Retirement Not Quite Risk-Free

by Peter van Onselen - The Australian

John Howard will not contest the next election. He is planning his retirement. Not because Piers Akerman of Sydney newspaper The Daily Telegraph says so but because Howard finally believes Peter Costello won't lose the next election. Howard doesn't take the voters for granted. Experience has taught him how tough it is to win elections. That is why he doesn't call early elections: why fight an election if you don't have to?

With the 2006 budget and its largesse behind us, Howard is convinced his party has enough political capital in the bank to win the next election. Cuts to superannuation taxes will benefit millions of Australians as they approach retirement. With fertility rates declining, a significant proportion of voters will be retirees. Throw in across-the-board tax cuts with the expectation of more to come next year and Howard is feeling more relaxed and comfortable about ongoing Coalition dominance in the federal sphere.

The stars have therefore aligned for a Howard departure. Or at least he thinks they have. But Howard may be underestimating what will be a hungry ALP machine. With Howard nothing more than a distant memory, Labor will be emboldened in the lead-up to the next election. And with unpopular industrial relations reforms at centre stage, Labor has the issue it needs to win an election, particularly given the man who introduced them will have cut and run, leaving the explaining to the significantly more smug, and arguably not as committed, Costello.

Once the Coalition won its Senate majority in 2004, Howard's departure was bound to be tempered by his trust of Costello's election-winning abilities. The worst of all possible outcomes for Howard (short of losing an election himself) would be for Costello to go down to Labor and for Kim Beazley to honour his commitment to rip up the IR reforms. Howard is a pragmatic politician willing to compromise to remain in power, but IR reform has been a 30-year political prize. Losing it to a man he twice beat could lurch Howard towards Paul Keating's post-prime ministerial bitterness.

So leaving is a risk. But he is also approaching 70. Even someone who enjoys politics as much as Howard would like to take up a traditional retirement to spend more time with the family and a good book.


Peter van Onselen, a lecturer in politics at Edith Cowan University in Perth, is co-writing a biography of John Howard.