Transition or challenge, either way, bye bye Nelson
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“Real power cannot be given, it must be taken” was the tagline of The Godfather Part III. As a rule, it is best not to look to movie taglines for wisdom and life lessons, especially not from weak sequels, but there’s a certain truth to it beyond the macho posturing it embodies. While we breathlessly wait to be dripfed extracts from Peter Costello’s memoirs on the weekend, it seems his primary critique of Liberalism is its “cult of the leader” in contrast to Labor’s “cult of the party”, which makes leadership transition difficult on the conservative side. This somewhat confuses Costello’s quite sensible analysis of his particular circumstances — that he was partly hostage to the “class of ‘96” — Coalition MPs like the execrable Jackie Kelly who were first elected that year and knew no other Liberal Party than one dominated by John Howard. History suggests Labor and Liberal aren’t that different in handling leadership, even if Labor talks about its history and identity a lot more. Both parties will endure a great deal for and be reluctant to replace a leader who is a winner, but don’t have much tolerance for losers. It’s simple politics. That’s why there are few successful challenges to Prime Ministers — because by definition they’ve demonstrated electoral success, and their challenger hasn’t. It was only the meltdown of John Kerin that really put the skids under Bob Hawke, long after it was clear that the latter was unable to work out how to respond to Fightback. What Costello is really saying is that the Liberal Party should’ve planned its leadership transition — to him — - better. “Leadership transition’ and “succession planning” are examples of management-speak that have crept into politics, the sort of concepts you can attend $500 day-long seminars in hotel conference rooms to learn about, with Minties, filtered water and tepid coffee. Labor is ostensibly better at managing “leadership transition” than the Liberals. Neville Wran, Bob Carr, Peter Beattie, Steve Bracks, all got out on top, and were replaced in orderly, managed processes. In contrast, John Howard clung to power until it had to be prised out of his cold dead hands. Look a little closer, though, and you wonder how much “leadership transition” has given Labor. It gave NSW Barrie Unsworth and Morris Iemma. It’s made previously hopeless Oppositions in Queensland and Victoria suddenly competitive. Federal Labor never had a leadership contest between Keating’s resignation in 1996 and Beazley’s challenge of Crean in June 2003. The appeal of a “leadership transition” is that it is bloodless, that everyone stays friends, there’s no party division to scare the public. But history suggests it doesn’t yield good leaders, but rather safe choices, choices unlikely to deviate too much from the style and substance of the previous leader. This tends to get punished by the electorate if the Government has been around for any length of time. They do things a bit differently in the United States. In fact most of their political process is devoted not to general elections but to party primaries, which are frequently every bit as nasty and divisive as the real thing. The idea that candidates should be determined by party elders sitting around working out who they think is the safest choice would strike most politically-engaged Americans as profoundly anti-democratic and politically unwise. Primaries, as you might have noticed, make for much excitement and limitless opportunities for journalists to comment, speculate and talk rubbish, which is what we most enjoy doing. There’s no doubt that contests of any kind are far better for the media than orderly transitions, and don’t forget that while reading and watching the death of Brendan Nelson over the next days and weeks. Malcolm Turnbull is, some say, waiting to amass a sufficiently large level of support in the Liberal Party that his replacement of Nelson is accepted even by party conservatives. This assumes that the likes of Nick Minchin will ever be happy to see Turnbull in the top job. They won’t, and if Turnbull fails to perform as leader, it won’t matter how he got the job or by how much, they’ll undermine him. Turnbull might reflect — in fact it would be strange if he hadn’t already — that the winners of Australian politics are those who let nothing get in the way of their ambitions. Fraser, Hawke, Keating, Howard, Rudd — all would’ve done whatever it took to get the top job, including actively undermining or challenging their own leaders. There’s a sense in which the electorate will only reward with the Prime Ministership those who have demonstrated just how badly they need to possess it, who seize whatever serious opportunities arise to get it, regardless of the timing or damage they do along the way. We seem to like our political bloodsport and are happy to reward the victors. The media would far prefer that Turnbull strike quickly, rather than sit back and wait for a consensus to develop that he should be leader. The media — it is doubtless unnecessary to add – don’t have the interests of Turnbull, the Liberal Party or even the electorate at heart, merely the desire to sell advertising. But maybe power really must be taken. Sitting back and waiting to be given it didn’t help Peter Costello. |
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14 Comments
John Goldbaum, I would hazard a guess that no political advisers to Turnbull are readers of Crikey…….but keep thinkin’ Butch…..
Fortunately for Turnbull, you’re not one of his political advisers Evan
Please,please, please…..Once and for all, as of now…. We have to slay the Costello illusion, if for no other reason, than to allow Malcolm Turnbull a clean shot at the coalition’s top job. Surely we all know that Brendan Nelson is a pathetic little man, lost in the wilderness of big time chicanery aka The Liberal Party. If Turnbull catches ‘Peter’s Syndrome’, we can all look forward to yet another saga of, ‘what if, should I have? Followed by another book about ‘how the Liberals screwed me’ author, Malcolm Turnbull. What oh what has Costello done to have people hanging on his every word? If he was such a political genius; how was it his Liberal Party were so blind as to fail to recognize this ‘evident genius’.? Why wasn’t he selected to be leader? Where were the decent bills he helped parliament to create, or pass? Where was he when Howard launched the obscene ‘Children Overboard’ scam? The ‘Tampa’ scam ? Why did he fail to make his revulsion of the wretched Pauline Hanson, quite clear? (assuming he did find her repulsive) What single piece of legislation was Costello responsible for, that made the world a better place for his having been in it? As for the idea which sprang from I know not where, that his electorate have benefited by his presence. Hell, I live in the place, I should know. Why hasn’t he been seen at the Malvern Vale Pup, having a drink with the electorate’s oldest inhabitant? Where was he when Ms Blitherer’s cat got caught up a tree? Ordinary grass roots caring. Why can’t all of you front up, fair and square, and admit that Peter Costello’s entire existence has been as useful as the proverbial *unt full of cold water. Until then he will hang around like a t*rd in the christening font. Always there to spoil the next guy’s aim at the top job.
So much for power. What I am wondering is if Costello ever thought it was necessary to challenge (and even lose) in order to promote an important policy agenda, not for power but Australia’s best interests according to his own subjective views.
Better to have tried and failed, in which case the policy might be adopted by your rival later anyway?
Even Hanson runs that line, that Howard did her over by adopting her clothes.
But what seems so obvious to me in all this is, there is nothing in it for Costello running for leader now. At the top of govt the grovel of opposition would be too boring. While he remains in parliament he IS a live round for leader ….later. Nightwatchman Man has months if not a year of grovel at low polling ahead of him and Turnbull can wear that sackcloth too if he wants. Costello has snookered both of them - as long as he keeps his grip on Higgins (?).
I mean what does “I neither seek nor will I accept” even mean? That he ‘won’t challenge in the future’? If so resign from parliament. If not, then re-read above.
Little JimmyK:
There you go again…thinking your one of the ‘big’ boys.
Evan,
1. Turnbull needs to move only when he knows that he has the numbers in the Parliamentary Liberal Party. He might now but I doubt it. He is presently winning friends within the said Party in his present role
2. It is probably not in his (or any other leader aspirant) to move now but ideally some 6 to 12 months from the next election.
3. Rudd has to sell an ETS that makes sense for the electorate to swallow. Better the present Liberal leadership stance on ETS is fought by the present honest hardworking but ‘dispensable’ which can be differentiated from by a new leader with the best policy going in to next election. Julia Gillard may have an opportunity in Labor for a similar reason. You will have noted that Rudd’s man Garnaut has moved to Nelson’s previously stated position on the implementation of an ETS (ie relative to the rest of the world’s response) in his latest interim report.
Can we please move on from Costello - the Australian public were over him years ago. Why would the Libs have replaced Howard with a gutless smirker with a poor record as Treasurer - giving away the boom to middle class welfare and leaving the national infrastructure to rot. Since the election he is somehow being transformed into some kind of Liberal legend - mainly by Shanahan and the other Lib apologist journos - conveniently forgetting the voters hated him. Turnbull won’t do any better - just what the Libs need now - an arrogant, know-it-all, silvertail barrister to emphasise to the ‘battlers’ how out of touch they are. He smirks as well!
Common guys! If Cossie ran second in the 2006 cabinet relay around Parliament House we’d still be getting permutations and combinations of why he got the silver medal. “Someone greased the baton or a palm, they passed a kouchie not a duchy or Janette laced my Dunlops”. Bottom line the guy’s a poor loser in good trantrum-chucking form and we can either ignore him or offer a distraction. Is there any better time to induct him into the Parliamentary Hall of Fame with a Gold Mace for compelling performances? Pete’s the here, there, everywhere and nowhere MP who went from back to front bench, from Opposition to Government into and out of Cabinet and with a spectacular dive twist and half-pike landed back in Opposition with a pledge to do it all again, no strings!!!. Sure he’s pledged to stay put like those other remarkables from WA to the capital and further east - the seat-sniffing, bra-snapping, dirty-dancing and paedophilic colleagues who marked a patch as conspicuous players in parliamentary life. If Cossie wanted to be striking, saleable and highly commercial he’s now ’s top dog, leader of the pack and grand dragon. If Malcolm Turnbull wants one better we’re simply waiting for the conversion.
Evan, JamesK made the same comment about me on a previous occasion. I suspect the only justification he relies upon is his role as an advisor to Brendan Nelson. He appears to be saying it for the benefit of Turnbull’s advisors, to warn them off.
I think it’s a little unfair to solely link the rise of the Qld Conservatives with Peter Beattie’s ‘transition’ to Anna Bligh.
I would suggest the so-called ‘rise’ in the non-Labor stocks in Qld have more to do with their own process of getting their own internal affairs into some order, rather than Beattie’s decision to move on.
Despite some minor hiccups, Bligh’s government has been solid, steady and consistent and largely devoid of the scandals of its interstate cousins.
Malvern Vale pub:
JamesK
Fortunately for Turnbull, you’re not one of his political advisers Evan
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Fortunate for me too. I can’t think of a worse job.
But what’s the justification for this comment?
Could it be that Turnbull just wants to see Nelson absorb as many blows as possible, then come in as the party saviour just when Rudd’s popularity inevitably begins its structurally mandated descent? Turbull likes to be the hero, the Success Story. Emo Man is much better suited to the role of media/party room whipping boy.
Oh yeah, and there is another psychological scenario - Costello has been moulded for so long by Howard into the ‘the other half’ of a winning leadership model that he’s stuck in that mould for good. He won’t run because he can’t - but he can balance up Howard’s proxy in Nelson (propped up by Minchin, the other hard right Libs-Nats left) and sitting on the back bench providing critical mass of political capital to block a real change in Turnbull. If Costello’s id is now so deformed by the now exhausted partnership with Howard, that would be Howard’s profound legacy: A half leader rival left to compliment an Iraq war swaggering apologist replacement.
And yet another scenario is that both my scenarios above are correct but the writing of the book will be the catharsis to get him out of his rut?