It's too early to say if Morris Iemma will be Barry Unsworth revisited, but, on the surface the situation is similar. A long standing NSW state premier resigns at his own time and on his own terms, and gets replaced by the Labor party machine's candidate.
For those too young to remember, Unsworth was elected (anointed?) leader in 1986 after Nevile Wran retired mid term. He took over a government in decline, and lost the following election by a landslide. The feeling this time round is much the same.
I take my hat off to Bob Carr. In my lifetime, he's only the fourth Australian political leader to retire on his own terms. The other three were Henry Bolte, Robert Menzies and the previously mentioned Wran. All the others either resigned under a cloud or for health reasons, were replaced by their own party, or lost an election. Just shows how addictive the power game really is.
Update: Apparently Sir Charles Court, Premier of Western Australia, resigned at his own time, according to this morning's paper. I'm not sure of the exact circumstances in which he left office, a quick Google didn't find the answer, only that he departed in 1982. So that makes five leaders in 50 years to choose their own time to leave. Not many.
The big difference that I can see was that the Opposition had a reasonable alternative candidate in Greiner. Who turned out to be a reasonable Premier until the indiscretion... I don't know if Broggers is as well thought of in NSW. But then I know Iemma isn't as well thought of as Unsworth was. As you say, Iemma who????
Maybe he'll do better than Unsworth despite being not so fancied. Who knows? I just wonder if the faceless Labor machine men at party HQ are savvy enough to pick a political winner. Their record's not so good in this situation.
Broggers is not well thought of, but Carr has previously proven that you don't need to be a vote-winner of a leader to win government.
The biggest worry from a Labor point of view at this stage is that Iemma just doesn't have the media in the palm of his hand like Carr did. I saw a live switch to Iemma this afternoon on Channel Ten news and his performance was on the excruciating side of okay. Repeated himself a lot and gave the impression that he didn't really know what to say.