Kim Beazley made another good call today. In the wake of a 50/50 newspoll a few commentators in The Oz were saying that Labor should reshuffle their front bench before the campaigning for next year's election gets really serious (as if it wasn't already!). They even mooted a potential leadership challenge coming from Rudd and Gillard!
Kim, quite rightly, pointed out that oppositions don't benefit from front bench re-shuffles in the same way governments do. What he didn't say (thankfully) is that Labor has had the government on the run for most of the last year. Why on earth would they "shake things up" now? The punches are just now starting to connect, Beazley is looking stronger than he has in years and his front bench team seems to be well coordinated. There is no chance of a leadership spill before the election, especially from Rudd or Gillard as neither of them are that dumb.
Weird, I'm spruiking for Kim, normally I'm knocking him down.
Update: Bryan at Ozpolitics is a bit suss on The Australian's Labor re-shuffle campaign as well.
Update 2: Aussie Bob at Surfdom looks at the figures of the newspoll and hammers the interpretation given in The Oz. He puts to rest the idea that Beazley's personal polling is bad.
