Peter Costello has ended his long tease of the Federal Liberal Party by announcing he will not contest the next election, effectively drawing his 20-year political career to an end.
The announcement, made on Costello’s new website, fulfills the commitment he made the day after the November 2007 election that he would not seek the leadership of the Liberal Party and would eventually move to the private sector. Since then, his intentions have been the subject of constant speculation from both elements within the Press Gallery and diehard supporters who wanted Costello to replace first Brendan Nelson, and then Malcolm Turnbull as leader. Costello, despite ghost-writing and launching his memoirs last year, had declined to shed any further light on his career plans.
Costello is currently a part-time member of the International Advisory Board of the World Bank.
Costello’s announcement will remove the leadership pressure Malcolm Turnbull has been under since it became apparent his elevation to the leadership last year had not yielded any significant rise in the Coalition’s poor standing in the opinion polls and, barring a last-minute Colin Barnett-style drafting, ensures a Rudd-Turnbull election contest next year.
Australia will have fully moved on from the Howard years.
The Bridesmaid finally let go of the bouquet
All that teasing and disturbance solely in order to revenge himself on the Liberal Party. He makes Howard’s exit look graceful and stylish in comparison. While the style and manner are different (but equally unattractive) his closest counterpart in Australian politics is Mark Latham – both of them tiresome, divisive and unachieving egoists.
Was it the lack of a severe recession and the government’s subsequent bounce in the polls that finally tipped Costello out? The chancer probably didn’t like his chances after that.
Since he’s been leader, Turnbull has never been able to assert his own dominance within his party. This has been because there’s been another potential leader that Turnbull could have been discarded in favour of. This lack of assertion has translated into a very consultative decision-making style and “internally inoffensive” suite of policies. In particular, the CPRS is being neither supported nor opposed, but simply delayed. By delaying, Turnbull could avoid an obvious rift within his own party. Any such rift had the potential to lead to a leadership challenge from Costello.
With Nelson and Costello out of the way, though, there’re no obvious alternatives to Turnbull within the party. Bishop, Hockey, Pyne, Robb, Abbott. Turnbull has nobody to challenge him. Consequently, he can now afford to make divisive decisions sooner rather than later.
I suspect that the libs will still oppose the CPRS this fortnight. However, Costello’s retirement makes liberal opposition in three months time when a catastrophic double dissolution is on the cards a lot less likely. There’s simply nothing for Turnbull to gain from allowing the Government to call an election over that policy (especially given that the Liberals have openly stated they’ll eventually support an ETS). My prediction is that the govt will announce a backdown over some very trivial element of the scheme and the opposition will use that as an excuse to let it pass.
It would be interesting to see if Costello pulls a Colin Barnett and quickly gets thrown the leadership and wins. I doubt it however, the Rudd government is not quiet incompetent enough for it to work successfully.