John Howard has done more than enough to deserve to lose the next election by a wide margin. The polls indicate that he probably will. Yet he remains a slight favourite in the betting. Quite a few seasoned commentators think it more likely than not that he will win, and no one is prepared to write him off. Mark Latham and Labor have not by any means done enough to deserve to win. And John Howard is not only lucky, but makes his own luck. Even if Latham has amazed his detractors by his self-discipline over nine months, people still wonder if he can hold it together through a campaign.
This is, or ought to be, a classic election which a government loses. It’s been in long enough, and if it has presided over a good economy (and can claim some credit for keeping it that way) all the signs are that it has pretty much run its course. Howard has achieved almost all of his personal agenda in politics, but this is an agenda set 30 years ago and there’s not much that’s new. The Treasurer, Peter Costello, may be set to step into his shoes but seems unable either to imbue the government with new energy or ideas, or to excite anyone about his succession. Indeed most Liberal voters would rather that Howard remained indefinitely than Costello replace him.
The Liberals are floundering because they lack direction and drive. The utter shabbiness of Howard’s refugee policies has deeply sapped the moral authority of the government. A parade of deceits, cunning tricks, dissemblings, prevarications, misleadings, and outright lies has deprived it not only of credibility but the capacity to inspire faith or hope. So too with casual abuses of the defence forces and the public service, the unspeakable greed and ethical apathy of many ex-ministers, the deceptions over Iraq, the propensity of the Prime Minister to play to some of the darkest instincts in the Australian soul, and his refusal to admit or accept any responsibility for any misbehaviours. Oh, and, of course, the sheer national humiliation of having a buffoon such as Alexander Downer purporting to speak for us, to tell others who we are, or to invite judgment of our character by his utterances.
All these were but lightly touched on by the ‘Gang of 43’—the group of retired diplomats, spooks and military people who remonstrated the government over