crean. When less than a dozen replied (all in the affirmative), the Telegraph headline screamed: "Too scared to say!"
However, even after this blitz, Crean has a solid majority among Labor MPs in the event of a Beazley challenge. So why has the corporate elite's hired pens suddenly attempted to restart Beazley's ticker?
An interview with US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage in the Australian Financial Review on May 2 gives some indication. After having a go at the ALP for its opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq, Armitage said: "However, the Labor Party is not a monolith and I understand that different views are allowed in the Labor Party, seeing a recent interview with Kim Beazley, reading remarks attributed to [foreign affairs spokesperson] Kevin Rudd."
Armitage was most likely referring to the Bulletin interview, in which Beazley gave a token nod to Labor's policy on the war ("to go through the UN was the right thing to do"), before launching an insulting assault on anti-war activists, referring to them as "a bunch of dyspeptic lefties who've taken themselves out of the political debate while salving their own consciences".
Former defence minister "Bomber" Beazley is certainly no anti-war activist: "I'm deeply proud of the Australian Defence Forces and their achievements in this conflict."
He went so far as to accuse the federal Coalition government of "not going out of its way to talk up [the troops'] achievements", pointing out that Israel's murderous Likud party was "deeply grateful" to Australia for its role in the war.
Beazley has always been pro-war. Under his leadership, the ALP firmly supported the US war on Afghanistan. His main passion, however, is the importance of the ALP's support for ANZUS, the US-Australian alliance (which was the subject of his masters thesis). "Australians have to understand that there is nothing in the American alliance that deprives us of choice", he told the Bulletin. "It would be moronic for us to pursue policy with the Americans on the basis that the US is always wrong and that they don't have serious issues to address internationally."
McKew, like many other media commentators, compared Beazley's "clear" position with Crean's "vacillation". The clear position, of course, is also the unpopular one. Crean's constant shifting on Labor's position on the war was unpopular because most people wanted the ALP to take a firm position against the war, not in support of it!
Every opinion poll showed that more Labor supporters opposed the war than supported it, and the Greens have dramatically increased their membership and support due to their clear anti-war position.
The bring-back-Beazley campaign is a demand by the big end of town that the ALP pay less attention to public opinion — and to the views of its supporters. The swell of anger against the US government and its wars for profit has scared the pants off much of Australia's business elite, which wants to share in some of the spoils of Washington's aggressive military interventionism.
The warning is clear: if Crean is incapable of putting an increasingly politically restive population back in its box, the ruling class will bring back someone who has the "ticker" to do so.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, May 7, 2003.
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