Here to stay?
For months, the conventional Canberra wisdom has been John Howard will retire in March — on a high, after ten years in the top job. By May next year, the expectation is that Peter Costello would be Prime Minister. The strongest evidence has been Howard’s desire to get the industrial relations and anti-terror legislation through the Parliament before Christmas.
Yesterday, on channel Nine’s Sunday Program, Howard made these remarks,
LAURIE OAKES: What about your Government? Can we expect in the budget next May that you will perhaps do what Kim Beazley says should be done?
JOHN HOWARD: Oh it’s a little early to be talking about the budget, but I’m sure in the weeks ahead Peter Costello and I will be discussing these matters.
LAURIE OAKES: Will Mr Costello be bringing down that budget?
JOHN HOWARD: Laurie, another one of your trick questions. The Treasurer will be bringing down the budget, and I think Peter Costello’s been the best Treasurer this country’s ever had.
LAURIE OAKES: There are rumours of course that a reshuffle is in the wind, and that Robert Hill will be stepping down to go overseas. Is that true?
JOHN HOWARD: Laurie, there are always rumours and I never respond, as you know, to those sorts of rumours. I’d spend a lot of time doing so, so I decided a long time ago not to respond to them.
The remarks have been interpreted by Mark Metherell and Michelle Grattan as implying the Prime Minister would stay on to May, at least.
More intriguing is the speculation of a Cabinet reshuffle. If Howard is planning a reshuffle, it is probably the best evidence yet he plans to stay on and fight the next election. If he were planning to retire, the decent thing would be to leave the make-up of the ministry to his successor.
Team Costello’s number one ticket holder, Glenn Milne, chose not to comment on yesterday’s developments in his regular Monday column at the Oz. Instead he concentrated on the Coalition’s troubles with IR reform and those folksy adverts. Milne’s piece included a long quote from the 15 July issue of Workers Online, at the heart of which was,
“Stripped of the fluff, the Prime Minister’s pitch appears to be ‘If we are going to compete with China and India, then you will have to give up rights and drop your wages’. All of a sudden he is on our turf and, as the polls are showing, it is not a place he wants to be.
“All of which means two things at this early stage of the campaign: Howard is taking a major political risk in pushing through these laws and, finally, Labor has an issue where they can play on their home ground.”
I am not so sure. Once the IR legislation is through the Parliament, I suspect it will have minimal impact on wages and conditions of most workers in the short to medium term. The crunch point will be the next recession. If the Australian economy continues as it has since 1991, campaigning in 2007 on IR laws passed in 2005 would be a lot like campaigning against the GST in 2001: not a winner for Labor.
Meanwhile, Beazley has kicked an own goal with the anti-terror laws and his proposal to gaol those responsible for “hate books and violent preaching”. Kim at the Purple Rodeo saw it in these terms,
Beazley is the prisoner of his past. Unwilling just to oppose the laws (for fear of being seen as a small target driven opportunist) on the defensible grounds of process, lack of proportion and illiberal implication, he’s tried to exorcise another ghost - he who has no ticker - by trying to thump his chest and look tough on terror. A terrible day for the ALP. Shaun Carney is dead right - if Labor wins the next election, it’ll have a lot more to do with union grassroots campaigning than the uninspirational and tactically clueless shambles of an Opposition we have to put up with.
And with an Opposition like that, why wouldn’t the PM want to stay on for another three years?