By Kerry-Anne Walsh Posted Fri Aug 9, 2013

Photo: Peter Beattie has variously described Kevin Rudd as an arch media manipulator and a saboteur. (AAP: Aman Sharma)

Labor pinning its Sunshine State hopes on the unquantifiable star power of a 60-year-old former premier of Ruddland, who thinks little of his esteemed leader, is ballsy, writes Kerry-Anne Walsh.

It's a strange beast, this New Labor. Yesterday's endorsement of former Queensland premier Peter Beattie as the bumped-in candidate for the Queensland seat of Forde is yet another example of how Rudd Labor's campaign slogan, A New Way, is a paradox wrapped around a contradiction.

Rudd unveiled his new paradigm (with sincere apologies to Rob Oakeshott) when he called the election. In his kick-off speech, he bemoaned the meaninglessness of the Opposition's three-word slogans, before revealing Labor's three-word slogan.

Since then, he's set about re-packaging and selling many policies of old Labor - that is, those of Julia Gillard's government such as the education reforms and the National Disability Insurance Scheme - and minting them as new after delicate female fingerprints had been erased.

Just before A New Way was announced, but in line with its philosophy, NSW Labor was decreed so poisonous it needed federal intervention. But at the same time, the head of the branch, Sam Dastyari, was recruited into the inner-prime ministerial sanctum and endorsed into a NSW Senate spot.

The latest spectacular example of A New Way, which promises an exciting future of ALP reform to return power to grassroots members, is to boot a pre-selected candidate in favour of a truly Old-Way former Queensland premier, Peter Beattie. There's nothing like a simple slogan to challenge voters' minds.

As he stood alongside a beaming Rudd yesterday when his candidacy for the Queensland seat of Forde was formally announced, Beattie - who doesn't even live in the electorate - had the good grace to look slightly uncomfortable.

Perhaps he was remembering the many times he'd pooh-poohed repeated suggestions he was sniffing around for a seat. Last April, he told the Australian Financial Review:

I don't really want to go back in, and I wouldn't. Not only are there no seats, I wouldn't do it.

Going back further, in June 2011 he told 7.30's Leigh Sales:

I have no interest in going back into politics and I am not interested in anything from the party other than for the party to perform, other than for the party to win.

And they're just two in a long and impressive list of instances when Beattie all but pleaded "Look at me, look at me!" which was followed quickly by "Hey, whatcha lookin' at?"

Maybe his initially sombre demeanour as he stood by Rudd was because he was quietly contemplating his nine-year tenure as Queensland premier, which started solidly then started fraying at the seams.

In his last budget before flicking the hospital pass to Anna Bligh in September 2007, it was revealed that state debt would rise considerably. Two years later, Queensland lost its AAA credit rating. Gordon Nuttall, a minister in the Beattie government, was jailed for corruption in 2009, while Bill D'arcy, a Labor MP under Beattie's watch, was jailed for sex offences. Most of a $10 billion desalination and recycling plant for south-east Queensland ended up being mothballed.

Trains purchased by his government unfortunately didn't fit through tunnels, and Beattie's electricity reforms have seen household electricity bills skyrocket. That's another reason Beattie could have looked a little sheepish by Rudd's side: in his first National Press Club address, re-minted Rudd nominated energy prices for households as one of his primary targets of attack.

But perhaps Beattie's most reflective moments, before the cheering and cheerios started after the Queensland political pair stepped out of the parallel universe in which they'd clearly held their press conference, were about the many times he'd derided the man who'd recruited him to federal candidacy.

Rudd lacked political judgment; backflipped on policies; bungled the home insulation scheme; and failed to listen to advice, Beattie wrote in his columns in The Australian and said on radio and TV. In his book Confessions of a Faceless Man, Paul Howes wrote:

[Peter Beattie] told me plainly that 'that bloke [Rudd] stuffed up the Goss government, stuffed up his own government and during the [2010] election did his best to stuff up Julia's government.  No one should ever forget the damage that he has done.

In many columns for The Australian, Beattie variously described Rudd as an arch media manipulator, a saboteur, and someone who put personal ambition ahead of public interest. Many variations on the theme of being just a tad self-interested and not acting in the best interests of the Labor party were earnestly penned during the time Rudd and his forces were stalking Gillard, whom Beattie considered "brilliant".

The former Queensland Premier even went so far as to call for Rudd to bugger off out of parliament, after what he considered his treacherous undermining of Gillard.

One of Beattie's most pungent columns was written on September 17, 2011, as yet another wannabe Rudd leadership challenge against Gillard was being promoted through the media. Beattie directly appealed to the undeclared challenger:

If you did make a return to the prime ministership by removing Julia, it would be akin to Napoleon's 100 glory days after his return from exile, when he was defeated at Waterloo by Wellington. Napoleon's return was short-lived but his exile to St Helena in the South Atlantic was permanent, and he finally died at the hands of a trusted lieutenant through arsenic poisoning.

Being slain at the hands of trusted lieutenants - whether poisoned, stabbed or any other violent imagery deployed these days - isn't a novelty in modern Labor. And Rudd, despite the presentation of cheesy unity his federal colleagues are man- and woman-fully presenting, isn't immune from any such attack, no matter his success or failure at the election. He's still as disliked and mistrusted within the party as he ever was. Long-serving and trusted staffers are running for the hills rather than working on the campaign.

Labor pinning its Sunshine State hopes on Rudd's home-grown wattage being enhanced by harnessing the unquantifiable star power of the 60-year-old former premier of Ruddland, who thinks little of his esteemed leader, is indeed ballsy.

It may well pay off, if Queenslanders think all their Christmases have come at once to have two recycled leaders, both renowned media tarts, zipping about the hustings then zipping down to Canberra to rule the country.

But success of the strategy will depend on whether voters buy this audacious move as a plank of Labor's New Way forward, or a Back to the Future re-run they'd rather not watch again.

Kerry-Anne Walsh worked in the federal parliamentary press gallery for 25 years until late 2009. She is the author of The Stalking of Julia Gillard, released on July 2. View her full profile here.

Beattie the unlikely face of Labor's New Way - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)