Prominent Labor figure Peter Beattie believes former prime minister Bob Hawke should be drafted to help resolve the party’s leadership crisis.
Beattie believes Hawke could be the “circuit-breaker” required to settle the battle between Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the man she deposed, Kevin Rudd, once and for all.
“You’ve got to find a new approach and the only way to do that, in my view, is to get Bob Hawke to get both leaders in a room and have a discussion about how to resolve it,” the former Queensland premier told Sky News.
“And one of them has to actually accept the inevitable – that is, that they’re not going to be the leader.”
Speculation is mounting Labor may make the switch back to Rudd within days, while parliament is back for the final sitting fortnight before the September 14 election.
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Reports say Rudd now has the numbers to topple Gillard, but there will be no change until he has overwhelming support in the Labor caucus, which meets today.
Cabinet minister Craig Emerson rejected Beattie’s proposal.
“These matters are for caucus members,” he told Sky News.
Labor backbencher Graham Perrett said he had nothing but admiration for Hawke and Beattie, but believed it would be “totally inappropriate” to have someone intervene in the leadership.
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“The reality is we have an elected caucus, we have elected Labor MPs and senators – we control our destiny and always have,” the Queensland MP told reporters in Canberra.
Perrett said he was “rock solid” behind Gillard and thinks she still has the numbers in caucus, but he conceded some Labor MPs have begun to hang their heads in despair at the polls.
Asked if Gillard had any chance of winning in September, the MP said: “When there’s two dogs in a fight, there’s always a chance the underdog can win, that’s for sure.”
Perrett said some people in his electorate have told him the party should return to Rudd.
Key independent MP Tony Windsor described the Labor leadership crisis as just “a bit of a dust storm”.
“I think we’ll see the same prime minister at the end of next week that we’ve got today,” he told ABC radio.
The New England MP, who has an agreement with Gillard to support her minority government on the floor of parliament, believes Rudd won’t want to risk a Coalition no-confidence motion likely to be prompted by a leadership change.
