Political Corrections

with Mungo MacCallum

Maybe it's time for Pete to start swimming

Last week I mentioned the improbable promotion of the late Harold Holt by a Tory clique, which makes the preposterous claim that not only was the honest plodder a legend within his own lifetime, but he was also the true begetter of the reforms Gough Whitlam was to bring to shortlived fruition.

Now the truth is out: this rewriting of history is not actually about the rehabilitation of Hapless Harold. Its real purpose is the puffing of Pious Peter, our current and rather less beloved treasurer.

At the launch of a new and somewhat absurd biography of Holt by Costello's personal friend, ex-army chaplain Tom Frame, Costello himself was keen to extol his predecessor: Holt had lived long and productively in the shadow of the longest serving Liberal Prime Minister, waiting faithfully until the baton was handed over. Not too much was expected of him, but what wonders did he perform!

Within a year he had won an election against a Labor opponent who had lost twice before by the then greatest majority in history, admittedly with a little help from his friend LBJ (with whom he was, of course, all the way). He then abolished the White Australia Policy, forged new links with Asia, began cutting the ties with Britain and ran the triumphant Aboriginal referendum of 1967. If only he had lived longer he would have completed the job: there would have been no need for Whitlam, and Whitlam would not have beaten him, as he was to finally succeed against those who followed.

Modesty forbade a direct comparison, but surely this record should reassure those who feared that an orderly transition from the Liberals' second longest leader to his deputy might prove fraught with instability and the prospect of electoral defeat?

Well, up to a point, Mr Costello. Holt was indeed a thoroughly decent politician who served his leader with unwavering loyalty (this, of course, is where the analogy starts to break down). Holt certainly won a record majority in 1966, but that was in the unique circumstances of the start of Australia's involvement in Vietnam, an adventure Holt was to support with uncritical enthusiasm. As boosters of the Iraq caper keep insisting, there are no parallels with today, and indeed Holt's gung ho approach to American adventurism is one of the reasons for the current scepticism.

Holt's approach to reform was at best timorous: even if he had been personally inclined for a more robust approach (which he wasn't) the then Country Party, under the fearsome leadership of Black Jack McEwen, would never have allowed it. However, Holt was certainly a breath of fresh air after the long stultification of Sir Robert Menzies, and there is no reason to doubt that Costello would provide the same temporary relief from the gloomy totalitarianism of John Howard.

So far so good. But what Costello does not mention is that towards the end of 1967 it all started to go wrong. Holt couldn't handle the complexity and responsibility of the top job. In parliament Whitlam was all over him. The long knives of the plotters of the day (think Tony Abbott, Brendan Nelson, Nick Minchin) were unsheathed.

There is little doubt that Holt would have been challenged, and probably defeated, if he had lived another six months. Instead, his serial philandering saved him. He was drowned while showing off to one of his many mistresses - a fate Peter Costello, who copped a small fortune when Bob Ellis accused him of premarital sex with the woman he married, would probably prefer to avoid.

Holt was, in the end (and it was an end that took less than two years) a failure. Costello would be wise to pick another role model. Oh well, back to the drawing board - yet again. It seems there's still plenty of time...

For the moment at least Queensland's eccentric but loveable hillbilly senator Barnaby Joyce is doing his party no harm at all; he is the maverick whose outrageous demands on the sale of Telstra make the scarcely less extravagant claims of his leader Mark Vaile look almost reasonable.

And the same demands give the government as a whole a convenient excuse for postponing indefinitely the unpopular decision about just when and for how much the sale of its remaining stake should go ahead.

But even if Joyce should fall into a combine harvester tomorrow, the problem won't go away. It may be possible to buy the National Party off and get the shares on the market, but Telstra will still be around to give the government grief.

At present Vaile and the responsible minister, Helen Coonan, are busily reassuring people that the full privatisation will not give the company a free hand; it will still be subject to government regulation which will ensure that the regions are looked after, that there will be no timed local calls, that technical upgrading will not be confined to the areas where it is profitable. That, we are assured, will be the law, and no matter how much Telstra's feisty CEO Sol Trujillo whinges that this is not the way to run a company, there will be nothing he or his successors can do about it.

Except, of course, break the law: simply run the company in the best interests of its shareholders and challenge the government to do something about it. And in that case, what could the government do? Fine the company? Jail the CEO? Neither would help, particularly if Telstra threatened to close down altogether, sending the country back to an era of smoke signals and message sticks.

With a near-monopoly on the communications system, Telstra really can hold the country to ransom, and the more savvy punters know it. Already, they don't believe the reassurances. But that won't stop them turning savagely on those who gave them when they turn out to be untrue. Telstra could yet become the government's ultimate wrong number.