JOHNNY GOING NOWHERE

Well hasn’t it hit the fan. Just look at the weekend newspaper headlines. And again today.

PM. I won’t make way for Costello. Howard digs in, Costello blows up. Costello fury at Howard. Costello’s fury fuels Libs’ fire.

Costello ready to fight for top job. No he’s not. First of all, he doesn’t have the numbers. And he doesn’t have public support. And, his opponents say he doesn’t have the “bottle” as the politicians say. Or the “Ticker” as John Howard would say. As he said about Kim Beazley.

Remember, Peter Costello could have put his hand up and got the job as Opposition Leader after the John Hewson disaster when he lost the “unlosable” election. He was party deputy but he didn’t. Talk about “no guts, no glory”. Instead they elected Alexander Downer. And it was a disaster.

Now the Treasurer is complaining because John Howard won’t hand over the keys to The Lodge and won’t even give a date for a future handover.

What started all this is that Howard, in several newspaper interviews in Athens, virtually said: “I’m not going anywhere”.

He did boast – and some call it hubris – that he had beaten Kim Beazley twice at Federal elections and wanted to do it a third time. He wanted to go an election that if won would a Menzies-style fifth term.

But he also aimed his guns at the man who would be king. In a few days we will see Peter Costello hand down his tenth Budget. John Howard, in Athens, either churlishly, or mischievously, or calculatingly, pointed out that PMs also had Budget input and, if you counted his time as Malcolm Fraser’s Treasurer, then this was his 16th Budget.

Guns are being fired across the bows here. But they are pop guns. Peter Costello is between a rock and a hard place. He desperately wants the top job and he probably believes there was some sort of agreement for a smooth handover from Howard. Not as watertight as the Hawke-Keating Kirribilli Agreement. And Hawke reneged on that.

But what does he do? Challenge a man who has won four elections on the trot and to whom Liberal members in marginal seats arte eternally grateful? Bide his time for four more years? Or give up the consuming ambition and go into a high-paying corporate life? His heart and mind have been churning over the weekend.

Monday, May 2, 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2005