For someone who’s going nowhere,
Queensland Premier Peter Beattie isn’t just enjoying a very high
profile at the moment – just look at this Kerry-Anne Walsh piece in
yesterday’s Sun-Herald or Bill Shorten’s chat with Laurie Oakes on Sunday – but, media tart that he is, he’s also getting out himself.

He turned up on Radio National Breakfast
this morning, chatting to Fran Kelly – even though just minutes before,
Michelle Grattan had stuck a spoke in the wheel of the
Beattie-for-Canberra bandwagon by declaring: “The idea that you can
just parachute someone in is pie in the sky.”

There may be other problems. Queensland politics is murky – and has been for a long, long time.

I
don’t want to cheese Beattie off any further, but it’s been fascinating
how the old stories that he deliberately let the work of the Fitzgerald
Royal Commission unravel by neutering the Crime Misconduct Commission
have all been coming out again, at the same time as the talk that
Premier Pete could be destined for greater things.