The Age is reporting that Kim Beazley is being tipped as the next Governor-General, with Michael Jeffery due to retire in a few months. What the? We’ve had two atrocious conservative Governor-Generals in a row with former archbishop Peter Hollingworth and then former soldier Jeffery, so you’d think Labor would try and put up a more unimpeachable candidate for the office. But if that story is correct, they’re going to repeat what they did with Bill Hayden in the 1980s and appoint an undistinguished - and again, male - former Labor leader to the office.
This is the perfect chance for Labor to show some remotely progressive credentials and finally appoint our first woman Governor-General. There’s plenty of people who’d be great for the role - off the top of my head, say, Elizabeth Evatt or Mary Gaudron from the judiciary, or scientist Fiona Wood, or going all-out and appointing someone like Aboriginal academic Jackie Huggins. Beazley would be such a damned waste.
Something I find especially odd about this is that both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are suggested to be not all that supportive of appointing Beazley, but Senator John Faulkner, of all people, seems to be going all-out to get him appointed. Why in hades is the father of Labor’s left faction trying so hard to get a mediocre politician from the party’s right appointed as Governor-General?
I vote for Jackie Higgins!
Now we have settled that, who do we tell to make it happen?
Alas, I have no idea…
Apparently it isn’t going to be Beazley now, though, which is certainly something.
Hehe, Beazly is on the record saying he’d like to write the next defence white paper.
To quote Bob Hawke, what Beazly would really like is a little war somewhere (presumably so he can go and play with all the ‘toys’)!
[…] a similarly conservative - if not quite so obnoxious - choice from Rudd, in the vein of the earlier rumors about appointing former Labor leader Kim Beazley, for gods […]