Battle for power down under
The Australians pride themselves on being – the lucky country – god’s own country and ‘Best bloody place on earth, bar none, strewth’. But if you’re a politician it can be a mean place to live.
In the last Australian election in October 2004 it was widely held that the young up and coming opposition leader Mark Latham would take the prime ministership away from John Howard, the then (and still now) PM, until a few months before the poll Mr. Latham went into decline on a series of spectacular errors of judgement with foreign policy and serious personal issues which lost him the election.
The Australians are a pragmatic lot and decided that they’d vote for John Howard on the basis that there was an oft’ and openly discussed ‘agreement’ that Mr. Howard would step down some time after the election and allow his Finance Minister, Peter Costello to step into the position. Costello had been buttering the election with a series of tax cuts (though still high by ‘Anglo-Saxon’ terms) and expected to waltz into power with little problem.
Well now it’s all gone horribly wrong.
Mr. Costello (much like Gordon Brown in the UK) started to get very impatient, and has now started the succession process himself by making (or through his chums) a very public series of accusations that Mr. Howard has reneged on the deal.
Mr. Howard has said that – There was a discussion yesterday and I have indicated that the leadership of the party is something that is determined by the views of the parliamentary party and that remains my position – he then went on to say – Let me make it quite clear no agreement was entered into between me and Mr. Costello about the future.
So what’s going on? Well it seems that like all great leaders, Mr. Howard has just found it difficult to let go (Tony Blair take note). At the same time, once promising protégés have a habit of disappointing, often because they’re too keen to succeed. Mr. Costello seems to have fallen foul of this problem.
Howard is without a doubt a world-class statesman; he has put Australia very much in the center stage in Asia and also in Europe and USA with his strong show of support for Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush.
Previous politicians have tended to favour cronyism and introspective isolationist policies and squandered the rich resources Australia offers its people.
John Howard should go, but his ‘heir apparent’ has now shown himself to be, quite unstatesman like and more like the Australian politicos of old
Sources
Leadership feud ‘hurt’ Aus govt News24
Costello ‘should do a Keating’ News.com.au