My take on this is that Beazley, although a really straight good bloke, never had a chance of winning. He never had the political smarts to outwit the Nat/Libs, so the thread becomes moot.
Almost like a "sealion" thread.
You're wrong.
Howard was all but gone in 2007 thanks to his disintegrating hold on his party (the APEC leadership debacle), his unpopular labour market deregulation, and the fact interest rates had risen continuously since his reelection in 2004 on the promise of "interest rates will always be lower under us
than under Labor." Plus the plain old political fatigue of a government that had been in office for more than a decade.
Stating this thread's hypothetical to be a 'sealion' type event is a bizarre and n00bish thing to write.
If we are looking for a Beazely Premiership
Hah, "Beazley Premiership." I've often wondered if he might have been parachuted into state parliament if he'd lost his federal seat in '96, thence to become the next Western Australian Labor premier instead of Geoff Gallop. But that's just my interest in the politics of this country asserting itself.
Meanwhile, in the Australia of 2007 John Howard faced a PR disaster in the failed challenge that Peter Costello launched just a few months out from the election. Said challenge would still have happened if Beazley had retained the leadership of the Opposition IMO. In fact Costello is probably more likely to go hard at removing Howard from office if he thinks he 'only' has to face Beazley at the polls instead of a fresh new political star.
Very Possible Scenario: Peter Costello in early 2007 openly calls for a partyroom leadership spill, he doesn't bother with any of this nonsense about getting the party elders/the conservative commentariat to pressure Howard into retiring voluntarily as he did in OT. He decides on crash or crash through.
And he looses the ballot for leadership, naturally, as the Liberal Party room is dominated by MPs elected under PM Howard who are convinced he's an electoral King Midas while Costello is electoral death. The member for Higgins then goes to the backbench.
You can argue this makes the election easier for Howard to fight, but that would only be the case if Peter Costello decides to quit politics altogether. My guess, which is supported by the man's history on the front bench, is that Costello always had a hope for the top job as long as the Coalition retained office, that he wouldn't quit parliament if there appeared to be a reasonable chance of Labor losing the election. Which, as far as the entire federal Coalition of 2007 was concerned, there would appear to be if Kim Beazley was the ALP's leader that year...
You see the vicious circle here for the Libs if they think they're still in with a chance against Beazley Labor? It actually raises the possibility of the Liberal leadership tensions being at their worst for the longest time possible, with an ex-treasurer being constantly accused of undermining his PM from the backbenches. This is exactly the kind of thing that couldn't have happened with a seemingly all-powerful new Opposition leader Kevin Rudd on the scene. It can only happen if 'poor, hapless' Kimbo is the Howard government's chief adversary.
That hypothetical aside, euromellows has already made the case for the polling, I've made the case for the actual political landscape as it was, not some simplistic impression of what people
reckon the politics of 2007 were about (ala all this nonsense about an Australia circa 2007 free of the hugely unpopular Workchoices legislation, and the interest rate rises, both of which are impossible to butterfly away with a PoD set in late 2006 where Rudd doesn't challenge Beazley for the leadership).
Being from WA also placed him at a severe disadvantage when up against the Government under Howard. Howard would often time important announcements so that they would appear in the press on a late Thursday or Friday afternoon. Those were the times when Kim was flying home to his electorate for the weekend. He'd consequently be on the backfoot and several hours behind the government in reacting to those pronouncements.
How do you know this context without actually realising Beazley moved his family to Sydney for his second stint as federal Opposition leader?
In fact that's the one thing that marked him as understanding the gravity of the situation, that this was his last chance, that it was almost a case of no-more-Mr-Nice-Guy when it came to him fulfilling the NSW's ALP Right's support for him as their favourite for the prime ministership. He had to deliver. (Of course being Mr Nice Guy was the way he was to win over the general electorate. That was the personality attribute that allowed him to make his seat in suburban Perth safe for Labor despite almost getting tossed out in the anti-Keating landslide, a personal appeal he then used to beat Howard in every televised election debate they fought in 1998 and 2001.)
Depending on whose at the Treasury, will dictate how the response the GFC goes... I think Beazley wouldn't do stupid things like the Mining Tax would be avoided
Dr Ken Henry is the Treasury secretary who in OTL managed the details of the response to the Global Financial Crisis
and wrote the report that advised the Labor government to create a national levy on mineral resources. Though admittedly his proposal was for a larger, more comprehensive tax than either the law Rudd designed or the one Julia Gillard amended.
But I'm sure you know that.
There, I've tried for an analysis with some meat on it, one where I distinguish between what I reckon happened, what I reckon could have happened, and what I believe can be identified as most likely having happened free of any of our collective 'reckoning'. I haven't relied on identifying Who Is Strong Because They Just Are Strong Regardless Of Circumstances .
Adopting Nate Silver's metric, all in all I rate Beazley's chances of winning that election, in percentage points, as somewhere between the low 50s and the high 60s. But Kevin Rudd was probably always going to be about 10 points higher on that curve. Hence Labor replacing Beazley with the member for Griffith a year out from the election in question--they were merely replacing a good thing with a sure thing.
Now, if Therese Rein, Rudd's wife, had been diagnosed with her illness in the second half of 2006, then it becomes almost certain that that leadership transition doesn't take place.