Political Corrections

with Mungo MacCallum

Mr Magoo's extreme makeover

Perhaps our ageing but still lovable Prime Minister is entering his second childhood, or perhaps it's just a sign of panic; but John Howard has suddenly become a political acrobat of Olympic standard.

We are not talking here about minor turnarounds such as the embrace of the never-ever GST, or unobtrusive back flips like his conversion to Mark Latham's line on political superannuation; what is happening now is a total transformation, a complete makeover. Last week our old fashioned, even stodgy Man of Steel disappeared briefly into a handy phone box to emerge, astonishingly, as Sensitive New Age Man.

Yes, the same John Howard who once described himself as the most conservative leader his party has ever had was out there with the chardonnay quaffing, latte sipping basket weavers defending single teenage mothers, acknowledging and redressing financial discrimination against gays and foreshadowing huge amounts of money for research into alternative energy sources. And we know he isn't joking because his faithful amanuensis, Dennis Shanahan, has reported it all in The Australian.

Not only that: Howard is to embark on - wait for it - long term policy programs which will have no immediate electoral appeal but which are aimed at repairing Australian infrastructure across the next 10 years - a full decade, more than three terms of parliament. And in a further promise which will make Peter Costello's blood run cold, itself an appealing prospect, Howard has hinted that he would like to stick around to see the culmination of these 10 year plans: "Obviously, I play a significant part. I am here, I have lots of ideas, I have a lot of views."

Obviously? Since when? What's going on here?

Well, one thing that's not going on is the budget. It would seem that Howard and Costello have just pissed $52 billion dollars worth of handouts and tax cuts up against the wall. They and their followers have all but given up on the idea of getting any real electoral kick out their tossing out of the gains of the last three years of economic growth. After just three weeks they are no longer even trying to sell the budget; the advertising is all about the so-called "strengthening" of Medicare.

The latest cynical decision appears to be that cynicism, in the form of a naked bribe, is no longer in fashion; improbably, the voters may have been telling the truth when they said they wanted more in the way of services and planning. So they are cynically to be offered what they bloody well asked for: our Prime Ministerial Mr Magoo is to cast aside his bifocals to reveal himself as a man of vision. Well, as Josef Goebbels once said, if you're going to tell the people a lie, it's a better to make it a really big one; while they may often gag at the merely unlikely, they will often swallow the frankly incredible whole and come back for more.

Next week: Peter Costello joins the Maritime Workers Union, Tony Abbott revealed as a Green republican and John and Janette vacate Kirribilli House and move to a rented attic in Chinatown.

According to some Liberal apparatchiks, the worst thing going for their cause at present is not the fiasco in Iraq or even the dead cat budget, but that old bugbear of Leadership Speculation.

The unanswered (and politically unanswerable) questions of just when and how Howard will retire and whether Costello will then waltz into the leadership are making even traditional coalition voters edgy. So they have tried to turn the argument around: would you rather have the team of John Howard and Peter Costello, or that of Mark Latham and (shudder) Simon Crean?

If this was a game of chess, the move would be followed by the symbol "!?" which means "bold but unsound." It points up what is supposed to be a stark choice, but it opens the way for a lot more questions. First, how solid is the Howard-Costello team? Costello has been making noises to indicate that he is finally running out of patience and that the chance of him sticking around for a 10th budget - let alone an 11th or 12th - is increasingly remote. And if - when - he does succeed Howard, what is the new team? Costello-Abbott? Costello-Nelson? And if he misses out, do we end up with Abbott as Prime Minister? These are hardly prospects to calm the nerves and settle the stomachs of troubled voters.

And really, is the idea of Crean as Treasurer so frightening? No one seemed to think so during his six years as number two to Kim Beazley. The problem with Crean as leader was not that people disliked him; they just didn't care one way or the other. Indeed, it could be argued that Crean is exactly the kind of stolid, reliable, unimaginative type voters prefer as a pair of safe hands in Treasury.

Howard and Costello have christened him "Mr Magic Pudding," suggesting profligacy; but Crean exudes caution and sobriety rather than any hint of rashness. Moreover, the Magic Pudding we all remember may have been a bit of a scamp, but he was certainly more loveable than threatening. Once again the spinmeisters have been a bit too clever.

Just when we hoped that we might finally be putting parochialism and the cultural cringe behind us, our national newspaper is there to bring us back to earth. When, after days of evidence which was probably more damning to the security services than to himself, Jack Roche unexpectedly changed his plea to guilty of planning to bomb the Israeli Embassy, The Australian couldn't resist it.

Across the country, posters proclaimed proudly: "OUR FIRST TERRORIST". Yes, gold for Australia! Gold, gold, gold!