Lazarus Rising

by John Howard

  If every young Australian — and most of them are young — foolishly contemplating being a drug courier from an Asian country could have been in my Gladesville office that November day, and witnessed the unrelieved anguish of that heartbroken mother, they might think twice before doing something which could land their own mother in a similar predicament. Mrs Kim Van Nguyen and her children had been refugees accepted by Australia in the 1970s. Her other son had been in trouble with drugs as well. It was said that the son held in Singapore had agreed to carry drugs to earn money to pay off his brother’s debts.

  It was difficult to imagine a sadder situation for a mother. I didn’t pretend that I could save her son. I couldn’t. For close to an hour I offered her what comfort that I could by listening to what she had to say, assuring her that I would continue to pursue the issue with the Singaporean Government, but not in any way holding out hope that I could be successful. I embraced her when she left as I had on her arrival, and at various times when she broke down during our discussion. I was her PM and she was begging me for help, which I was powerless to provide. All I could do was show compassion and concern as a human being and a father for her tragic situation. I hope that I was equal to the task.

  Her son was hanged in Changi Gaol, Singapore, on the morning of 2 December 2005.

  44

  THE LEADERSHIP

  If certain events had been handled differently, Peter Costello, following my retirement, would have become Leader of the Liberal Party and, as a consequence, Prime Minister towards the end of 2006. He would have done the job well; whether or not he would have won in 2007, we will never know. The focus of this chapter is the leadership issue and why a transition late in 2006 did not take place. All I can do is to tell the story from my perspective; readers will make their own judgements.

  It is central to a proper understanding of the leadership dynamic within the Liberal Party to recognise that the Government was not regularly plagued by leadership debate. For most of the time that we held office, the issue simply did not arise.

  When leadership tensions did arise, neither Peter Costello nor I allowed them to affect our strong professional partnership. At no stage did leadership issues disrupt the proper functioning of the Government.

  Following the lead of our respective chiefs of staff, Arthur Sinodinos (and later Tony Nutt) and Phil Gaetjens, our staff worked together for the good of the Government. Personal relations between them remained positive; so much so that David Gazard, a senior media advisor of mine in my early years as Prime Minister, later became a senior advisor to Peter Costello. He stayed with the former Treasurer until the 2007 election.

  Likewise, Nigel Bailey, once a key economic advisor on Costello’s staff, became my chief economic advisor in 2006. Niki Savva, a senior advisor to the Treasurer for a number of years, joined the Cabinet Policy Unit in 2007, thus working very closely with my office.

  I was not removed as Liberal leader in favour of Peter Costello because the great majority of Liberal senators and MPs never wanted that to happen. Politics is relentlessly driven by the laws of arithmetic. If a political party thinks that its electoral arithmetic will be boosted by a leadership change, it will make that change, irrespective of the circumstances. In 1991 the ALP removed Bob Hawke, its most successful leader, because it thought it would have a better chance of winning the next election with another leader, Paul Keating. Sentiment and gratitude for past favours played no part in it, just as sentiment and gratitude for his past work in rebuilding the credibility of the ALP, after the wreckage of 1975, had not stopped that party from replacing Bill Hayden with Hawke on the eve of the 1983 election, in order to strengthen its electoral prospects. Most dramatically of all, Labor, in June 2010, removed Kevin Rudd in favour of Julia Gillard because it thought she would be more likely to win the forthcoming election. For the first time since Federation, an election-winning PM had been denied the opportunity of completing his first term.

  If at any time during my prime ministership the federal parliamentary Liberal Party had concluded that Costello had a better chance than I did of winning an election, it would have removed me in his favour. Peter Costello would have sensed the change in sentiment, and would have moved against me. That would not have been wrong or disloyal. It had not been disloyal of Rudd to challenge Beazley, nor had it been disloyal of me to work to regain the leadership of the Liberal Party in 1994–95 when Alexander Downer’s position became increasingly unsustainable. Likewise, Julia Gillard displayed no disloyalty in accepting the draft of her party.

  Nobody has an entitlement to lead a political party. There is no code of fairness which ultimately drives the members of a party to choose one person over another. If there had been, then the ALP would never have replaced Hayden with Hawke in 1983. If ever a person had earned the right to lead his party to what looked like a winnable election, it was Bill Hayden. He was the one credible senior ALP figure who had come out of the chaotic Whitlam years. He made his party economically respectable again. Yet his party pushed him aside and, in the process, broke his heart by installing Bob Hawke in his place. His plaintive invocation of ‘the drover’s dog’, to describe his assessment of Labor’s electoral prospects, meant nothing to a party determined to leave no stone unturned in its quest to oust the Fraser Government.

  I thought that it was unfair of the Liberal Party to throw me out of the leadership in 1989 after all that I had been through in fighting both the ALP and the madness of Bjelke-Petersen in 1987. Fairness didn’t come into it. When we lost in 1990, I thought that I was entitled to another go, and that surely the defeat in 1990 demonstrated how mistaken the party had been to cast me aside in 1989. Yet Liberals decided that their future lay with someone else. Again in 1993, issues of entitlement and fairness did not enter the equation. The Liberal Party was not willing to reach back to a former leader.

  When the party turned to me in January 1995, it was not out of a sense of fairness — that it had been wrong to remove me six years earlier — or a feeling that I was entitled to the position of leader. It was because the majority of my colleagues had by then concluded that I had a better chance than anyone else of taking the Coalition to victory. Once again, the relentless laws of political arithmetic had driven a decision.

  Peter Costello was never entitled to the leadership of the Liberal Party. He had a right to challenge for it, and freedom to hope that I would retire and he would succeed me, but it was not an entitlement. It is, and always has been, the unique gift of the party room, conferred on the person regarded as most likely to lead the party to victory at the next election.

  Since the election in 2007 Peter Costello has said on several occasions that he did not challenge me because that would have put the party through too much turmoil and disunity. Whilst I have never doubted Peter’s concern for the party, his statements represented ex post facto rationalisation and nothing else. If he had had the numbers, he would have used them; of that I am certain.

  Prior to our defeat in November 2007, Costello’s only path to the prime ministership was through my retirement. For reasons I will explain, his own conduct helped to remove this as an option at the very time that I was contemplating it. There was, of course, another path to the prime ministership subsequently open to Peter Costello. He could have stayed in politics for the long haul after our defeat in 2007, thus keeping alive the opportunity, as Opposition Leader, to pursue the prime ministership. I accept that history has been against governments being voted out after only one term, but at the age of only 52 when he resigned from parliament in October 2009, Peter Costello had years of political life left in him. He was not forced to go; his party would have been delighted if he had stayed and made himself available for whatever role he might have thought suitable. I was 56 when I was elected Prime Minister; Bob Menzies was 55 when he commenced his 16 years in the Lodge; Gough Whitlam was 56 when he won the prime ministership.

  Peter wanted to emulate a predecessor in Higgins, Harold Holt, and come to the
leadership whilst the Coalition was still in power. It was an understandable aspiration. The transfer of the Liberal leadership, in office, from Menzies to Holt has had no real parallel since Federation. Barton’s assumption of a seat on the High Court in 1903, with Deakin replacing him, went close, but was not comparable, as Barton remained active in public life. On all other occasions, changes in the leadership of the incumbent government were the result of death, ill-health or the serving leader being forced out.

  Costello had a remarkably smooth ride in his early political years. He won the first preselection which he contested, defeating a sitting Liberal MP, the late Roger Shipton, for the safe seat of Higgins. He entered parliament in 1990, and just four years later became Deputy Leader to Alexander Downer in May 1994, when that duo replaced John Hewson and Michael Wooldridge. Costello did not even face a vote for the deputy’s position. When Downer defeated Hewson, Wooldridge pulled out and Costello was elected unopposed, although he had lost a contested ballot against Wooldridge for that post in 1993. For the next 131/2 years there were no leadership ballots in the party. I replaced Downer unopposed in January 1995, and from then until our loss in November 2007, Peter Costello and I retained our positions without challenge.

  My Liberal colleagues did not want me back as their leader after our loss under John Hewson, in 1993. Their attitude had not altered when, towards the middle of 1994, they realised that it was pointless for Hewson to stay as leader. They opted for the ‘dream team’ of Downer and Costello. The description of generational change was applied to them. It wasn’t really; Downer was only five years younger than Hewson, and had entered parliament three years earlier — anything but a ‘generation’. The term was code for saying that the Liberals definitely did not wish to go back to Howard.

  In 1994 Liberal MPs went for Downer because he had done well as the shadow Treasurer. There was respect for Costello’s ability, but Downer seemed more battle-hardened. In addition, some of the so-called moderates, especially from South Australia, who had given up on Hewson, saw Costello as too hardline for their liking.

  I have already dealt with the much-commented-upon meeting of Costello, Ian McLachlan and me on 5 December 1994. Peter Costello never mentioned that meeting to me until July 2006, almost 12 years later, and only then in the wake of stories regarding the meeting having appeared in the newspapers of the previous Sunday.

  There were two isolated incidents, though, involving the leadership. The first was late in July 1998, when Peter Costello confirmed during a radio interview that he had been approached about seeking the leadership by colleagues. He denied any intention to challenge and said that I had his support. I spoke to Costello about it and, on the basis of his response, I decided to simply bat the issue away.

  The other incident was my ill-disciplined interview with Philip Clark on 2GB on 26 July, my birthday, in 2000. It was a real lapse and I should never have said what I did. At that time I had absolutely no intention of retiring, had not contemplated it, and had simply stated the obvious: that at some time I would go. I said, speaking of the period after the 2001 election, ‘I’ll then be in my 63rd or 64th year, and you start to ask yourself and that’s fair enough. And nothing is forever. And I don’t have the view that I am so indispensable and so important and so vital that, you know, the Liberal Party will be bereft without me — that is an arrogant view. By the same token … I have very good health and I am applying myself to the job very effectively and I am enjoying it.’

  Some of my senior colleagues were justifiably angry with this comment, as I had gratuitously injected some uncertainty into perceptions of the Government at a time when it was travelling well. We had just successfully introduced the GST. Costello never mentioned the Philip Clark interview to me or sought in any way to draw implications from it in talking to me.

  Relations between Peter Costello and me were badly strained by the leaking of the Shane Stone memo in May 2001. He reacted angrily to its contents, understandably feeling that as the memo was more critical of him than me or anyone else, it must have been leaked to damage him. He was openly furious with Stone. I don’t think that their relationship ever recovered. Peter did not use any of the discussions I had with him over the leaked memo to raise the broader leadership issue.

  My foolishness on the Philip Clark program meant that the future leadership of the Government would be an issue in the 2001 election campaign. Kim Beazley saw to that. It wasn’t a big issue though. Given the dominant role I had played in driving the Government’s response to the threat of terrorism as well as the asylum-seeker issue, not many Australians thought that I would be leaving the Lodge any time soon.

  The new but unspoken reality in the leadership equation was that the sudden arrival of national security as a dominant political issue, which was destined to grow even further in 2002, meant that the case for my being replaced by Costello in the near term was significantly weakened. The public strongly endorsed my handling of the Tampa incident, and border protection generally, as well as the aftermath of 11 September. The Australian people did not want me to go. The public judged that I was the safe pair of hands in a time of unexpected turbulence. I am sure that Liberal MPs sensed this sentiment.

  When asked about the leadership, my reply was that I would give consideration to my future about the time of my 64th birthday, which was in 2003. I should never have put myself or the Government in this position, but having been ill-disciplined with my remarks, I had fixed an artificial deadline for saying something about my future. Journalists and others drew a circle around 26 July 2003, my 64th birthday, as the time when I would indicate a possible retirement. There were many jocular references to the famous Beatles song ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’.

  Costello did not raise the leadership after the 2001 election. The Government had increased its majority and there was a widespread belief that national security had been a big factor in our impressive win. As our third term progressed, there was no agitation of any kind from within the parliamentary party for a change in leadership. They had no wish to alter a winning formula. There was general acceptance that if I succumbed to the hypothetical bus, then Peter would take my place.

  Peter Costello not raising the leadership with me after our return at the 2001 election could well have been due simply to his accepting at face value what I had said publicly: that I would consider my position at the time of my 64th birthday. The dominance of national security would only intensify as 2002 wore on, with all the implications that had for the leadership dynamic within the Liberal Party. There was the tragic attack in Bali, claiming the lives of so many Australians; there was also the growing likelihood of a showdown with Iraq and the strong likelihood of Australian troops being directly involved. It must have been the instinctive view of most Liberal MPs that this was no time to be changing prime ministers or even talking about it.

  That certainly seemed to be the view of the Australian public. I took a call from a young mother during a talkback session on a Perth radio station on 23 October 2002. Her name was Beverly. She told me that she had never been so fearful for her future and that of her family, and pleaded with me not to retire. She said, ‘I have no confidence in somebody else.’1

  Peter Costello was widely admired within the Liberal Party for the job he had done as Treasurer. Now, however, economic management had to share top billing with defence and national security. Inevitably this reinforced the view that most of the colleagues had of keeping the status quo at the top.

  Late in February 2003 I initiated a discussion with Peter Costello about the future, in which I repeated my public position that I would assess the situation in the middle of the year. I went to some lengths to make it clear to Peter that he should not assume that I would decide to go. My diary entry of 26 February 2003 said, in part, ‘I raised the leadership issue and told him that I had not made up my mind. I said several times that there was no guarantee that I would go.’ I told him that it was the views of colleagues that mattered most. He never se
emed very receptive to this notion. His rather elitist dismissal of what his fellow MPs thought on a whole range of issues was one of the main reasons why the widespread respect for Costello’s abilities within the parliamentary party never translated into enthusiastic support for him as party leader. Peter is not a good listener. His colleagues knew that. They had experienced it first-hand. In this discussion, Peter Costello made no reference to my meeting with him and Ian McLachlan back in December 1994.

  This conversation occurred on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. Peter Costello backed the decision to go into Iraq. We both understood that if things went badly for Australia in Iraq then the public would want a head and that head would have to be mine. In committing units of the ADF to the Coalition of the Willing, a great risk was being taken. I diarised that if Iraq had gone wrong (meaning significant casualties) then I would have fallen on my sword and taken the blame for the whole government. I would have resigned the prime ministership. Iraq did not go badly for Australia. The men and women of the ADF did an exemplary job and mercifully suffered no battle casualties.

  As the middle of 2003, and my 64th birthday, approached I received frequent signals from colleagues, some direct, others through the chief government whip, Jim Lloyd, that I should stay on and lead the party to the next general election. That was also the view of the party organisation. Peter had a core group of supporters amongst Liberal MPs, probably 15 to 20 out of more than 100 colleagues. That was not the basis for a serious challenge. His only hope was for me to decide to go.