| THE
OK CORRAL
Two shootouts today. One between Lleyton Hewitt and Juan Carlos
Ferrero in the first Davis Cup final. And what a battle it was.
Hewitt won after a four-hour struggle in five sets including a
7-6 breaker in the fourth.
The other shootout in Canberra with Simon Crean facing the inevitable.
He announced his resignation as federal Opposition Leader this morning
after that tap on the shoulder earlier this week from front bench
heavyweights who had supported him earlier in the year in the shoot-out
with former leader Kim Beazley.
Crean also said he would not stand again at the Party vote on Tuesday.
And why would he? He’s been described as “dead man walking”
for months. There was no way he would be resurrected as leader next
week.
And so Simon Crean goes into the political history books as the
first Labor leader ever NOT to be permitted by his colleagues to
contest a federal election.
On Tuesday a man who has lost two federal elections to John Howard
will surely by elected Labor leader again. Even then Kim Beazley,
who announced today that he would stand, gets to grasp a poisoned
chalice.
But, I believe, he is the only Labor politician with a chance in
next year’s poll.
If they go for the Rottweiler, Mark Latham, they will be destroyed.
Kevin Rudd is a clever and articulate and believable politician
but his time has not yet come. Eighty per cent of Australians would
not recognise his face or name.
And talk of being radical and electing the lemon-lipped leftie
Julia Gillard is just suicidal.
It is, as I said, a poisoned chalice. But Kimbo has the best chance
of any Labor pollie to take it up to Howard on the hustings. He
is the best chance they have. Kimbo comes back from limbo as I said
yesterday.
A year before the last federal poll Howard was so on the nose in
the polls that Beazley was probably reflecting on what colour wallpaper
to have in the Lodge.
This time around he’ll be a bit more circumspect. Unexpected
things like the Tampa can tamper with history.
Friday, November 28, 2003
©Copyright
Derryn Hinch 2002
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