If he becomes prime minister, Kim Beazley said yesterday that he won’t have any friends:

When you are prime minister of this nation, you govern dispassionately for all the people … You have no friends to have favours done them. No friends. Not friends in good odour or bad odour, none. You govern for the Australian people and no one else … It just happens to be the case when you’ve got a job like mine, your friends [are] right at the back of the queue of people you talk to.

No friends at all? Well maybe a few …

America: “You have to be … able to sit down with your friend and [tell] him when you think he’s doing something wrong,” Beazley told the National Press Club yesterday.

Rupert Murdoch: The media baron’s speech about Australia-US relations this week was “superb,” said Beazley yesterday. “It was a clarion call, on a very important occasion, to the Australian people”.

The trade unions: “I will always be your friend and ally,” Beazley told the ACTU Congress in October.

Whatever he says, even Kim Beazley knows you gotta have friends.