Never Underestimate Howard's Need To Win

by Mungo MacCallum - The Australian

So the latest Newspoll makes it 56-44, the best result for Labor in six years, with the Coalition primary vote below 40 per cent for the second poll running. And Kevin Rudd is breathing down John Howard's neck as preferred prime minister, with the lowest disapproval rating on record.

The battlefield, moreover, has suddenly changed: the war in Iraq and interest rates, issues that once favoured the Government, are now at best neutral, while headlines about Work Choices, climate change and David Hicks are giving the Opposition more ammunition by the day.

So has the political kryptonite finally caught up with our Man of Steel? Is the legendary Unflushable headed for the gurgler? Not, as they say in the classics, bloody likely.

Labor Party MPs may be chuffed by the latest polls, but none of them have yet been seen dancing in the streets. This is because all too many have been here before, poised for the victory that never came. The more numerate know that only a couple of months ago Labor was coasting along at 54-46, but not even all the intending Labor voters believed the figures; in a related poll more than 60per cent of the punters actually expected the Coalition to win.

Worse still, they appear to have been putting their money where their mouths are: the bookies, who in the past have proved infallible prophets, also have the numbers at 54-46, but in the Coalition's favour. Even with everything apparently running in their favour, the more hard-headed Ruddites are still exhibiting a well-founded pessimism.

All they have to do to confirm their fears is to look at the scoreboard. For the past three elections, Howard has looked down and out at the start of the year, immured in a morass of unfavourable publicity, unpopular policies and negative polls; yet every time he has somehow broken free with a single bound.

In 1998, the threat of his never-ever GST seemed set to panic voters back to Labor, but although Labor won the majority of votes, some well-targeted handouts, combined with carefully edited memories of Paul Keating, held the line in the marginal seats. At the start of 2001, things looked even worse: the effects of the GST, a blowout in petrol prices and a leaked memo from the Liberal Party president branding the Government as "mean and tricky" had Kim Beazley measuring up the Lodge for renovations. This time the carrots were bigger and brighter, and had probably done their work even before the Tampa appeared on the horizon and the bombers struck the twin towers.

In 2004, the fresh and unorthodox Mark Latham had Howard floundering for a few months before his unorthodoxy degenerated into political madness. But to make sure of things Howard all but emptied the coffers in an orgy of electoral bribery unmatched in Australian history.

It proved, as his opponents complained, that he would say anything, do anything, to get re-elected. So, with all the economic experts urging caution in 2007, has he the hide to put on a repeat performance if the contest seems too close for comfort? You better believe it. The circus is already under way: triple back-flips with pike and tuck, degree of difficulty 5.6. Climate change? Blood oath. Carbon trading? Of course. David Hicks? I'll give those dopey Yanks a bit of hurry up. And the dessert trolley will be around shortly.

Rudd has accused Howard of being an economic fundamentalist, a cold-hearted calculator in the tradition of Friedrich Hayek, Margaret Thatcher's mentor; and it is true that Work Choices is brutally tough on employees, reducing them to little more than units of input. But once those same workers move towards the polling booths, ideology goes out the window.

Howard's media boosters rightly scoff at the idea that he is any sort of Hayekian fundamentalist; once the campaign starts, money is hurled around with a profligacy that would make the most ardent Keynesian blanch. Housing grants, healthcare rebates, family allowances, middle-class welfare without limit. If you are a potentially swinging voter in a marginal seat, don't bother about Lotto - the big red ball arrives every three years on the dot.

Howard makes Labor's hard man, Graham ("Whatever It Takes") Richardson look like a wimp. There has never been a politician so determined to win, so frightened to lose.

One reason, of course, is that he has lost too often in the past. It is hard now to remember that Howard served his time in the wilderness, securing the leadership from Andrew Peacock only to lose the 1987 election (the Joh-for-PM fiasco) and then have Peacock snatch it back before what would have been his real chance in 1990. He then had to endure the humiliation of being passed over for John Hewson, once one of his own staffers, and finally, the ultimate mortification, for Alexander Downer.

At this point any normal man would have called it quits, but Howard fought on - not necessarily because he had any real hope of winning, but simply because he had nothing else to do. Politics and the power it can bring is everything to Howard; he lives it, breathes it, eats it and sweats it. From his first modest win in the NSW Young Liberals it has been an obsession amounting to monomania.

Life without it would be - well, what? A return to being an anonymous middle-ranking solicitor in a Wollstonecraft bungalow? That's a far cry from Kirribilli House. Howard is the first prime minister since Ben Chifley of whom it can be confidently said that he has enjoyed far more material success in politics than he ever would have in private enterprise.

But he is not in it for the money: he is in it to win, and he is prepared for any number of policy flips, tergiversations and downright fibs if that's what is needed. It is this determination, this single-minded focus, that makes him such a determined opponent.

And this time around there is an extra motive: a loss would seriously tarnish his place in the Liberal pantheon. From being Howard the Great Reformer, Howard the Invincible, he would become Howard the Selfish, the man who held on too long, the hog whose hubris cost a younger, fresher leader the chance to match Labor's generation change.

So it's really very simple: he must win, and that's all there is to it. And in spite of the polls, he's still got an awful lot going for him. The record says he'll win; the bookies say he'll win; and, most importantly, the punters say he'll win.

They've got to know him, and they've forgiven his foibles. He may be a lying rodent, but he's their lying rodent. And unless something pretty drastic happens, they're unlikely to desert him for a blow-in they've only just met.


Mungo MacCallum, a former Canberra correspondent for The Australian, Nation Review, the National Times, and The Age, is author of several political books, including Run, Johnny, Run: The Story of the 2004 Election (Duffy & Snellgrove, 2004).