Costello Is Not A True Team Player

by Mike Steketee - The Australian

"Whatever my own ambitions were, the party was always greater than them. I think that's been a big part of our success over the last 10 years."

That was Peter Costello doing his riff on loyalty when he spoke to Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen last year for their recently published Howard biography. The Treasurer was drawing a contrast with the destructive rivalry between John Howard and Andrew Peacock in Opposition during the 1980s.

But what Costello really was doing was rationalising his lack of courage. He has never had the bottle to act on his beliefs - expressed publicly, semi-publicly and privately at every opportunity - that he is the future of the party, that he is the one to deliver future election victories. If Costello were fair dinkum about Howard's time having passed and wanting to put the party first, his version of loyalty would have compelled him to take on Howard.

What sort of loyalty is it to lay a long trail of explosive political devices, now stretching back almost 10 years, hoping at some point they would blow up Howard's leadership?

He was serving not the party's interests but his own when, in 1998, he said that people often raised the leadership with him, going on to suggest that Howard owed him because he had helped him become leader. Where was his loyalty to the party when he said the following year that he had only two or three budgets left in him?

What about when Howard changed his mind about considering his future when he turned 64 in 2003 and Costello threw back at him his own words when Howard was deputy to Peacock: that, with his track record of loyalty, he was under no obligation to rule out a leadership challenge. Or when last year he described as "entirely accurate" the note kept by former Liberal frontbencher Ian McLachlan of the meeting he attended in 1994 when Howard told Costello he intended to serve only 1 1/2 terms as prime minister, then hand over to Costello.

Or his denigration in the Howard biography of Howard as a failure as a reformer and treasurer in the Fraser government. Or his long dinner with three journalists in 2005 when he indulged his Paul Keating fantasy and, according to their accounts, talked about destroying Howard's leadership from the back bench if he did not step down by April the following year.

If these are examples of loyalty, of putting the party's interests ahead of his own, then Liberals will be hoping they are spared his disloyalty. Costello supporters argue that he never had the numbers in the partyroom to mount a challenge. But by drawing the parallel with Keating, who challenged Bob Hawke in 1991, lost and went to the back bench before challenging again, Costello acknowledged that you don't get the numbers by making idle threats but by becoming an active alternative willing to put your future on the line.

Despite all the slights and dishonourable conduct that Costello feels he has suffered at Howard's hands, he has never had the bottle to do as Keating did, marching into Hawke's office to tell him, in those immortal words: "I'm going to go you, Bob."

If he had acted on his reported threat to go to the back bench, Howard would have been weakened and Costello would have been in a much better position to challenge when Howard fell from political grace following Kevin Rudd's ascension to the Labor leadership. But Costello has been willing only to feint, not strike; to indulge his frustrations but then retreat behind denials and fake avowals of loyalty.

Costello's behaviour raises wider questions about his ticker.

He complained in the Howard biography about having to foot the bill for Howard's spending sprees before elections. But the treasurer's job is to be the guardian of good policy and the public purse. It is a role in which Costello has been conspicuously unsuccessful, certainly in election years.

Now Howard's standing is at a low point but Costello has left it too late to strike. The person who from the time he entered parliament in 1990 had leadership written all over him passed up not one but two opportunities in Opposition to take the position: in 1994 when he deferred to Alexander Downer and the following year when he failed to contest it against Howard.

If his frustrated ambition has been on display since, he has only himself to blame.

In the increasingly unlikely event that he becomes prime minister, his record does not suggest he would deliver policy boldness. If the Government loses this year's election, the question becomes whether Costello has the stomach for the job of Opposition leader, the hardest in politics and all the harder in the first term or two after an election loss.

This is not to suggest that Howard has acted honourably over the leadership. He has kept Costello at bay by misleading and out-manoeuvring him, stringing him along with promises - such as considering standing down after 1 1/2 terms and thinking about his future when he turned 64 - that Costello took as binding but which Howard never showed any sign of fulfilling.

Conceivably, Costello could have given the Government a new lease of life if he had been willing to carry through on the bravado he displayed at dinner with journalists in 1995. Yes, he would have caused the Government some damage in the process of trying to tear down Howard. True, he has never been popular with voters. But the dynamics change dramatically when the leadership speculation turns into an actual contest. The same applies when a treasurer becomes prime minister. Keating proved the point because, before he challenged, he was in the same position as Costello now. He managed to win an election in 1993 in the wake of a recession, albeit with some help from John Hewson and his promise of a GST and to tear up Medicare.

The journalistic ethics of reporting Costello's off-the-record dinner conversations are dubious. The three journalists involved were provoked into it by Costello's denial that in 2005 he had made the comments about Howard's leadership. But Costello couched his responses mainly in terms of what he had said to supporters rather than to journalists. This is an example of Costello being tricky, just as he has been for years in his surreptitious attempts to plant incendiary devices under Howard's leadership. But it does not justify journalists breaching confidences, which are the lifeblood of political reporting.

Still, Costello has little reason to be surprised that he has reaped what he has sown. When it comes to rhetoric, no one plays his politics harder. It is just that his actions have never matched his words.