Howard's Missed Opportunity

Tony Walker - Financial Review

Prime Minister John Howard has missed an opportunity to make an interesting appointment to the governor-generalship.

Howard has selected someone who is, on the face of it, utterly worthy, highly traditional and unlikely to express a point that diverges one millimetre from accepted conservative orthodoxy on any subject under the sun.

In other words, what we have here is a typical Howard appointment to a largely ceremonial office. This "man of the people and for the people" stuff is hogwash.

Howard's calculation would have been quite simple: will the latest - possibly last - vice-regal occupant of Yarralumla (the removalist's costs will not be great since Jeffery already lives in the suburb) be someone who will be largely seen, but not heard except mouthing the sort of platitudes that might not be out of place in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta?

Now, it might be understandable in view of his recent experience with Peter Hollingworth that Howard should have scoured the country for a candidate who is so completely unexceptional that he makes the Pope seem controversial; but this is another opportunity missed.

Howard made a mistake when he appointed Hollingworth to replace William Deane. He is not about to take the slightest chance of another folly. Indeed, he can be about as sure as anyone can be about anything that Jeffery will be so uncontroversial that the possibility of even the slightest zephyr from Yarralumla has all but been neutralised.

Of course, Jeffery serves the useful purpose for Howard politically of reminding people of our debt to the military. In Howard's mind no doubt his appointment connects the dots between a war recently fought and public office. How convenient!

None of this should be read as criticism of Jeffery per se. It is not his fault he has been dragooned into the governor-generalship to serve out Hollingworth's interrupted term. No-one can say he is a dud.

From all accounts he served an unexceptional term as governor of Western Australia following a successful military career. His Military Cross for valour in Vietnam was a particularly good one.

But Howard has again forsworn the chance of appointing a woman. It is an opportunity he could have taken, not for the politically correct sake of doing so, but simply because it is hard to believe that among the country's millions of women there is not one who measures up.

Of course, in all of this it would have been desirable if the process was more transparent. That would be a singular advantage of a republic, whatever model is chosen.