Yes the labor hacks must be getting nervous heading into the next election. This is very similar to the last election. Yesterday, Howard lay wreaths in Vietnam and Costello met with Bono, while the Labor Party burned. Very depressing. Listening to the radio yesterday, the Political Editor of the Bulletin was saying that many Labor MPs were very happy to discuss the Labor leadership (slam Kim Beazley). Seems that they are a very disfunctional organisation and are doing exactly what Howard and Costello would have ordered. Of course being aided by cynical journalists and other related wags. This before the campaign has started for real.

Sure there have been gaffes, but nothing serious - unlike Iraq, etc. on the government side.

The media really apply the blowtorch to the ALP at any opportunity - while letting Howard and Co. get away with absolute murder.

It gets depressing - the weight of serious cock-ups this government has had a free ride on is incredible.

As has been pointed out before, reporting in this country on politics now resembles the reporting found in gossip magazines. It doesn't matter that there isn't any truth behind the rumour just pile it on the bonfire of innuendo they create.

There is no leadership challenge brewing - there is no credible challenger yet. Rudd may be the next leader, but his performance's over Iraq recently were just not good enough.

BigBob,
yes. You are right. Probably little more than end of year wobbles. There is no leadership challenge as far as I can judge.

But I reckon that the ALP is being left behind on issues such as climate change, and education. They have focused too much on industrial relations in the sense that this has been at the expense of other issues. This looks to be the Beazley style--remember the no GST campaign.

On the other hand, its election fixing time. In areas such as skills shortages and climate, Labor had been berating the Government for years about its state of denia, the government's denial disappears and rapid action follows. Issues that have served the Labor Party well are suddenly whipped away.

Colin
the dysfunctionality of the ALP comes through in this frontpage article---entitled 'Rebels plan Beazley coup by Christmas'--- in The Age. Frontpage! It implies plotting in Victoria.

It's a media beat up in one sense in that, though there is a concern about Beazley's recent performance, there is no leadership challenge. In another sense it is not a just a media beatup--ie., a fiction-- as it is written by Shaun Carney and Michelle Grattan, two senior commentators with good very contacts. The pot is being stirred in the federal ALP, as someone in the ALP is drip feeding Grattan about leadership destabilisation. But by whom? That is the key question.

Sure some within the party are urging a Labor frontbench reshuffle. For good reason. Beazely'a right-wing supporters in Victoria steamroll two frontbenchers — Gavan O'Connor and Bob Sercombe — out of their seats. O'Connor and Sercombe lost preselection.As a result, Beazley finds himself with two shadow ministers who won't even be in the next parliament.

I don't understand why Peter Garrett, who was recruited in part because of his public profile on the environment, is languishing on the backbench, when this celebrity politician could sell Labor's environmental message?

But that call for a reshuffle is not the same as leadership destabilisation by anti-Beazley forces (presumably they mean former leader Simon Crean+ Gillard+Rudd) undermining Beazley. The tone of the article looks like a defence of Beazley to me:----poor Kim he's being stabbed in the back by disloyal, ambitious power seekers.