Labor’s nightmare: if not Gillard, then who?

I mean, which of the following candidates, all flawed, would you pick as Labor’s leader?

My take - Julie Bishop is charming, pragmatic and no inner-city ideologue. I have reason to suspect that as a Catholic she has a healthy disdain for the broadsheet commentariat, so strongly anti-Christian generally and anti-Catholic particularly. She, too, could steer Labor back into love with the voters of the outer suburbs. But she could do with more personal discipline, and still seems too young and lacking in gravitas. And while she was not the author of the Murray Darling water plan debacle, it exploded while she was alive and has yet to be resolved.

I like Robert Menzies, particularly for being imperturbable and willing to front up to media critics, but who out there knows him? And of those who know him, who thinks he’s more than a smooth-tongued Labor Right man from NSW - a brand not in high fashion? Still, he might be a man who’d turn Labor away from its disastrous flirtation with the ABC crowd and back to the many more (and more lovable) Labor voters in talkback land.

Tony Abbott is the leader of the Coalition and seems entirely uninterested in the job of Labor leader. This lack of ambition may come back to haunt Labor should he be chosen.






Neytiri has a reputation among Canberra journalists of being the Government’s Miss Fixit, but what has she actually repaired? Off-puttingly blue in appearance and demeanour, and with her ACTU ties a disadvantage, she’s now seeing her reputation fall.

So I ask again, if not Gillard, then who?

See the problem?