Beazley Unveils His True Colours

by Malcolm Farr - Daily Telegraph

The usual lynch mob gathered as soon as Kim Beazley mentioned on Monday new industrial relations laws and the Beaconsfield mining tragedy in the same sentence.

In a stunning over-reaction, he was accused of politicising the pit collapse which killed one miner and trapped two others.

The general accusation was that Beazley was a mindless creep who would stand on the body of a dead man to further his political self-interest.

There are two important points here.

First, who would have thought jolly Kim Beazley would be accused of knuckle-duster politics?

Second, the charges were baseless and ignorant, and in some cases hugely hypocritical.

In about three sentences to a May Day rally in Brisbane he said the union-provided training the miners received in occupational health and safety issues had helped them survive – and the skills rescuers had acquired over the years could help bring them to the surface.

"It is the sort of activity and action and this sort of understanding which the Howard Government wants to rip out of industrial relations," Beazley said.

But help was on the way, he said, meaning the possible election of a Labor government late next year and the dismantling of the workplace laws.

Those comments were as appropriate and topical as they were brief. Safety issues are very much a part of the Beaconsfield debate and will remain so for months to come.

Beazley was merely pointing to an area in which unions provide members with a benefit which might soon be denied under the new laws.

The Government was perfectly entitled to challenge Beazley's view, but instead spent most effort attempting to indict him as a political grandstander, a crass opportunist.

It was Beazley's attackers who opportunistically used the Beaconsfield disaster as a political weapon, even as they accused him of doing exactly the same.

But back to point one.

Rarely has Beazley been accused of being a political hard man. Usually he's laughed at for having no ticker.

Yesterday morning, just before he appeared on ABC radio in Brisbane, Beazley was told he and his safety comments had been torn apart by influential Melbourne broadcaster Neil Mitchell.

Beazley directed staff to set up an interview with Mitchell as soon as he had finished his Brisbane commitment, and he took on the broadcaster.

Mitchell wasn't convinced, but at least Beazley did not avoid the confrontation, as he might have in the past.

"I do not take a backwards step on the industrial relations changes as they relate to workers' safety. That's one of the most evil sections of the Industrial Relations Act," he said.

Just over a year ago Beazley brought in his closest advisers and told them he wanted a tougher approach in his second crack as Opposition Leader.

Some of those advisers began crafting lines for him which more clearly demarcated the divisions between Labor and the Government, and which didn't flinch from aggression.

Workplace relations was one obvious issue, others were the AWB scandal, vocational skills and training and the importation of workers on special visas.

Now Beazley is doing his own lines and in many – but not all – cases is sticking to them.

In fact, Beazley is probably performing more strongly as Opposition Leader now than at any time in the past 10 years. He's fitter and more dedicated to simple language – he has a strategy and he doesn't mind kicking a few shins.

"Previously, as Leader of the Opposition, I was pretty hail-fellow-well-met. I was out there looking for the bipartisan opportunity, that sort of thing, and the public took a friendly view of me," he said on April 24.

"I've decided that's not the way to go, that this is a Government now been in office too long."

And he noted: "It doesn't necessarily make you popular."

Simply saying you are not the man you used to be doesn't necessarily make you convincing. Beazley has to do more than scowl a lot to show he is heading for government in a no-nonsense manner.

His occupational safety comments on Monday show Beazley is doing more than scowl.

In a previous manifestation, he might have hung off the safety issue simply to avoid the darts now being thrown at him.

He would have held the same beliefs but been held back from expressing them by the "me-too" attitude to whatever the Government might have said was the prevailing attitude.

John Howard would never take a Beazley-led Labor for granted, and now has to size up a familiar opponent more prepared to take risks.