Political Corrections

with Mungo MacCallum

A super idea if the end is nigh

Over the years the Liberals have put up with a lot from John Howard for the sake of winning.

They have watched in silence as he purged the party of dissidents and instituted his own reign of terror. They have averted their gaze as he trashed the standards inherited from Robert Menzies, intimidated the courts, destroyed the independence of the public service and made a farce of the Westminster convention of ministerial responsibility. They have acquiesced in the trickery, evasions and downright lies through which their leader has scared the electorate into returning him to power at the price of destroying public trust in the whole system of government and ensuring a perception of themselves, and indeed all politicians, as dishonest, greedy and probably corrupt.

But last week the little shyster finally went too far. In a desperate bid to regain his ascendancy over Mark Latham he threatened their actual incomes; and the party room went ape.

Peter Costello, yet again made the fall guy by Howard's tergiversations, restored a semblance of calm by switching the threat to future generations, but the damage had been done. The man of steel, who in the past has always taken the advice of his mentor Margaret Thatcher never to give an inch, was suddenly revealed as a man of jelly. And this meant that not just their wallets, but the jobs which filled them, may be in danger.

Things were not helped by Howard's clumsy attempted to justify his super back flip with pike and tuck (degree of difficulty 4.8). First he said that he had to get the whole question of politicians' superannuation off the agenda, because it was a distraction and he hated political distractions - journalists moved nervously aside to avoid the thunderbolt with which a just God should surely have responded to such monstrous hypocrisy. Then he said that really, Latham's suggestion was quite a sensible one and he always responded quickly to sensible suggestions - still no thunderbolt.

Then, as questions were asked about just how the transition was to take place and whether future members would be compensated with a salary rise, and how this rise was to be quarantined from the present generation, our fearless Prime Minister faded from view, leaving the hapless Costello and the shameless Tony Abbot to hose the place down.

And the Labor people smiled and smiled and smiled, and the no longer cowed Libs mused very audibly to the press that perhaps the old man (as Howard is increasingly known) had finally cracked up.

One of the things Howard does not want us distracted from is his most recent baby, the totally misnamed Free Trade Agreement with the United States.

In fact, this still-secret document will not become an agreement until (and if) it is ratified in total by the parliaments of both countries, and even if this happens it will still have very little to do with free trade - while various rules governing types of investment will be freed up, enormous barriers to actual trade remain set in concrete.

Nonetheless Howard, and many (but by no means all) media commentators claim it is an absolute knockout for the government. There are plenty of reasons to believe they are wrong.

Howard's line is that, okay, the deal isn't perfect, but there are some winners, and even those who missed out haven't actually lost anything; they are no worse off than they were before. (So why are they - specifically the sugar industry - being promised vast quantities of public money in compensation? Er, next question please).

Tuna fishermen and growers of macadamia nuts, to name but two, have reason to celebrate, as do lawyers and accountants who can expect a wave of American takeovers of Australian companies now the free-entry limit has been raised to $800 million. Moreover, although we gave way on sugar (and indeed on agriculture as a whole) we stared the Yanks down on pharmaceuticals, foreign movies and quarantine laws.

Well, did we? Then why is the spin in the American media that large holes have been bored through all of these areas, and smart American operators will shortly drive very large trucks through them? Until the 1000 page document is revealed, and probably for quite a while after that, we simply have no way of knowing.

The same applies to the alleged money benefit from the deal. The original guesstimate from our government was the nice round figure of $4 billion. With most of agriculture out, this would be at least halved, and in any case some independent analysts say that the real figure was always negative, and is now much more so.

The optimists counter that numbers don't really matter; what is important is that we now have much improved access to the world's biggest market. Pessimists reply that the said market also has much improved access to little old us, and could easily swamp a lot of Australian industries altogether.

The point is that there is a lot of doubt around, and Howard's crowing about the national interest sounds more like bravado than conviction. Whichever way Latham and Labor jump when they have examined the details, the FTA is unlikely to be portrayed as an unalloyed triumph for Howard.

But then, few things seem to break that way in recent times.

Howard, defiantly insisting that he won't give up a cent of his own strenuously accumulated superannuation, may at last be facing reality.