You can take the dog out of the fight – but sometimes you need to kick him before he gets the message

Sorry to all the people out there who don’t care about politics – another story in the Sydney Morning Herald has just grabbed my attention. Kim Beazley has guts. There’s no denying it. You can’t – they’re there in plain sight. He’s also got heart. Obviously or he’d be dead. Ok, so he’s courageous. Lion like. He’s willing to go through defeat and bounce back (I imagine literally as well as figuratively). You’d think after losing two elections to a midget with funny eyebrows that big Kim would have got the message. The Australian public are less inclined to have him leading the country than a man who has demonstratably misinformed the public on a major international crisis (Iraq), potentially misinformed the public on the conduct of a national governmental body (AWB) and deliberately misinformed the public on the refugee issue (the children overboard fiasco).

“I want to face John Howard because … when you do things like wreck the industrial relations system, and make people’s lives insecure, you answer for it,” he said of the man who has twice beaten him.

It seems Big Kim hasn’t learned his lesson after all. He’s come out calling for Howard to stay in the top job till the next election (due in a year and a half). There’s no denying that Kim Beazley is an intelligent man. He’s a Rhodes Scholar. He’s articulate, eloquent, erudite and boring. He’s the most boring man ever interviewed on TV. He misses out on golden opportunities to engage with the Howard government on controversial issues. He’s inept. He has the charisma of a piece of cardboard. But he thinks the industrial relations reforms will be enough to sweep John Howard out of office. The fact is, when voters are faced with a choice between an idiot and a moron or a boring man, and a slightly less boring man with a voice, eyebrows and glasses that can be easily lampooned by cartoonists – they’ll choose the incumbent every time.

Unlike selectors for next week’s State of Origin – both Queensland and New South Wales have given their teams from last year a significant overhaul.