The feeling I have long had in the pit of my stomach, that neither Peter Costello nor Kim Beazley will ever be Prime Minister of Australia, has been reinforced in recent months. Just precisely what defeats either –the times, events, and a certain want to tinker, in pushing their ambition to the brink – is still in the balance.
Kim Beazley has been, in recent times, in much the same position in the opinion polls as he, and Labor, has been at every one of John Howard's mid-terms: well ahead, and looking like a lay down misère. That the bookies, and most of the smart money, is still on the Government to be returned, as they have at every election since John Howard took power, does not reflect a lack of faith in opinion polls, as such, but experience with the capacity to Howard to whittle back such a lead on a timetable. The Prime Minister's superior electioneering, and all of the advantages of incumbency (including setting a poll date), plus the bitter experiences of Labor, and Kim Beazley, dropping the ball, lead me to think this.
At the moment, Labor is effectively campaigning on one issue only, and one which has been stripped down at that. The issue is industrial relations, and Labor has simplified its anti-change message to say that it will abolish all forms of Australian workplace agreements, whether under trade union pressure or because it thinks voters are too dumb to understand any sort of nuanced policy. It adopted pretty much the same approach with its opposition to the GST, at the urging of the same strategic geniuses (and the same leadership).
At this stage of their campaign, according to the polls, IR reform is seriously unpopular, and the Government is making little headway in selling it (despite a highly improper partisan public relations campaign with public money). The situation is the same as with the GST, and the distance away from an election, about the same as well. Alas, the GST settled in, the horrors which Labor had so strongly predicted did not eventuate, and John Howard slowly pulled back Labor's lead not by surgery to the GST, but with highly strategic handouts to particular groups, and some attacks on what had been proclaimed to be its "mean and tricky'' label. Howard had some luck – with terror, the Tampa and the demonisation of boat people