Kim Beazley

He managed it in 1996 but then there was a period of scrabbling around but then it's crystallised in 2001 and many of those ingredients are coming together by the beginning of the 21st century for Howard.

Yeah, and psychologically it's critical for both sides then in setting up what happens after that 2001 election because Kim Beazley as the Labor leader has done better than he expected to do in 1998.

He's won the popular vote.

He's come close but hasn't won.

And she's a published author and she's been a speechwriter.

She'd been a speechwriter for Kim Beazley and Paul Keating and she'd worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs.

And she took me under her wing and really introduced me to a lot of the great novels of the 19th, 20th century.

Which ones? Oh, gosh.

That will drag us in no matter what.

The issue this week, what's Kim Beazley's take on fraught US relations, security threats and the great change in Australian politics? Hello, I'm Tim Lester.

Welcome to The Issue.

Across four decades, Kim Beazley was a force here in Canberra, one of our longest-serving Defence Ministers.

It earned him his nickname, Bomber.

As Labor leader John Howard twice beat him, Howard himself would call Beazley the greatest Labor Prime Minister Australia never had.

And then both sides of politics applauded his work as ambassador in Washington during the Obama years.

Today, Kim Beazley is tackling the issue.

So you inspired him?

Well, Kim Beazley claims he might have.

And Kim Beazley at the time told me afterwards once he was doing his MAGA routine that we should have sued.

Trump for an IP violation, a breach, a copyright breach, and that the dollars that we would have received off him would have probably balanced the federal budget.

Sorry, that's the gag.

Look, I agree.

This would not happen if the Minister or the Prime Minister were to have a quiet word in the ear of Kim Beazley, the Council Chair.

Now, I know Kim Beazley well.

He's a very decent man.

He and I have had discussions about this.

He and I differ on this matter.

But in the end, Kim Beazley and the Council will do what the Minister and the Prime Minister would like.

And both the Minister and the Prime Minister, I think, have a duty to our country.

I don't know whether you're old enough to remember him, but he was the member for Evans and he was the head of the um, Presbyterian church, I think in Sydney.

Um, and he got together with Kim Beasley senior, um, and encouraged me to take an interest in an organization called moral rearmament.

They were in, um, Geneva or outside of Geneva, they would meet there regularly and they would bring people together to talk about how you resolve issues that may enable people to live together.

They played a particularly important part in South Africa in advance of the first democratic elections in South Africa.

The Australian War Memorial now wants the ABC to remove the program from its online platforms.

War Memorial Council Chair Kim Beazley says Four Corners has unfairly damaged the memorial's reputation.

However, the ABC is refusing to budge.

In its response to the media watchdog, the public broadcaster says it's standing behind its journalist.