National Textiles was an accident just waiting to happen. The defect lies in Howard's approach to politics. His opponent, Beazley, heading towards his fifth year as ALP leader, has failed to tell the Labor Party or the country what his leadership represents and what direction he plans for Australia's future. Labor seems to be locked into a defensive mind-set, so confident it can win the next election on Howard's flaws that it seems incapable, so far, of devising bold new policy. This is political fraud on a grand scale.
Globalisation presents harsh new problems for political leaders.
But Howard and Beazley are failing the test. Australia's situation is bizarre. We enjoy our strongest economic expansion of the century. We have outpaced the US miracle. Yet any visitor touched by the media-driven political debate in the past few weeks would conclude only that Australia is in the depths of a national crisis.